“Free” shipping is not actually free

I don&#x27;t mind if shipping isn&#x27;t free. I do mind if the shipping cost isn&#x27;t queriable until I:<p>1) Add the item to the cart<p>2) Create an account<p>3) Enter all my personal info<p>If your business makes it that much of a hassle to find out what shipping costs (presumably in order to capture sales), I&#x27;m indisposed to patronizing it. Transparency and lack of hassle are what I&#x27;m after, not free shipping.

I didn&#x27;t think shipping companies were just delivering packages out of the kindness of their hearts. I just expect it to be included in the purchase price. I&#x27;d much rather have one price to consider rather than a really low initial price with a bunch of additional charges.<p>As a customer, adding a bunch of additional fees, even if they&#x27;re reasonable, just makes me feel like I&#x27;m being nickel-and-dimed. Tell me the total amount you want me to pay you to get what I want and if it&#x27;s in my price range I&#x27;ll happily pay it.

Ok, so it seems nobody else is mentioning one of the big things that shocked me from the article: the claim that shipping, for the company that runs Saks Fifth Avenue, is more expensive than retail.<p>What? How on earth is a ridiculously high end Fifth Avenue retail location staffed with models and lots of hired security cheaper than shipping? Their Fifth Avenue location in particular is literally stuffed with expensive glass chandeliers. It&#x27;s an ENORMOUS property on Fifth Avenue in NYC, the most expensive street in the world; one of their stores alone is worth four billion dollars. If you think &quot;enormous&quot; doesn&#x27;t merit all caps, its shoe department has its own zip code. <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reuters.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;us-retail-usa-shoes-idUSN2435153420070524" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reuters.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;us-retail-usa-shoes-idUSN2435...</a>

- I&#x27;d rather have shipping be separate (but prominently displayed), so that buying multiple items in one order would be beneficial. But obviously a site has to have consistently good prices for this to make sense. (And eventually, a meta-buy engine that optimizes sourcing from multiple suppliers, but we can dream).<p>- I figure the prominence of free shipping has more to do with price fixing by the manufacturers (minimum advertised prices, etc), and perhaps rate secrecy by shipping companies as well. Since walk-in stores build logistics into the price tag, online retailers had to move to that model as well to have comparable prices.<p>- I still don&#x27;t believe that direct shipping is three times the cost of brick and mortar fulfillment. I&#x27;d really like to see that accounting to make sure that it is including things like the full expense of running a retail store with employees, additional distribution centers, and clearance markdowns. I can see a strong temptation for a traditional brick and mortar retailer to count much of that as necessary overhead for their entire brand rather than attributing it directly to retail sales.

Retailers complaining about how Amazon is creating a race-to-the-bottom with free shipping calls to mind horse vets complaining about how automobiles are eating into their lifestyles. It&#x27;s sooooo unfair!<p>Amazon is changing the world the way Standard Oil changed the world. If it&#x27;s going in my house and it&#x27;s not groceries, it&#x27;s coming from Amazon. The buying and shipping experience is unparalleled. Amazon isn&#x27;t one of these bespoke SF-only investor-moneygrab services, it&#x27;s real technological progress on a world scale.

When I buy a product in a physical store the price of getting the product there is included. I don&#x27;t pay the product + the shipping fee. It should be the same on the web.

Just a note for Americans that are not aware: the rest of the world, generally, pays a lot more for the same or inferior items. Some Canadian examples:<p>0 Shipping - Free shipping is much less common within and to canada; it&#x27;s also more expensive, in my experience.<p>1 Duties&#x2F;import broker;s fees - Can be tens of dollars, even for items whose value is about that.<p>2 Taxes - Typically, bringing across items with net value more than ~150USD will have taxes levied (~15%, depending)<p>3 Straight-up &#x27;gouging&#x27; - For example, the exact same book in canada will typically be 10-30% more, even taking into account exchange rates. I&#x27;m sure the differences can be partially explained but I&#x27;ve never seen good reasons.<p>4 Product differences - Cars are a good example here. In the US often the &#x27;base&#x27; model will have features CA versions of the same cars require upgrade packages for.<p>5 Product Choice - The bigger US market means more colours (or colors even), wattages etc to choose from<p>6 Warranties - I haven&#x27;t taken a survey but whenever I&#x27;ve checked the US warranties are as good or better.<p>And that is just CA, EU countries generally have it worse if my UK friends are to be believed.

