Shipping Updates
Hoooo boy are things getting messy in the US of A. I was going to make a much bigger Blog post that includes a bunch of fun stuff but things got really ugly really quickly in the US and I need to address it before anything else.
Here goes…
Since taking over my inventory and shipping again, I’ve mostly used Japan Post for shipping out orders. It’s generally the most cost-effective, as well as the most convenient. They have some restrictions on what they’ll ship - ironically blaming those restrictions on the US Postal Service saying USPS doesn’t allow those items… even though I’ve been shipping those items for literally a decade with zero issue… but whatever. The point of this bit is that Japan Post has stopped shipping to the US almost entirely.
The quick explanation is that the US is making it much more difficult for postal carriers to ship to the US due to increased regulations, so a bunch of countries’ postal services are simply refusing to ship to the US until they figure things out. It isn’t just Japan doing this, but also Australia, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, New Zealand, Spain, and Sweden. That’s, uh… that’s not a good thing.
The reason why the postal services are no longer shipping to the US is because President Trump’s tariffs are not only affecting the shipments for businesses, or expensive shipments to individuals. They’re now affecting almost everything for everyone. I’ve previously talked about how expensive the tariffs are and how they would have affected pricing, and explained how the $800 de minimis exemption would prevent the majority of customers from being affected. Unfortunately, that’s no longer the case.
Trump has ended de minimis exemptions. What that means is that anything that isn’t a personal gift valued less than $100 will be taxed at his absurdly high tariff rates. For those of you outside to the US, this will not affect you (at least as far as Redpants is concerned). But if you’re in the US, get ready to pay a whole hell of a lot more for a whole lot of stuff, even beyond Redpants.
Current Shipping Methods
Aside from Japan Post, the other shipping method I usually use is Yamato. Shipping with them is more difficult, but they don’t have many of the restrictions that Japan Post has. And, they’re still shipping to the US despite all the bullshit going on. So virtually all the shipments that I send to the US from Japan are now being sent via Yamato. Yamato’s US partner is UPS, so I use UPS’s tracking information for updating orders.
I only update my shipping system with tracking numbers for orders when I’ve actually prepared those shipments (or when I receive the tracking info from my supplier, if it’s shipping directly to my customer). That means that if you get an automated email with a tracking number, the order has actually been packed, and it’s being shipped out the same day or next business day (depending on what time it is).
When I update my shipping system with the tracking number for an order, I often use the tracking information for the carrier that is delivering the shipment. So if I ship something by Yamato and it’s delivered by UPS, I use the UPS tracking information. This is better for tracking the shipment once it has left Japan, but won’t start updating until that carrier has the shipment, even though Yamato has already received it.
So, please keep in mind it can take a couple days for tracking information to start updating once I mark an order as shipped, and it will only say “label created” despite the order having actually shipped out.
That’s it for now. Like I said at the beginning, I was originally going to share a bunch of happier news but this nonsense has demanded my attention instead. Hopefully I’ll be able to share the happier news soon.