Bricks weighing heavier?

WESTIEKATH

Hi all. Is anyone having a problem that I appear to be having? I have received a few orders over the last few weeks - where the order is mainly bricks (mostly 1x4, 1x5 etc. The weight on the order is far below the allowed weight to send as a large letter, but when I go to post it the weight is over 100g which takes me to the next price band. I have to take the extra myself which is really eating into my profits as some of these orders are quite low in price. Is anyone else having this? My packaging is the same as I always use but the latest order's weight was 79.28gr but when I went to post it, the weight was 103grm. I have weighed my envelopes and they come nowhere near 20gr. Can anyone share some light on this subject please?

Emporiosa

The weights provided for the bricks are done by volunteers, so you could check those particular bricks and see if it matches what's in the catalogue, and provide updates if incorrect. If you add any printed pages as well, I find those can weigh a fair bit. For me 80g in bricks almost always goes over 100g total weight as I print the order for the customer (to also put a thank-you note).

If you're finding this is a common problem, just add restrictions to your shipping methods so for the up to 100g, make it cap at 75g, etc... Always leave a bit of wiggle room if you're finding it's happening a lot.

Calibrick

I also pad my shipping methods (here, I do 0.5 ounces, since we're imperial measures) to accommodate packing materials. Very occasionally it goes over, but it's been pretty rare.

WESTIEKATH

Thank you both - will firstly check the bricks and then adjust my shipping weights. Thanks again

mfav

I would be very skeptical of the weights in the database here...or anywhere. The brick undersides can vary widely in design, and if you have a large quantity of a brick with one kind of bottom...but a database entry with that of another kind of bottom...that may multiply a weight difference substantially. Attaching a pic showing three variations of a 1x4 brick. These three will differ in weight. I also have seen reports that different color bricks may have different weights.

WESTIEKATH

@mfav funny you should say that - I weighed 10 different 1x4 bricks. There wasn't 2 that weighed the same!! The order contained 20 of the 1x4 and various other bricks so that could account for the large difference in weight. I do not want to ask the customer to pay the extra in charges as I feel that just wouldn't be fair. At the moment my shipping weight is 70g. Tbh I just dont know what to do now about my weights.

Hoddie

I had this problem too, and seems the choice boiled down to:

Make more allowance within your shipping weights for such things, and refund any excess shipping, potentially losing orders because the shipping is higher than it should be.

Keep it as it is now and cover the cost of excess shipping yourself.

WESTIEKATH

@Hoddie - thank you. I think I will just have to take the extra cost myself - thankfully this does not happen too often but its happened twice this month, but the customer is such a good one I do not want to risk upsetting or annoying her.

Bricks-Shop

@WESTIEKATH : from view of your buyer, it's fair if you bear the additional cost. But as it was mentioned before, change your shipping rates and at a tolerance - I have added 10% less. It works fine.

Anyhow I have very often the problem with the automatic shipping fee calculation of instructions. These dimensions here and on the other site are a blame. The outer dimensions are wrong or are missing and the weight is very often more than 25% away. If I recognize this I correct this on the pages. On the other site the buyers can place an order, but they have to wait for me to add the shipping fee - some time lost, but no money lost. Here at Brick Owl it takes very often the most expensive shipping fee - true to the motto "it will fit in the largest box". Yes it does, but I think a buyer leaves the page if the shipping fee for a small 5g instruction is 15 € instead of 3.5 €.

Have a great time,
Oliver.

Calibrick

OliS, I've run into the same issue with instructions - I've gone out of my way to measure and weight the instructions I list to avoid this issue, but yes, it's definitely an issue. Since we cannot set shipping options by category (which would really help with instructions, as US offers a cheaper media mail option for paper-only shipments), I live with adding a comment to each of my instructions along the lines of "if you're not in a hurry and would like to explore the cheaper 7-10 media mail option, please select Request a Quote for this item as a stand-alone order".

One_Click_Off

We had the same issues in a different form when buying 2 years ago to recapture older sets with new buys -bricks we purchased to introduce seemed different- there seems to be both the stud and support weight that @mfav so beautifully photographed but the other issue not raised here so far is of the outer walls of 2 x whatever bricks decreasing in width over production time. Some old stock of bricks, specifically red, appear more opaque, whereas newer will almost have a partial translucent effect because of the minuscule reduction in wall dimension...