Gift buying you budget for, but what about what you spend to send your present?
“I don’t take the time to really look into pricing,” said one woman.
“The price difference is not significant enough for me to be comparing,” said another man.
With holiday shipping deadlines looming, Consumer Investigator, Kristin Byrne, did a price check on the three major carriers, United States Postal Service, UPS, and FedEx.
“We've got three shipping envelopes and we've got three packages of candy canes -- all the same weight and all of the same envelopes. So, we are going to place one in each envelope and see how much it costs to ship if we do it USPS, if we do it FedEx and if we do it UPS,” said Byrne.
The cost to ship depends on the weight of the item and where you're sending it. In Byrne’s experiment, the candy canes weighed less than a pound and we shipped them to her mother in South Florida.
FedEx, with a ground delivery of three days, costs $10.92.
UPS, with a four-day ground delivery, cost $11.63.
And USPS, with a three-day delivery, cost $4.57.
Experts say if your package weighs less than two pounds, go with the postal service. If it's heavier than that, UPS and FedEx are a better bet.
If you want to get your gifts to your United States destination in time for Christmas, those deadlines are coming up. For UPS it's December 13th, for USPS, it's December 14th and for FedEx, it's the 16th.
TODAY’S TMJ4 reached out to all three carriers for this story and is waiting for comment on shipping pricing.
