All Entries Tagged With: "Holiday Shopping"
Avoid the Holiday Lines!
The holiday season is upon us. For those of you with friends and family scattered around the country and world, that can only mean one thing, shipping.
Every year around this time shipping times slow from the sheer volume of packages. It used to be if you were just a little late you could bump up to the speedier service with not too much financial pain. Things are changing in shipping. Fuel costs are up, and shipping costs go up right along with them. UPS, USPS and FedEx are all going to raise rates again in early 2009. DHL is not going to ship within the United States anymore (they will continue to ship from the US to international addresses) so if you had used them for domestic shipping you are going to have to find another service.
What does this mean to you? It means you should plan ahead. The shipping companies are 
always trying to drill this into us, ship early, ship early, but based on the lines at post office year after year many are not heeding this advice.
There are a few things you can do to avoid this last minute hassle. After all, who wants to stand in line at the post office when you have cookie to bake, Christmas trees to trim, parties to go to, and children home on winter break?
Did you know that you can have either your postman or UPS come to your house to pick up your package? Its easy! If you have the packing supplies and an accurate scale you can go to http://www.ups.com or http://www.usps.com and schedule a pickup online. UPS charges a small fee, USPS offers the service for free if you are sending at least one Priority or Express package.
Another option is to send gift cards instead of gifts, be really careful about that this year though, as the economy tightens more brick and mortar stores will be closing up shop in the coming months. The first thing they do is stop accepting gift cards.
I have an even better idea – the most convenient method of all – shop online and have the store ship directly to the recipient. Many online stores offer gift wrapping services for a small fee. Small retailers like myself will wrap the items in pretty tissue paper and ribbon if we know it is a gift going direct, at no extra cost, and can pretty it up even more for a small fee. In the sometimes impersonal world of internet buying I know how important it can be to our customers that we give that little bit of extra customer service.
This winter everyone wants to save time, money and gas – buying your gifts online and having them shipped direct is the way to go!
