Quote:
Originally Posted by Josh D
I'm on board with the others here. I don't mind paying reasoneable shipping costs. What I don't like is when shipping equals or exceeds the cost of small parts. I don't always want or need to spend $100 for free shipping. Sometimes I just want a dang Mahle oil filter, but don't want to pay double for it to have it shipped!
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Unfortunately, if someone orders a filter - it's going to cost about $5-$6 to ship it. It's nearly impossible to get around this, unless you're a company like Amazon that decides it's going to lose money on every order just so it can grow and appease shareholders. The reality of this too is that if I look at the processing and handling costs of selling a single oil filter - it's a money loser for me. So, from a business perspective, I almost want to *discourage* small orders like these (possibly by charging a higher shipping amount) and encourage larger, more grouped orders. Of course, this doesn't take into effect the "Customer Perspective" and loyalty part of the equation - knowing that you can get anything anytime from Pelican at a reasonable part (I.E. we subsidize the costs associated with "smalls" in order to keep the customer happy). This is one reason why we use first-class mail right now. We charge $2.95 to ship first-class mail. Most people don't even realize that the padded shipping envelope can cost up to 50 cents of that, and the actual shipping cost paid to USPS is greater than $3. That doesn't even include the picking / packing / label printing cost for that order. I think our average warehouse costs are between $5-$10 per order, last time I looked at them. So, shipping "smalls" is a super-duper big-money loser, unless you factor in the "Customer Appreciation Factor".
-Wayne