We started selling our eggs last week, as our girls have been getting really generous with us. This has been a goal since we got the chickens, and so it’s really quite fulfilling to finally have arrived at this point. Of course, not all of our girls have started laying yet, so there only promises to be more output, and every day it seems like I find one of the tiny pullet “starter” eggs in one of the nest boxes, telling us that there is a newbie layer joining the rest of the hens! Yay!
So far, we’ve just been using cartons that we (and my mom – thanks, mom!) have been saving over the past several months. But we have known all along that we want our own new cartons to use, and have had our eye on these beauties, from eggcartons.com, for several months:
Now that the ball (egg?) is rolling on sales, and we are running out of those repurposed cartons, we decided to get our own cartons on order. It was my first time ordering these, and so I went through the usual process of getting an account set up on the website, adding to my cart, etc. During checkout, I was presented with two shipping options, FedEx Ground, or UPS Ground, but both were the same price – nearly twenty dollars for shipping. That seemed steep to me, but I was willing to pay it, because these are the exact cartons we wanted.
Part of the checkout process was a small survey, which asked if there was anything I felt could be improved in terms of my ordering experience. I said:
“Shipping costs seem a bit pricey, but as this is my first time ordering cartons, it’s likely just my lack of familiarity with the weight of the packages.”
I didn’t think twice about it, as typically, when you fill out one of these surveys, very little results from it. Imagine my surprise (and delight) when I received an email from the President of King Supply Company (the parent of EggCartons.com), Paul K. Boutiette, this morning!
He explained:
We fully agree on the shipping charges. They stink! We know because we absorb about one-third of the charges and bill our customers the remainder, just to keep them somewhat acceptable to you, our customer. Our products take up lots of room in the carriers’ trucks. They bill us for its bulk, more than for the weight, as they are considered oversize by their standards. Those drivers earn a pretty good week’s pay, and we pay dearly for it….
FYI, there are NO hidden handling charges in our fees. In fact we go backwards with shipping charges and shipping costs. The shipping costs far outweigh our charges to you. I know it sounds like bad business, but if we didn’t absorb some of it, you probably would not buy our egg cartons, so we share the burden with you.
We are very grateful for your order. We always try to keep the shipping costs as low as we can. I assure you, the shipping charges on the large boxes cost us almost twice what we charge our customers, and the smaller boxes cost us up to 50% more than we charge our customers. UPS and FedEx have gone up over 10% in the past 14 months with no end in sight, most likely due to fuel and labor cost increases. We always negotiate for the best rates possible to help keep our costs low. We do our best, but that seems less than adequate when looking at the bill, and we understand that. We are in the same boat as you are.
We welcome customers to open their own UPS account (any business or residential customer can open an account, large or small, just go to UPS.com, click the SHIPPING tab, and OPEN AN ACCOUNT) and then we can ship on the customer’s UPS account number where UPS sends the customer the bill for the shipping costs, allowing full control of the shipping costs to be in the hands of the customers.
And, for the record, USPS (Post Office) is averaging 20-50% more than UPS or FedEx on large bundles. Believe me, we have checked. Also, USPS does not have a true tracking system nor do they offer insurance automatically. It has to be purchased with each package. In addition, it takes 3 – 4 weeks to cross the country by parcel post (compared to the 5 days by UPS or FedEx), which would be unacceptable to most of our customers.
The more egg cartons that are ordered, the broader the base can be, in other words, the more egg cartons that are ordered, the cheaper cost per egg cartons in shipping costs. We sell about 3 million egg cartons each year and do our darndest to keep your costs low. However shipping costs are always a tough challenge for us.
Anyway, we are glad you found us and hope to hear from you again!
Now THAT is what I call excellent customer service – wow. Just WOW. I am really looking forward to getting the cartons tomorrow, and I now better understand the situation. We have experienced the same sort of issue with being charged by the shipping company for the bulk of a package, rather than the weight, when we’ve shipped certain car parts out. So I totally get that, and the way Paul took the time to explain it all so patiently certainly helped, too. I’m sure this is something they deal with quite a bit – complaints about shipping costs – and helping to educate their customers is the best way to deal with it. This is the sort of business ethic I really appreciate, and have always tried to espouse in my own dealings – and so I’m very happy to shout from the virtual rooftop, as it were, when I have the pleasure of dealing with like-minded folks.
So, if you are in the market for egg cartons, I can’t recommend the customer service I’ve received through eggcartons.com enough! We will definitely be return customers, ourselves.
Thanks Paul!
Related Images:
Leave a Reply