"xrongor" wrote in message
...

"Hagrinas Mivali" wrote in message
...

"tgilb" wrote in message
ink.net...

|
| If it were essential, I might have just ordered them anyway, but I
figured
| that somebody else might post something. And now I saw a couple of
posts
| that said I can try Home Depot, so I might as well do that instead.
|
I realize we're not talking cigars here but the site
(https://www.jrcigars.com/) I buy mine from charges $2 for basic
shipping
(3
days to my front door). Depending on the company's shipping volume
some
are
able to ship quite cheaply.



All companies are able to ship quite cheaply. Putting a switch plate
cover
in a padded envelope shouldn't need more than two or three stamps.
That's
37 cents for the first ounce and 23 cents for each additional ounce.
They
can get a box or envelope from the post office and send it to me by
priority
mail for about $3.

The problem is that companies charge for "shipping and handling."
Handling
is a phony concept. It's a way of splitting the price for any item into
two
pieces and disclosing only one of them to make the price look low. Yes,
there are legitimate costs for handling. If I buy it at Home Depot,
they
have to pay somebody to stock it. My neighborhood hardware store would
have
to pay somebody to put it on a peg on a shelf. Both would have to pay a
cashier to ring it up, put it in a bag, and process my credit card.
Handling
costs are typically lower for mail order companies, which do not need a
showroom or to go through the process of putting things on display. They
and
retailers both need warehouses. Regular stores have the extra step of
stocking the merchandise instead of getting it to the shipping clerk.
But
the latter can be automated and the former cannot.

Could you image the reaction if you checked out at a supermarket and
somebody tacked on an extra five dollars and said it's for handling? Of
course they have handling costs. All companies have operational costs
and
they factor that into their selling price. Sometimes they even lose
money
on the deal. If I show up at a cash register with a 39 cent item with a
missing bar code, they will probably lose money on my purchase. But
companies have to figure all that out when they set prices, and that's
why
a
switch plate cover might sell for $3 in the first place when it costs
pennies to manufacture.

Companies should just come up with the real price of the item and tell
us
what it is. They should charge for actual shipping. If we want to save
money by getting multiple items shipped at the same time, that's
legitimate.
If they want to give volume discounts because it's almost as cheap to
send
me a dozen as it is to send me one, they can do that too. But when they
tell me that something is $3 when they are really going to charge me $10
plus actual shipping, I don't consider that honest.

if you think the grocery store or the hardware store doesnt charge you a
handling charge because its not seperated out, well, you're wrong. the
item
price already has all that overhead built into it and then some. the
issue
here is awareness. you're more aware when the charges are seperated out.

But that was exactly my point from the beginning. I'd like to know the cost
up front. As I said, it's not that the grocery store does not factor
handling into its price, it's that they don't try to sneak it in at the end
after offering me a lower price.

Many Internet merchants do exactly the opposite of that. They tempt people
with a price that is not the complete price and don't tell you the whole
price until after you give them your credit card number. With a grocery
store or hardware store, you know what you are going to pay when you read
the price tag.


come up with a TOTAL price and buy it or dont. you'll just outsmart
yourself if you get too hung up on what costs go where and take pointless
moral high ground.

But that's exactly what I did. Had they sold a $30 for $10, but charged $15
to ship it when $6 is more reasonable, I'd still think they are not being up
front about the true cost, but I'd still buy it since it would still a
bargain. It only becomes an issue if I need to return it, in which case they
would keep half the money I paid for the actual merchandise, and try to hide
that from consumers. In this case, the price was reasonable before I knew
the shipping charges, but was not reasonable, or even in line with other
Internet merchants when I went to check out. And of course, merchants who
do this will never list their shipping prices in their FAQ.

When people take the Infomercial route of telling you that you pay "only" a
certain price, and the fine print says +S&H, I have a problem. If somebody
says that they have a 15% restocking fee, I can live with that. But when
they try to get it out of me by bundling it in as a handling charge, I'd
rather not see it done that way. Commercials constantly promise things to
people for "only" a certain price, and these days it's more common for them
to not even bother advertising the S&H charge. If people weren't fooled by
it, I wouldn't mind. But people will tell you that they paid the price that
was advertised, not their total cost.