Heads up, USPS is merging First Class and Parcel Select into Ground Advantage on July 9th

Payments + Shipping & Fulfilment
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On July 9th, the USPS officially launches, ‘Ground Advantage’, which merges First Class Package, Parcel Select Ground and Retail Ground. The prices should be slightly cheaper per zone and it includes up to $100 insurance, just like Priority Mail. The average shipping times are 2-5 days vs parcel select 2-8 days.

Here’s USPS’s news about it: https://www.usps.com/ship/ground-advantage.htm

There’s a grace period until Sept 30th for commercial mailers to adopt/integrate the new postal product. Presumably, this is why Shopify and some big name shipping APIs haven’t sent out announcements yet. If you’re also using Shopify or another shipping API for commercial rates, we’ll just have to wait until they update their systems to use the new service.

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Is shopify going to include the Ground Advantage in the options when paying for a shipping label? As of today (July 9th) it still says First Class..

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I’m wondering about this as well. I have customers selecting "Ground Advantage " but there is no option to buy the label for this service.

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They will have to eventually, I’m sure they’re working out all the details to update their system. That’s why I mentioned it, since I still haven’t read anything from Shopify about it.

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Thanks for clarifying the grace period!
Yesterday I was confronted by a USPS worker who adamantly said that as of July 9th First class package was no longer effective. Me standing there with 40+ USPS first class packages just laughed him off and kept trying to change topics. He wasn’t going to let it go but my persistent deflection also got the packages sent out! lol
Next time I’ll be better prepared! Phew

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Looks like there might be a grace period until September. The shopify will probably be ready way before then:
https://postalpro.usps.com/node/12255

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Okay, it’s now 7/18, still no news from Shopify on when to expect shipping options to be updated. Considering all of the other e-comm and shipping apis have updated, this is a little silly. Maybe by August? :sweat_smile:

I do want to add, when I track customers’ packages that have been shipped first class, even before the change, USPS shows the service as Ground Advantage with insurance. So I guess that’s something!

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Hey, keep an eye on those Ground Advantage rates for items over 1lb. Shopify appears to be using the OLD Parcel Select Commercial rates and not the current Ground Advantage rates. These rates are set by USPS, so I don’t know if this is an honest mistake or if they’re trying to make a few extra dollars off every package.

To give an example: A 3lb package going to Zone 6 currently costs $10.03 with Ground Advantage. Parcel Select Commercial rate was $11.19. The more expensive (old ps) rate is being charged for any of my Ground Adv packages over a pound. Even if it were just pennies, that’s going to add up…

If you would like to know where to find the current rates: https://pe.usps.com/cpim/ftp/manuals/dmm300/notice123.pdf page 15

Old rates from 1-22-23: https://pe.usps.com/Archive/NHTML/DMMArchive20230122/Notice123.htm#_c139 you will have to scroll down to Parcel Select Ground, Commercial

Just keep an eye out!

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Thanks for the heads up, I’ll definitely be keeping a close eye on the rates.

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How are you getting your website to offer ground advantage? Mine is only offering priority even though I have ground advantage selected in the settings.