Postal Service and Ebay Co-brand Shipping

By Art Micklewraith
The United States Postal Service has entered into a deal with auction leader Ebay for special shipping boxes baring both of the icons' logos. Auction site resellers can now ship their products using the Postal Service through a convenient set of links on Ebay's website. Ebay users could already find zip codes, calculate postage and check on tracking and confirmation but now have a new option of choosing to send their items through the post in co-branded, Priority Mail flat-rate boxes.

Flat-rate boxes can make shipping much easier since they eliminate most of the hassles of weighing and calculating postage. The cost for priority mail flat-rate box is $7.70, no matter where it's going. As long as it will fit in one of the five different sized boxes and weighs less than seventy pounds the same flat rate applies. The special dual logo boxes are available for free on Ebay's website.

This can represent huge savings on shipping over normal postage rates. For example the postage for shipping a five-pound box from the east coast to the west coast costs is around $12. A ten-pound box is nearly $20. Even the much shorter distance of New York City to Chicago costs $13 for that same ten-pound box. Parcel post is, of course cheaper but no online retailer should consider bypassing the security of package tracking and the speedy delivery of priority mail.

The Postal Service and Ebay are going out of their way to make sure as many people know about their new partnership as possible. USPS, who also operated a special booth to promote the new services, sponsored Ebay's huge annual conference in June. The event always attracts thousands of users from around the world. The Postal Service's booth unveiled the new co-branded boxes and offered attendees the chance to send their materials home in them.

Anita Bizzotto, USPS Chief Marketing Officer waxed poetic, for a bureaucrat "Ebay customers are extremely important to the Postal Service. With online services it's never been easier for Ebay entrepreneurs to take advantage of the Postal Service's mailing options."

"Teaming up with the United States Postal Service is a significant win for the eBay community," said Gary Dillabough, Vice President of Strategic Partnerships for eBay. " (The partnership) offersÂ… the eBay community, many of whom are small business owners, the tools and services to manage and grow their business."

The Post Office offers consumers what they call ReadyPost mailing and shipping supplies aimed at reducing the time spent preparing boxes. The Postal Service also offers "The Shipping Standard," a complete mine of shipping, mailing and packaging materials with the USPS logo and brand including "Advanced Security Tape." We are told that if the package is opened by anyone other than the addressee, the word "Opened" appears repeatedly across the box.

The United Parcel Service has long held a good lead on the USPS in the race to get the shipping dollars on online business but the Postal Service has started to gain ground. In recent years the USPS has started to shed its snail mail reputation and offer a variety of services aimed at smaller businesses. For example the postal service now allows customers to print labels, pay postage, and last year they started picking up packages at any address, all with a simple online request. More services and generally lower rates are the kind on co-branding online retailers like to see.