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As an authorized distributor, are my shipping rates discounted?

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An Authorized Distributor recently asked the following question.
 
QUESTION
Mike,
I think we spoke breifly about this before, but if you could refresh my memory it would be much appreciated. I was wondering what my shipping charges are as a distributor, are they discounted, if so what are the rates, so I know what to set my own shipping charges at for my customers. If you have any recommendation on how i should handle the shipping charges, that would be very helpful to me as well.  Thanks in advance,
 
Mike
 
 
ANSWER
Hello Mike.  Yes your rates are discounted and we have a calculator specifically for distributors on our website.  However, our site is being transfered to a dedicated server because the amount of traffic we are recieving is causing many problems with missing links, bogg down times on loading pages, etc.
 
In the mean time, just call someone here in customer service and ask for a cost ahead of time if needed.  Everyone else is simply posting ads utilizing the ebay provided UPS calculator and adding a handling charge within it to cover any miscalculations but are comming out ahead in making some money off the shipping costs.
 
The other method for making money that I can tell you is when you Air Cargo product.  We charge $20 per 50 lbs per package boxed and delivered to the airport by us to the standard consumer.  We only charge our authorized distributors and retailers $10 per (50% off the handling).  The customer is required to pay actual shipping costs COD and can get a good estimate going to any site like www.swacargo.com and clicking the estiamate of shipping link to see what they come up with. 
 
Another offer I see our distributors doing is simply knowing that we will ship COD but will offer some kind of special online where they know for a fact their expenses are covered such as (example) $350 for 100lbs of Premium Fiji Live Rock and FREE S&H by OVERNIGHT AIRCARGO!  This seems to do real well also.  In this case, we would charge you the same $10 per 50 lbs (in this example 100lbs = $20) plus what ever we are charged and on average the shipping charges range from $35 - $70 depending upon locations.  I would definitly put a legal in there that you "may not be able to ship to some locations.  If it is found we can't ship to your area, you will be refunded 100%."  This is true to certain regions where their simply is not a major international airport nearby to service and I've also seen rare circumstances where the AirCargo division actually wanted to charge as much as $400 for delivery alone because of all the layovers and reloading that had to be done to get somewhere. 
 
A great way to service your customers is for instance to go to www.swacargo.com and see where it shows all the destinations from ONT (Ontario, California) where we ship out of and that is a good list of locations to deliver too.  We do have accounts with every airlines but SWA has always been the least expensive and a safe one to go with if you are going to make this kind of offer.
 
Hope this information helps at least until we get our distributors calculator up and running again and remember we are here for you Mon-Fri 9am-4pm PST (Distributors Only) (909)590-4227 to answer any questions.
 
Sincerely,
Michael D. Baker, President
Oceanpro Aquatics, Inc.
13472 Fifth Street #4
Chino, California  91710
 
(800) 722-0421 Mon-Wed 9am-4pm PST
(909) 590-2636 fax
 

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