I know a lot of people like the Book Depository due to their &quot;free&quot; shipping. They actually adjust their price using geo IP data. VPN&#x27;s can save you a lot.<p>Someone made a website to show you the pricing discrepancies per location:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bookdepository.cheap&#x2F;Lisp-Small-Pieces-Christian-Queinnec&#x2F;9780521545662?a_aid=bentanweihao0" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bookdepository.cheap&#x2F;Lisp-Small-Pieces-Christian-...</a>

Free shipping is a lie, but the average consumer thinks of dealing with shipping costs separately as pesky, and Amazon &amp; eBay have configured their fees to charge you more on any extra shipping line item to encourage sellers to make shipping &quot;free&quot;.<p>I don&#x27;t see &quot;free&quot; shipping going away, nor do I see Amazon&#x27;s new delivery service succeeding where DHL and other have floundered in the past, since you need a certain volume in that business to even be viable, and Amazon has stated they can&#x27;t push that volume alone to make running a shipping service make sense.<p>What might happen, and what I hope happens is the lower end, smaller businesses get better next day and 2 day shipping prices. Currently, from one wholesaler I can order a 50lb box of hardware, and UPS charges them $21 to $23 to ship it from Chicago to Seattle in the span of about 18hrs and get it on my doorstep.<p>Another much smaller vendor I deal with can&#x27;t get anywhere near that pricing, half that weight&#x2F;size box will run me $150 easily, with ground (a week and change) being $40 usually for a 25lb box from them.<p>Edit: Another layer to this is USPS and China Post teamed up a while back and offer Chinese sellers dirt cheap ePacket shipping, where 1lb of goods can be moved to the US for $5, whereas USPS charges $50 to the American seller to ship something to China [1]. Essentially, it makes American online sellers uncompetitive in our own market. This is why people like Trump, since he says he&#x27;ll put a 35% tariff on foreign imports and end programs like ePacket (not supporting him though, just to be clear).<p>[1] - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.skubana.com&#x2F;e-commerce-trends&#x2F;the-usps-epacket-program-and-how-it-affects-your-e-commerce&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.skubana.com&#x2F;e-commerce-trends&#x2F;the-usps-epacket-p...</a>

Shipping directly to consumers is more expensive and energy consuming than shipping to a single location (e.g. a brick and mortar store).<p>However what this article is neglecting is that brick and mortar stores are built where people go to them. The land and building cost money, which the store typically pays for through a lease.<p>So, yes, shipping isn&#x27;t free. But having products sit on a shelf in a store in the city isn&#x27;t free either. Especially if said products depreciate in value and aren&#x27;t sold quickly.<p>Basically, look at why RadioShack went bankrupt to see how this can backfire for brick and mortar.<p>Also, &quot;Free&quot; shipping from China isn&#x27;t. The cost of shipping from China is subsidized by other countries. I remember reading that the price to ship something from China to your house in the US, USPS gets paid less than it costs them to ship.<p>Shipping rates from China are up for review soon, and the industry is expecting their rates to be re-adjusted, after which ordering from China will get a lot more expensive...

&gt;<i>Still, someone has to pay the cost of shipping.</i><p>Yeah, and this article managed to get an unexpected rise out of me, touching on my experience in municipal finance, leading me to want to yell:<p>&quot;Right and somebody has to pay the cost of maintaining the infrastructures like ports and airports and roads and I don&#x27;t see anybody lining up to fork over the cash out of effing altruism these days.&quot;<p>Like, I get it, we all want free stuff, but dwindling tax bases and constant bitching about taxes just avoids dealing with the more practical angles of societal function(s).

With Amazon Prime I am starting to feel like I am paying for shipping twice, first for Prime then baked into the item price too.<p>Very often I am looking at an item that would cost £5 in a store and it costs £7 with prime. Alternatively I can buy it from a non-prime marketplace seller for £4 + 3 in shipping. Then there is an &quot;add-on item&quot; for £5 where I have to buy at least £30 in total. And finally a 4-pack for £21 with free shipping. Either way I am clearly paying for the shipping.

I have no problem paying for shipping as a separate item. It is frustrating though when sites make it hard to figure out what the shipping will be. The good sites let you identify down to your city without having to enter other details (like email address, or even credit card details) before you even get to the check-out phase.<p>I will often play around with the order to try and maximise against the shipping cost. e.g., I use to order protein bars and would order the maximum number that wouldn’t bump me up to the next shipping class, to get the best value per bar.<p>My biggest gripe, living in the Antipodes, is that many foreign companies have really expensive shipping costs to ship internationally. I suspect we’re often not a big enough market to make it worthwhile for them to fine-tune the costs, but it still sucks when shipping can be 40-60% of the cost of an order.<p>e.g. I really want to try out some Death Wish Coffee, but ordering 2 lbs at US$38 plus US$27 to ship to Australia, vs US$6 for US shipping, sucks.<p>Some places feel like they are really gouging you on the shipping costs. (Not saying that’s the case with the coffee above, just that it costs a lot.)

