Why don many merchants ship APO/FPO?
In a surprising way, an interesting “Catch-22” situation exists for APO/FPO address holders in the online shopping realm. Here’s how. In order to compete successfully, both with other online merchants as well as real “brick and mortar” stores, and continue to offer their customers the lowest (delivered) prices for its merchandise, many online merchants have built their business models on discounted contract rates with commercial parcel/package carriers, like UPS or FedEx. The U.S. Postal Service cannot offer these same discounts, so they rarely get the business of many online merchants. So, by using these discounted contract shipping rates, many online retailers are able to pass these savings onto their customers. This often has resulted in reducing the cost of shipping to zero or at least a fixed (low) price for each package shipped, regardless of contents, weight or destination address. To accomplish this, merchants arrange an exclusive arrangement with one carrier. This means that i
