We recently conducted a survey among bidorbuy sellers in order to get some insight into how they deal with one of the most important and most complex ecommerce issues, shipping. You can see the shipping survey results here.

In the meantime, things on the shipping front have gone from bad to worse. As of 1 April, South African Post Office has put up its rates well above inflation.

bidorbuy sellers are especially hard hit by the decision to cancel the popular Econoparcel option, increasing the counter-to-counter postage for small parcels, now called “ordinary”, from R22,80 to R40,90 for the first kilogram.

Yes, that is an increase of 79.40%!

Sellers can take some comfort in the knowledge that, after this increase, Post Office rates for small parcels are more or less on par with courier rates. Since even a cursory scan of our shipping survey infographic shows that bidorbuy sellers rank courier services much higher, it is to be expected that more and more of them will stop offering postal counter-to-counter delivery.

When searching for a suitable courier, it may help to know which ones are popular among the shipping survey participants. Here they are:

• Speed Services (Post Office) 16%
• The Courier Guy 14%
• Fastway 13%
• Aramex/ Berco Express 10%
• MDS Collivery 6%

And in case you want to stick with the Post Office, here is the page with the new postal rates.