Hotship.com, a new online package delivery
company, said it has launched a pilot program to provide pricing options for
a variety of levels of courier service from “an extensive pool” of
established package delivery companies.
Membership in hotship.com is open to e-commerce consumers, traditional
consumers as well as businesses.
Overnight pricing is available throughout Canada and from Canada to the
United States. A full range of local shipping options including direct (one
hour), rush (four hour) and same-day (eight hour) express pricing is
currently limited to the pilot market, the greater Toronto area.
By keying in a zip or postal code, the destination zip or postal code and
weight of a package, hotship.com said it will provide the lowest cost pricing
from its extensive real-time database of shipping partners.
The overnight price may come from FedEx, the three-day price from UPS
and the one-hour price from a local courier — all branded as hotship.com
services.
“Hotship.com will provide the lowest prices from a variety of shippers for
any available level of service from one single site,” said Jeff Grist,
president of Hot Ship Inc.
Hotship.com said it will eventually be able to coordinate the pick-up and
delivery of packages, provide all of the information for duties and tariffs
for international shipments and explain the legalities surrounding the
importation of restricted articles.
“Right now, there is not much flexibility in the back end of an e-commerce
transaction. You get slow, slower and slowest,” said Grist. “With hotship.com
end users will get more choice, retailers will have happier customers and
couriers will have fewer empty vans. And, the host company won’t have to worry about delivery
of their transactions.”