Christmas surcharge from USPS, FedEx & UPS

25 Sep 2022

In the US, USPS, FedEx and UPS have all announced a temporary price adjustment for the 2022 peak holiday season. They say that This Christmas surcharge is similar to ones in past years that help cover extra handling costs to ensure a successful peak season.

The good news is that you can avoid the Christmas surcharge on some carrier services when you purchase your labels on eBay. If you sell on eBay you can access the lower rates, but if you sell on other sites make sure you budget for higher shipping costs.

This helps smaller consumer sellers, but most businesses will use third party software to produce their labels and so won’t be able to easily access the savings offered by eBay.

Avoiding Christmas surcharges on with eBay Shipping

USPS

The United States Postal Service (USPS) has announced temporary increases from October 2, 2022 to January 22, 2023 for Priority Mail, Priority Mail Express, First Class Packages and Parcel Select Ground.

Most Priority Mail shipments will not have the announced peak rate increases when you print your labels on eBay.

There is no increase for zones 1-6, 0-2 lbs
There is no increase for zones 1-5, 3 lbs
There is no increase for zones 1-4, up to 10 lbs
There is no increase for Flat Rate Boxes and Envelopes

First-Class Packages will have the following peak rate increases:

$0.25 increase for Zones 1-4
$0.40 increase for Zones 5-9

Priority Mail Express, Parcel Select Ground and Priority Mail for weights and zones not mentioned above will have the published rate increase.

FedEx

There will be no per-package surcharges for FedEx Express and FedEx Ground or additional surcharges for Residential Delivery when you purchase your FedEx label on eBay.

FedEx Ground Economy will have a per-package peak surcharge of $2.00 in place from October 31, 2022 – January 15, 2023.

There will be additional peak season surcharges for Additional Handling, Oversize packages, and Ground Unauthorized shipments. These surcharges are most commonly applied when package dimensions exceed certain limitations or when non-standard packaging is used.

UPS

UPS will not have Peak Surcharges this holiday season when you use eBay Labels. However, UPS has applied general rate changes on eBay Labels that will go into effect October 2, 2022.