Holiday Shipping Tips
The holidays are here! With them comes gift-giving (and therefore gift-shipping) season, and, as always, Island Ship Center is ready and excited to serve as your holiday shipping headquarters.
Here are some tips to help ensure your gifts arrive safely and on time to your loved ones:
- Ship early – Carriers remove time-definite guarantees during their peak season (end of November through early January), so the earlier you can send your gifts, the better.
- Pack safely – Make sure your boxes are sealed properly, with all flaps taped down securely to allow the shipping carton to stay intact and unopened during the can-be-rough shipping cycle. Don’t leave extra space in your shipping carton, but fill voids with packing material and cut boxes down to avoid paying higher shipping rates for too-large boxes.
- Avoid brown paper and string – No matter how quaint wrapping a shipment in brown paper and string may seem, that’s a thing of the past. Both will garner additional handling fees by shipping carriers, so to avoid that simply pack your items in plain cardboard boxes, sealed with packing tape.
- Trust the experts – If you don’t have a close-fitting box or need help packing fragile items, Island Ship Center’s team of certified packing specialists and our wide array of boxes and packing materials are here to ensure that your gifts are packed efficiently, safely, and securely.
- Consider destinations – If sending to a hot climate, avoid temperature-sensitive gifts like chocolate or perishable foods. If sending to a very cold climate, keep the same in mind. Shipments will often sit in the back of trucks or on front porches before they’re taken into climate-controlled environments.
- Request secure deliveries – Signatures upon deliveries will avoid the risk of porch pirates taking packages from their destination addresses. You can also consider having your gifts send to a local shipping and receiving business like Island Ship Center for secure receiving instead of being left on a porch. Please check your destination’s secure receiving facility’s options and make plans with them in advance to have your packages sent there.
- Avoid gift wrap for international shipments – In addition to shipping as early as possible for international destinations, please don’t gift wrap shipments being sent overseas, as customs will likely remove that gift wrap in order to ensure the commodities being sent are indeed what has been declared.