I don&#x27;t care if a company makes shipping &quot;free&quot; and raises the price. Of course they shouldn&#x27;t make themselves unprofitable by undercharging, just charge a reasonable price, and in the other direction I&#x27;d prefer seeing the whole cost up front to having a disingenuous &quot;cheap&quot; product that has &quot;shipping&quot; so gold-plated it&#x27;s obvious they&#x27;re pocketing it.

If the item is offered at a competitive price then it effectively <i>is</i> free.<p>For example many items are sold at a fixed MSRP and no retailer will undercut it, but some retailers will offer free shipping while others charge me. That&#x27;s actually free shipping from my perspective.<p>The same logic applies retailers that offer &quot;free shipping for orders above $X&quot;. Can you argue that the cost is rolled in anyway? Sure, but rational actors think at the margins. The <i>alternative</i> is effectively paying twice for shipping, both the explicit shipping charge and the upcharge rolled into the price. Again, if the prices are competitive the retailer is essentially eating shipping costs for you.

<i>&gt; &quot;The economics are clear... direct-to-home has a supply chain cost three times higher than a store-based model.&quot;</i><p>That surprised me. Does anybody have more details as to why that would be?

While not &quot;free&quot;, also realize the numbers displayed by companies displaying the number separately are often complete and total fiction, even if you consider handling&#x2F;packaging&#x2F;whatever cost.<p>IE next day air from within (let&#x27;s call it a few hundred miles) does not cost them $50-75 on a 1 lb package, because the volume discount of any company that does any real amount of shipping is very high.<p>The shipping cost at a good volume discount is &lt;$15 for something like priority overnight (and the cost at a great volume discount is closer to 7.50).<p>Even if you consider their cost to make your order slightly special, package it, whatever, it&#x27;s still complete fiction.<p>I often see companies with separate shipping tell me something absurd, like it&#x27;ll be $150 to overnight something. At which point i just tell them to charge my fedex account instead, because it costs ~10-20% of that.<p>So when i hear &quot;they are having trouble keeping up with costs&quot;, maybe that&#x27;s because they are trying to put too much of their margin into handling fees.

pets.com went out of business trying to ship 50lb bags of dog food for example with &quot;free&quot; shipping

<i>Direct-to-home has a supply chain cost three times higher than a store-based model... It&#x27;s because it&#x27;s really expensive ... It’s a very expensive model and it’s not less expensive than the store-based model</i><p>I don&#x27;t doubt that&#x27;s true, but you&#x27;re not going to get me into the store, so if you want my business you&#x27;re going to have to ship my purchase to me, so figure out how to make it sustainable. Regardless of how much more expensive mail-order is, it&#x27;s going to become a larger part of retail business.<p>I suspect that it&#x27;s much worse for merchants that have a brick and mortar presence - they are paying a lot of money for those stores, and the incremental cost of serving one more customer is virtually zero, while there&#x27;s a material cost to pack and ship a package.

It&#x27;s easy to imagine a scene when self-driving trucks have multiple compartments and they pull up to your house, send you a notification on your phone and you run outside to pick up your package. Perhaps we&#x27;re talking 10 years maximum?

There are been times where a store offers free shipping over $x.xx but offers free return shipping. So why not just add on a few things you don&#x27;t want and then return them when you get them? You get free shipping on the things you want.

I can&#x27;t believe that anybody has not mentioned ShopRunner [0] in this &quot;analysis&quot;!<p>[0]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.shoprunner.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.shoprunner.com&#x2F;</a>

Why is shipping so expensive in US? I live in China, and virtually every online stores here offer free shipping, even for for example a screwdriver which worth less than 5 dollars. I once researched into it and found that if you are a store owner and have many packages to be delivered everyday, the price can be as low as 30~50 cents per package.<p>And it&#x27;s really efficient. Basically no shipping would take more than a week. Average time would be 3~4 days.

I don&#x27;t understand why shipping has to deliver to EVERY address, wouldn&#x27;t is save them millions to leave at secure locations spread across their territory.<p>In the future I think they&#x27;ll merge a shop&#x2F;showroom with collection center. That way people can see products for real while they collect (it&#x27;ll serve as advertising) and there will be more land for housing to be built due to less stores being around.

