Shipping Costs

[George Max]

There's a serious customer relations problem here in how they bill this. When they do it this way they make themselves look as if they're very nearly giving you the small part for free, it's the shipping they're really making their money on.

Sometimes perception is the problem.

So when you point out that customer always pays, yes, I agree. The problem now is how this is presented. The manner of it's billing and the hard ass attitude of "take or leave it" kills customer loyalty.

My own personal experiences over the past 50 years leave me with a mental list of places I just won't do business with. Yet there are others that do the right thing (however that's defined) and get my business over and over. Those people are the ones that don't leave me with a feeling that I've been screwed as I walk out the door or confirm my online deal.

So in the end, in addition to good business sense, it'd pay to also have good people skills.

[George Max]

I'm please to hear that. Really. Maybe my local distribution center (if that's the problem) will clean up it's act. I doubt it though.

Until then, I pick other shipping methods when possible.

[Brian Elfert]

When you start getting into truck freight and such, prices can vary all over the map.

At freight101.com, they will list dozens of carriers that could haul your freight. I have seen the price for a shipment range from $75 up to $300 or $400.

Brian Elfert

[dpb]

...

And how is that any different other than naming the "transaction fee" a "handling fee"???

[dpb]

Others have competently addressed the realities of the shipping/handling charges as being essentially the product of having to deal with large volumes negates "special-casing". That some judicious application of business psychology might be able to improve perception is undoubtedly also true.

But I'm still trying to figure out what 1-oz part shut your jointer down???

[The Other Funk]

Finding the keyboard operational warbler entered:

Boy there is a lot of good stuff here frpm both sides here. I just want to add my 2 cents here. As a small business owner, I get 10, 12 deliveries a week from UPS, Fedex, DHL and USPS. All of them have their good points and bad. I can't say that one of them beat up on the boxes more then the other. I do have on supplier that couldn't ship a box in a box without screwing up. The only reason I deal with them is that they replace damaged items quickly and for free. Shipping charges are a royal 15 carat pain in the ass. If I build it into the price, then my product is too expensive. If I charge the instore price plus the cost of the time for someone to pull, pack and lable, then add the actual postage or other fees then I get complaints about $5 shipping on a $12 product. In the case of $8 on a $3 part. Well there could be a number of reasons. Delta may find that $8 averages out over all the part orders. The $3 part may not be a part that Delta has found necessary to stock as a part. So someone has to get the part from manufacturing. Hopefully, they are in the same building or at least the same state. The third and possibly the closest to the truth is, $8 covers their fixed shipping costs. Salaries + SS/WCI/medical, space, light, heat, packing materiels, invoicing, billing. Anyway, I am sure that Delta or any other company is not getting rich on this kind of thing. It does suck if you are paying a lot for a little but there doesn't seem to way around it. Bob

--

-- Coffee worth staying up for - NY Times

[Mark Wells]

BTW, Lee Valley, who a lot of people hold up as the "gold standard" in many categories, charges $7.50 for shipping a $3 part. If you order $21 of merchanise, then you pay $9.50 in shipping.

Mark

[Prometheus]

If I could cut out the new antenna and the shipping, that would save $65 if I were to pay the list price.

Of course, if I just fabricate a new one or cd weld a stud onto the old one, that doesn't cost anything.

That may be part of why I didn't think of it. The last three or four times I tried the junkyard, they didn't have the parts I needed, or gave me pieces from the wrong model.

[Prometheus]

Seems fairly likely, given the design. Wouldn't have to be a garage door- backing out of anywhere that had an overhead obstruction of any sort would clip the thing off.

Perhaps not- but this is a tiny part that would easily fit into a drawer on the mechanic's desk- with room left over for about 1000 other tiny parts as well.

Ah well, now I'm just bitching. I see your point- there was just more to the story with that particular dealership messing up the paperwork on the initial sale, requiring two additional trips back to the place, and endless irritiating phone calls (about three a week) for a month where they all but demanded I give them a good review on a survey they were sending out.

After all that, it would have been nice if *something* could have gone smoothly and in my favor.

[Stephen M]

They break it out.

shippingandhandling has the *perception* of being shipping cost plus profit.

HF has dirt cheap prices and the transaction fee pretty much indicates that they intend to make up the profit in volume.... if you are not willing to purchase in volume, then you pay a premium.

I agree that this is only semantically different than S&H, but *I* find it to be refreshingly honest.

-Steve

[James Silcott]

Do we really need 98 posts about this topic? I wonder what good posts dropped off because of this BS? Let's stay on topic here.

[George Max]

Yeah, we do. This is a burr under the saddle for a lot of people. It's good to vent. Or do you prefer people accumulating their frustrations and then one day exploding in rage, maybe harming others? Life's full of frustrations. Gotta let it out somehow.

[George Max]

This great if the seller has other stuff you could add to your order to deal with the shipping cost problem. If I order something from Amazon, it's easy to add something else to bring my order up. If I'm getting a part from Delta, Bosch, etc., that's not so easy.

Lots of good info in this thread. I intend to keep it mind the next time I need a part for a tool. And try to get USPS shipping. ;)

[Stephen M]

None (recent) if you subscribe to decent service and Google isalways there for the archive.

The discussion is accurately labled, an it is in the context of woodworking tool/part acquisition.

Quitcherbitch'n

[bf]

When are you going to learn that the garage is for storing tools and wood, not cars? LOL

The coorporations got me trained now to expect to be reamed for replacement parts and to be thrilled when I can actually get a replacment part.. :)

I'm indifferent to Ford.. but any other car company would've probably done the same thing. The name of the game is to save 5 cents on an attenna mount because we as consumers make price such a high priority.. If they upgraded all the little stuff like that, a Focus would probably cost 1-3k more. You and I might be willing to pay the premium, but most people wouldn't. If everyone thought like me, places like Harbor Freight would not stay in business. Obviously, everyone doesn't think like me (which might be a good thing).

[B A R R Y]

Huh?

[B A R R Y]

I've found a possible solution to that problem is to check for local "authorized repair" places. I just saved $12 in shipping from Bosch by obtaining a router part this way.

[dpb]

...

But to take the semantics to the limit, the post to which you responded and (I was questioning your response to) specifically was about business-business transactions wherein the "handling" or "transaction" fee _was_ broken out from a separate line item for shipping which you then claimed was somehow different...

I don't disagree that it's nice when the shipping charges are identified as the actual sellers' cost, but not all billing software is set up that way and , in the end, the decision is controlled by what the particular business' systems and accounting practices dictate.

[dpb]

I've been trying!!! :)

(Still interested to know what was the part that started the furor...)

[Mike Marlow]

Dear Owner of The Net:

Kindly block the message threads you don't want to see rather than get up on a horse and chastise the minions. Oh - no posts got "dropped off" because of this thread. That's not how usenet works.