Surprising
as it may sound, UPS and FedEx charge more when the destination is a
residential address. What’s more? The difference in cost between
shipping to a residential address and an office address is quite
significant. It’s cheaper to ship your parcels to an office
address.
Why is that so?
Office buildings are typically in high density areas. And homes do not generally get as many parcels as offices do. Someone is usually available at the office building to accept the package; there isn’t much of a chance that the delivery guy has to revisit the address because it wasn’t delivered to the person the first time. More importantly, an office gets several parcels on an everyday basis. So, there would be multiple packages going to the same address or at least, to the same locality. There is no need for worry about knocking on a door three times and then having to hold it at the depot and then providing facilities and staff for people to pick up packages.
Of course, it’s different story if the destination is a residential building with a concierge who can accept parcels on behalf of the residents who aren’t home. There are some exceptions. And these buildings would entitle comparable shipping rates to commercial addresses in terms of cost of service.
With FedEx, this differential pricing is typically seen in FedEx Express, U.S. package services and FedEx Ground services. It’s called a delivery area surcharge and it applies to shipments destined to select ZIP codes: these codes are the ones that do not fall within the official district codes.
The surcharge numbers depend on a lot of factors. So, if you can ship a parcel to an office district, it makes sense to choose that address as your destination than choose one that falls in a residential zone.