shipping not looking too good...

[Kristie]

Just got off the phone with doug and he said he talked to the folks at DHL & Fedex...so far, Fedex is charging a lot more than DHL but he thinks Fedex got the Iraq contract (which is why they can charge more?) and DHL may only be shipping to Bagdad & Kuwait city...As far as the boxes going to Iraq, I don't know where the Anaconda base is, if it's in Bagdad.. then we might be ok?! but the Kuwait boxes, we know, we can get there via DHL.

but as far as we can tell, the shipping discount we got last year was $22 for 30 lbs and we ended up spending a little over $300 on shipping all the boxes.

This year, DHL's deal is $22 for 10 lbs, in which case, we're going to end up paying more overall for shipping (even though we have fewer boxes, they're just as heavy).

He's going to check out the possibility of sending them the APO route if that'll save us the extra $$ because unfortunately, we only have about $300 left over for shipping and doug figures at the DHL rate, it'll cost us about $500 to ship them since we're not getting the same deal as last year (we were really counting on that deal).

you'd think these shipping companies would be all gung-ho for citizens to send packages over to the troops and we're just not getting that feeling. granted, they have to make money too, but if they even donated some of it, it wouldn't hurt their bottom line because they could write off the donations considering how large a company they are...then again, Doug and I could probably write it off too, but our bottom line isn't nearly as large as DHL's is, so i really don't know if we'd get out of it what we put into it - tax wise...

If the APO route isn't going to work, we may be asking for a few more donations to help offset the cost of getting the boxes over there... and then, lesson learned - we'll check out shipping prices before we do another Operation Care Pack next year. If shipping charges continue to go up &/or our discounts continue to deteriorate, we might not be able to do OCP next year because we want most if not all of your donations to go to goodies, not shipping.

but anyways, there's the newest scoop!

[Doug Taylor]

Oh yes, fun fun fun!

I'm going to give DHL another ringy dingy this afternoon and see what I can do about the shipping costs. Last year rocked in terms of shipping, but this year is starting to suck pretty quickly. The only shippers offering airline discounts internationally for employees of my airline is DHL.

I'd like to avoid using the APO system because if the packages arrived by next October, I'd be cheerfully suprised. Plus, it's going to roughly be the same amount to use the APO/USPS system compared to DHL's rate I got quoted this morning (afternoon? I dunno, I had a 0530 pushback out of KBHM so I'm still on 'last night' if you catch my drift)

More updates a little later. I'm going to give DHL another ringy dingy this afternoon once I reach Dayton and I'm going to do a little more research on the APO thing.

[JEP]

[ QUOTE ]
I'd like to avoid using the APO system because if the packages arrived by next October, I'd be cheerfully suprised.

[/ QUOTE ]

Amen, avoid the APO/FPO route at all possible costs. It's o.k. for letters, but other stuff, it could be there in a few weeks or a few months. Little reliability at all in regards to scheduling.

How do I know you ask....Friends and family made frequent use of the system while I was stationed onboard the aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf.

[Screaming_Emu]

My family lives on an airbase in Japan right now and APO works fine going out there. But I have a friend that was statione din Iraq. I sent him a package and it seriously took 4 months to get to him, and when it got there it was completely beat to crap. So avoiding the APO is probably a good idea.