DHL Express will increase their shipping price in 2021

[Yavianice]

ModelTrainPlus has posted that DHL will increase their (corporate) shipping price in 2021 by about 50%, making DHL shipping from Japan "no longer viable".

 

FedEx might be an alternative.

 

He did not post details. I'll see if I can dig up some.

Edited December 1, 2020 by Yavianice

[gavino200]

50% Wow! 😲

Edited December 1, 2020 by gavino200

[cteno4]

Yikes I wonder if it’s just his business size or all business sizes. Usually they tier the deal to how much business you will do.

 

jeff

[Yavianice]

Dunno. I guess we will see an announcement on the HS website soon. I also asked RG-R what prices he got and if he will offer FedEx as a replacement.

[Yugamu Tsuki]

Wondering if this is only Business to Business or Business to Consumer as well.

[Yavianice]

Wouldn’t make much sense if it was only business to business and not business to private if MTP posts it on his regular Facebook page.

[Yugamu Tsuki]

From a company standpoint if my forwarder/courier was raising my business costs I'd need to let my customers know my overhead is going up so I could justify needing to pass it on to them, but that's just my speculation. 

[roadstar_na6]

If more shops then move to FedEx it‘d be nice imo, they offer equally fast shipping at a much better price. 🙂

I guess we‘ll have to wait and see

[disturbman]

I wonder what's the rationale. You would think the prices would have jumped more this year, when the air travel plummeted, not the year when all major economies are planning large vaccinations campaigns and we will probably see international air traffic slowly pick up.

[bill937ca]

Maybe consumer goods are getting squeezed out economically by vaccine shipping contracts.  There is only so much capacity and the world will be going crazy for the vaccines.

Edited December 1, 2020 by bill937ca

[Kiha66]

I wonder if DHL held back this year to avoid of accusations price gouging, which can carry steep fines in many parts of the world during decarded emergencies.  I wonder if enough time has passed now that they feel they can raise rates during the time they would normally, and while the amount will cause outrage it probably won't provoke lawsuits.

[chadbag]

If this is a general across the board rate increase, I guess they will see a reduction in business.  It may be worth it if they can make the same amount of money with fewer packages.  All part of figuring out your cost vs benefits in business.

[lukewang01]

It only says for general public a 4.9% increase in price for 2021. Which they also did from 2019 to 2020.

https://www.dhl.com/jp-en/home/press/press-archive/2020/dhl-express-announces-annual-price-adjustments-for-2021.html

I know it's different for businesses, my guess is there's probably a quota that a business need to meet to stay in that discount tier. I sure hope DHL is not raising 50% for every business. Someone will need to be fired if they're going to raise the price for everyone, just doesn't seem like a rational decision for a company at this size. 

Edited December 2, 2020 by lukewang01

[katoftw]

Corp rates are normally much cheaper than resident rates. Maybe they are just closing the gap?

[cteno4]

DHL use to be very dependent on your volume for the pricing. Long time back I did a lot of express shipping of cdroms and use to use airborne as they had the best rates for small business and lower volumes. FedEx was next and DHL (not great us offices at that time as well) was high, when DHL bought airborne the rates skyrocketed and I moved over to FedEx. DHL kept calling wanting me back but their rates as my volume (maybe 3-5 per week) were just not anywhere near what they wanted to give much of any Corp discount. It was also just a more complicated affair as well with a contract and such. Last I checked even just a tiny FedEx account still gives you a good discount over the walkup price.

 

maybe a small business starter price they tried here and did not work out for them so pulling big discounts from it. We shall see.

 

jeff

[Yavianice]

RG-R has told me that the usual 4400 yen I spend on shipping 3-4 cases, will now be bumped to 4800 yen (approximately). 

[disturbman]

Still a bit steep but definitely not a 50% increase.

[Yavianice]

25 minutes ago, disturbman said:

Still a bit steep but definitely not a 50% increase.

 

MTP has said that DHL will increase the prices by 50%. RG-R says it will be bumped by 10%. I am guessing that RG-R and MTP have different contract types with DHL, and not a universal one. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

So if you want to buy stuff with DHL shipment, I guess that you have to order it from RG-R instead of MTP.

[disturbman]

Yep. Personally, I rarely feel the need to pay premium. SAL, ePacket light, or Register Air are usually fine by me. The only time things fly DHL is when I use Amazon.

[marknewton]

I'll be happy when EMS is available again, because my experience is that DHL's performance is very poor by comparison. It amazes me that they can get a parcel from Japan to Australia in one day, then take a week or more to get it from the airport - which I can see from my kitchen window - to my house. And their tracking is fairly useless as well. They're already more expensive than EMS, and if their prices increase I'll only use them when no other alternative exists.

 

Cheers,

 

Mark.

[Tony Galiani]

I just had my first experience with this yesterday.  Placed an order from Hobby Search and the DHL shipping came in at US$40.  There were some cheaper options but the delivery times seemed really long.  Since the order is for a bunch of items for my current new tram layout project I decided to go ahead but will need to rethink this going forward.  Since I don't order very often, shipping has not been a big issue for me though in the future I will likely plan my purchasing a bit better!

Ciao,

Tony Galiani

[EdF]

Amiami doesn't seem to have increased.  But HS does seem to have doubled for anything larger than a casket.  Ordering a empty casket and a underfloor spare part was 40, just the casket, 20.

[Yavianice]

22 minutes ago, EdF said:

Amiami doesn't seem to have increased.

 

yeah I'm actually a bit confused about the DHL shipping increases. I think that some of the larger companies BSed negotiated to keep the price the same, but that small businesses have had their tiers bumped up.

[cteno4]

this is nothing new. i had fedex and airborne both do the bait and switch on contracts and try to up the rates later unless i went to much higher shipping levels. when i contacted DHL about changing my shipping company once they would not even tell me how long they would keep the prices offered or how they would structure future shipping contracts. this was before all way before the covid issues thrown in. DHL is of course just trying to optimize their profits. always profits in bulk, small accounts eat up more of the profits so they charge more to cover it. does seem to be a really dramatic leap in prices though!

 

jeff

[JR 500系]

I've had both Ami and Rail Rokko delivered through DHL in January 2021, i didnt notice much of an increase though... It is still slightly higher than EMS, but at 2-3 days faster than EMS, i can deal with it ~