Twelve questions about how this desk works
These are questions about the site rather than about a haul. Operational questions — how to read a QC photo, why a link failed, what releases a hold — are in the answer library, which is grouped by topic and carries its own exceptions.
1. Why are there no prices anywhere on this site?
Because a price has a shelf life of hours and a page has a shelf life of months. A site that publishes prices is either updating constantly, which it is probably not, or publishing figures that are wrong most of the time.
The deeper reason is that this desk is not a shop. It describes shapes and stages rather than stock, and the moment it starts showing prices and availability it becomes an under-maintained storefront with none of a storefront obligations. Buying happens on the list side, and the disclosure page explains that relationship.
2. Why will you not publish coupon codes?
We tested the genre before deciding. Twenty publicly listed codes were sampled: nineteen followed a mechanical naming pattern, all twenty carried the same no-public-expiry note, and none resolved against a checkout total.
A code list is also the single most perishable content type there is. Publishing one would mean a page that is wrong most of the time, and a reader who learns to distrust one page learns to distrust the site. The coupon write-up publishes the three channels that still work and the four checks that tell you whether an offer is live.
3. Where do the numbers come from?
Four kinds of source, and every figure on the site is labelled with the kind it came from: a published rule, a carrier document, a community-reported range, or our own editor measurement. The method page defines all four and states what each one can and cannot support.
If a figure cannot be traced to one of those four, it should not be on the site. That is the standard we hold corrections to as well.
4. Why do the tools give ranges instead of one number?
Because every input to a haul total is itself a range. A service fee moves with promotions and account tier, a payment channel is priced as a band, a carrier applies peak surcharges by calendar window, and tax depends on how an item is classified rather than only on what it cost.
A single number would require choosing a value for each of those and hiding the choice, and the chosen values tend to be the favourable ones. A range makes the choice visible, which means you can argue with it and change an input rather than hope for the good end of it.
5. Why is there no search box on the home page?
Because a search box is a promise that the site has a large undifferentiated body of content, and this one is organised instead. The home page offers three facets: where it ships, what is in it, and what job you are doing. Each facet is a small number of entries rather than a haystack.
Search would also produce result pages, and result pages are parameter pages: hard to keep out of an index, hard to give a canonical form, and rarely useful to anyone arriving from outside. The index desk does the same job with a stable address.
6. Do the tools send my inputs anywhere?
No. Every calculation on this site is a pure function running in your browser. A weight, a declared value and an item count stay on the page you typed them into.
The packing checklist is the only place that stores anything, and it stores tick marks in your own browser so the list does not reset while you work. Clearing site data removes them. The privacy page lists everything else that does not exist here, which is most of it.
7. Why do some pages say Not verified instead of giving a figure?
Because a figure we cannot support is worse than an absent one. An absent figure tells you to look elsewhere; an invented one tells you to stop looking, and it is wrong.
In practice this shows up on destinations without a shared threshold, categories whose volume varies too widely for a single number to mean anything, and transit lines where we do not have enough reports to state a range. Each of those cases has a page that explains which input is missing rather than filling the gap.
8. Why do you not compare this desk against other sites in the category?
Because a comparison would require measuring them, and we have not. Publishing an impression of a competitor while labelling everything else with its source would be inconsistent, and inconsistency is the one thing a method page cannot survive.
Where comparison is useful, we compare practices rather than operators: list formats, link shapes, charging units. Those comparisons are checkable without naming anyone.
9. What happens when I send a correction?
It goes into the next review, and the outcome is one of three things. If we were wrong, the figure changes, the review date changes, and the change appears in the changelog. If we were right but unclear, the wording changes instead of the figure, which is the most common outcome. If neither of us can settle it, the uncertainty is written into the page rather than resolved by preference.
A correction is easiest to act on when it names the page path, quotes the specific claim, and says what it should be. Write to [email protected].
10. Why is the writing so cautious?
Because the subject is full of things that depend on facts we do not have. Two identical parcels can cost different amounts because of a surcharge period, and an identical declared value can produce different bills because of classification. Writing confidently about that would be writing fiction.
The caution is also practical. A confident wrong answer costs a reader money and a return; a hedged correct one costs them a minute. We have chosen which error we would rather make.
11. Can I use the tools for commercial purchasing?
Yes. There is no account, no usage limit and no licence fee for using a calculator to decide how to ship a parcel, commercially or otherwise.
What is not permitted is republishing the site in full or presenting our original data tables as your own work. Quoting a passage with attribution and a link is fine, and the disclosure page states the terms in full.
12. What is the relationship with the list site?
Outbound links go to kabosheet.com, and a click that leads to a purchase may earn this desk a referral credit. That is the whole arrangement: no paid placement, no sponsored pages, no advertiser.
The arrangement does not buy a favourable measurement, the removal of a failure section, or placement in a tool result. There are eight outbound calls to action on the entire site and their positions are fixed rather than chosen per page, which is a deliberate cap rather than a coincidence.
If a question you have is not here, it is probably in the answer library or on the method page. If it is in neither, send it — questions we keep getting become pages.