Speaking of Amazon - if you have Prime membership and buy something with &quot;free&quot; shipping from third-party seller fulfilling via Prime, seller still pays ~25% - 30% of the total to amazon to ship this product. So all sellers factor in shipping into prime price.<p>Where it get really bad - when you do NOT have prime - you also get charged extra for shipping, yet seller still pays same cut to amazon! :)

Free shipping seemed to be a necessary evil to get people shopping online. First free shipping and then same-day delivery got people past all of their mental hangups of online shopping. Now with more small businesses entering ecomm, there will probably be more consumer flexibility on shipping costs. But to get people in the door, it was necessary.

Remembers me of <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;romain.goyet.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;free_shipping_from_china&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;romain.goyet.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;free_shipping_from_china&#x2F;</a><p>Where the author wonders how a single button, costing less than 5 dollars, can have free shipping from china to france.

On a personal level, from ebay experiences and such (in the hundreds of items), this is what I&#x27;ve seen. Anecdotally and empirically, buyers largely prefer if the price of shipping is added to the item&#x27;s price, and marked as &quot;free shipping&quot;, over being marked separately.

&quot;For many online shops, the cost of a free shipment is either folded into the prices for items or funded by investors.&quot;<p>No kidding. I&#x27;m having trouble imagining how the cost of free shipments is paid for by the remaining shops, if there are any.<p>(Amazon Prime is pre-paid, unmetered, not free, shipping)

Have there been any deep-dives into what Amazon pays for shipping on a per-package basis? At their volume, I can imagine that the cost per item shipped has the potential to be low enough that it costs more for the worker to put the item in the box than it does to ship the item out.

Also consider by charging shipping, the seller might refund only the item price rather than total (depends on reason of return). While if the seller offered free shipping, they may be obligated to refund the entire price, even though shipping was included somewhere.

Free shipping is still valuable if you might return it, because shipping costs are not typically not refunded, but shipping costs baked into the purchase price are, unless they specifically state a restocking or return fee.

In the same vein, it is a lie that ad-supported websites are free.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=12810076" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=12810076</a>

&gt; Maybe this is why so many of us have so much trouble emulating Amazon&#x27;s model and making any money. It&#x27;s because it&#x27;s really expensive and it&#x27;s also why Amazon&#x27;s had trouble making money on merchandising sales. It’s a very expensive model and it’s not less expensive than the store-based model.<p>Amazon&#x27;s savings come from it&#x27;s lack of stores. Retail storefronts are expensive in terms of staff, cleaning&#x2F;managing, rent, utilities, taxes. A warehouse in rural Indiana has a lower operating cost and can far more efficiently prepare items for customers on a per-worker, per-rent-dollar, per-utility-bill-dollar basis. And at scale, you only have to have a small margin to succeed.

Futurama fans of course know about this: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;m.imgur.com&#x2F;BiYzbP4?r" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;m.imgur.com&#x2F;BiYzbP4?r</a>

TANSTAAFL - There Ain&#x27;t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. This applies to services like education and healthcare as much as it does to shipping.<p>If there&#x27;s one word I wish we could banish from common usage, it&#x27;s &quot;free&quot; (as in gratis, not libre).<p>Discussions around economics and politics would become much more transparent and honest if we used phrases like &quot;taxpayer funded education&quot; and &quot;customer subsidized shipping&quot;.

Someone is already working on a reverse free shipping. Like &quot;everything a $1&quot;<p>E.g. pay $15 and fill your up your cart. Choose from thousands of items. Each combo has a value, of course. Shipping free.<p>Have third parties pay to place produce samples inside your boxes. Like Bill messages of the past

What is the truth anyway? Business news?

Economy 101

It&#x27;s more than just free shipping. It&#x27;s the two-day shipping that Amazon and Walmart are offering with Prime and Shipping Pass.<p>The problem with the smaller e-commerce shops is that most people aren&#x27;t going to subscribe to 3,4,etc... annual service fees...especially for small places.<p>It took me a while to justify Walmart.com&#x27;s Shipping Pass fee, but once I saw the huge discounts that I can get on bathroom and household stuff, then I got on board.

Unless I know something is what I really want, I&#x27;ll buy it in a store. Clothes are a good example- returning something because it doesn&#x27;t fit is a hassle (because the shipping is expensive so there is an incentive to make it a hassle), so I don&#x27;t do it. And so the supposed savings from buying online evaporate. (And of course stores prevent the problem in the first place because you can try it on.) I used to buy a lot of clothes online but now I basically never do. The experience really kinda sucks.