COVID-19: Don’t Bother With Air Shipments, Sea is Faster!
(Update: All Shipments Resumed!) Covid-19: Temporary Outbound Shipment Freeze
February 18, 2020COVID-19: Buying Cheap Masks? Read THIS First!
April 17, 2020Dear Loyal Customers,
We usually pride ourselves on having one of the fastest air shipments via Big Air and Tiny Air in Singapore.
It’s true, our customers have commented things like ”神速“ (That’s Chinese for “godlike speed”), and “Reached before I even received the tracking number” with our past air shipments. But the truth is, in this COVID-19 situation, flights out of China are severely crippled and many airlines have their mandatory capacity cut to almost nothing. Some airlines operate just ONE flight out of certain China cities per day, compared to 8-10 in the past.
(Don’t just take our word for it – see this article by Reuters and this article by South China Morning Post. And then check out your favourite flight booking website, you’ll see.)
What does this mean for you, our loyal customer?
Almost no flights, huge amount of packages = Your packages wait in the airport warehouses after clearing Chinese customs
For how long you might ask? Airline cargo slots are being bid at ridiculous prices daily. That means that Tier 1 carriers such as DHL, FedEx, SF Express (which, by the way, charges in excess of $30/kg), etc get their desired slots first. We get the slots after they’ve had their pick. To put it crudely, we get “what’s left”.
We are no longer able to provide a reasonable lead time on air shipments. Some of our customers have reported delivery times of over 2 weeks, while others have hovered between 4-7 working days. This is very much horrible, but there is truly nothing we can do about it…. except to tell you this:
“Don’t waste your money with air shipments, lah.”
Well, not until this COVID-19 situation blows over.
Instead, check out our Sea shipments. You can literally DUMP LOADS OF PACKAGES – used to be up to 30… but we’ve raised it and absorbed the costs to 50 PACKAGES (or actually.. 60, if you’re willing to pay a small fee) – and have them shipped via Sea at a much faster speed than the current air shipments.
Usually arrives within 10-12 working days, with no such thing as airline delays!
It’s not that we don’t want to earn extra money with the current state of air shipments, it’s just that we didn’t think it’s fair to you, as our loyal customers, to be paying more than you need to ship via air shipments… and receive it even slower than with a sea shipment.
Our customers usually find our Sea shipment services cheaper* about 10-20x versus Air shipments, especially with the current COVID-19 situation.
* 10-20x cheaper: Assuming you do at least 1 cubic metre (that’s 1m x 1m x 1m). Please don’t do less than that, it’s really not worth since you’ll be paying for 1 cubic metre anyway.
2/4/20 Update: BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE!
We have just rolled out some new Sea shipment packages: Tiny Sea, Small Sea, Medium Sea… and renamed Sea to, well, Big Sea – but dropped the price significantly.
Among all that chatter, just focus on that one, magical Tiny Sea.
Literally NOBODY else in Singapore sells door-to-door sea shipments for S$50.
We’re going below cost price, and truth be told – we’re doing it because the speed of our Air shipments suck so badly at the moment that we hope you’ll give our Sea shipment services a shot. Now it’s entirely up to you to keep us busy, our dear valued customers!
3/11/20 Update: Not-the-best News, but here it is…
You might have heard of the sharp increase in sea shipments’ demand leading to a severe shortage of sea shipment containers for quite some time.
As much as we try to maintain and absorb fluctuations for our sea shipment’s pricing for our premium direct sea shipments from China to Singapore, the latest wave of shortages have surged the sea shipment prices to an amount which is too much for us to absorb.
We have no choice but to only offer sea shipment under our Mid Sea & Big Sea from 3rd November 2020 onwards, and to implement a slight price revision which will be updated on the website shortly.
That said, as always, please feel free to reach out to us if you have any queries!
For your convenience, here are our contact details: via WhatsApp ((+65) 8753 0283) or Telegram (@SheepSG)
Thank you for your continued support!
Yours Sincerely,
Sheep Logistics