Reselling News: UPS and FedEx Raise Holiday Surcharges and eBay Consignment Goes Dark

Most of the money a reseller loses in the fourth quarter is lost in September, when the shipping costs for the rest of the year get set and nobody is paying attention yet. Two things landed this week that fit that description.

UPS and FedEx peak surcharges are up about 25 percent, and the expensive ones start first

Both carriers have published their 2026 peak season surcharge schedules, and Value Added Resource walked through them on August 29. The headline number is the residential fee. UPS adds 50 cents per Ground Residential or Ground Saver package for most of the season and 75 cents at the peak from November 22 to December 26, up from 40 and 60 cents last year. FedEx runs 50 cents and tops out at 80 cents from November 23 to December 27, up from a 65 cent maximum in 2025.

Pennies per package is not what should worry you. The dates and the size fees are. Supply Chain Dive reported on August 27 that the UPS additional handling charge runs 8.75 to 11.90 dollars per package and the large package surcharge runs 96.25 to 117.50 dollars, and both start September 27, a full month before the residential fee does. FedEx is on the same footing, with additional handling of 8.80 to 11.85 dollars and an oversize charge of 95.75 to 117.25 dollars beginning September 28. The UPS window closes January 16, 2027 and the FedEx window closes January 17.

Stack that against USPS, which put a 6 percent temporary increase on Priority Mail, Ground Advantage, and Parcel Select from October 4 through January 17 in its August 25 newsroom release, and every carrier a reseller uses is more expensive in Q4 than it was in August.

What to do: if you flip anything bulky, golf clubs, luggage, monitors, guitars, car parts, ship it or reprice it before September 27. An oversize charge near a hundred dollars will eat a flip whole, and it arrives four weeks earlier than the fee everyone talks about. For normal-sized clothing going Ground Advantage, the practical move is to rebuild your shipping numbers in early October rather than trusting a price you calculated in the summer.

eBay Consignment went away without an announcement

Poshmark bought the dedicated operational facilities of Linda's Stuff, the 25 year eBay seller that had been eBay's exclusive partner for handbag consignment since 2023 and luxury fashion after that. Value Added Resource covered the fallout, and the detail that matters is what happened next on eBay's side. The eBay Consignment landing page is gone, no replacement partner has been named, and eBay has said nothing publicly about it. Linda's Stuff is winding its eBay store down and moving its luxury livestreams to Poshmark, where live shopping had grown from 3 percent to 44 percent of its revenue over three years.

Poshmark is using those facilities for a consignment as a service model with authentication, intake, and fulfillment handled in house. Some Poshmark sellers read that as the platform stepping into competition with them in the luxury category, which is a fair reading.

What to do: do not build a Q4 plan around eBay Consignment, because it is not there. If you have high-end pieces you were going to hand off to somebody else, you are listing them yourself this season. That means your own authentication notes, your own measurements, and your own photos of every stamp, serial, and stitch.

The takeaway

September 27 is the date on this week's news. Everything oversized you plan to sell before Christmas is cheaper to ship this month than next month, and the platform that used to take luxury inventory off your hands no longer exists. Pricing for a fourth quarter where every carrier costs more is a whole skill, and it is one of the things we work through inside The Income Lab.

Hero photo by Lance Cheung, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Wikimedia Commons, public domain.