I can’t really build enough anger at this for the Pit, but this just irritates me.
A few years ago, I ordered a dagger from Weaponmasters and as far as I remember, it went smoothly. The dagger was really nice, cheap, and IIRC it wasn’t an arm and a leg to ship it all the way out here.
Sweet, I was happy with a new pointy stabby thing and they had someone who might shop with them in the future.
Now cut to about five days ago.
Remembering the website and how overall inexpensive it was, and thinking I haven’t bought any new pointy stabby things in a while, why not go in and look?
So I went back to the website, somehow got into my old account, deleted that account, made a new one with updated info and a password I could remember.
Awesome, let’s get shopping.
While I didn’t find a sword or dagger that interested me at the time (except a cool cane with an 8-Ball on top that hid a sword inside), I did find a cool Celtic cross necklace that could also hold scents/essential oils.
Now, since I’m a big fan of peppermint and several other essential oil fragrances like sandalwood, and I’ve always wanted a kind of aromatherapy necklace, as it were, this looked awesome. Especially since the Irish side of me just loves anything Celtic.
Celtic and aromatherapy-related? Cool beans.
However, at checkout, things come to a halt. For them to ship a small necklace using UPS shipping, it costs almost $40.00.
Hold on a second.
It costs $39.xx to ship a small necklace? Are you kidding me? The orders I get from thinkgeek.com don’t cost me that much, and I did all my Christmas shopping with them this past year. They use UPS as well, may I add.
Thinking that maybe they were smoking something really, really good that day, I contacted them with an e-mail asking if shipping just using the regular old USPS would be allowed/implemented/thought of seriously anytime soon.
This morning I finally get a reply:
UPS charges them nearly $40 to ship a small little pendant? I understand that according to their FAQ on shipping as can be seen here that they use insurance in case something is lost, but does it really cost that much?
They’ve got to be kidding me. I don’t even understand how people order from them with prices like that.
I’m afraid to see how much it would cost to get that cane with the sword inside.
Yes, it’s true, provided they take the bare items to a UPS Store to be packaged and shipped. The actual shipping cost is just a few bucks, but they make their money from the packaging part.
Whenever I’ve let them do it all, it never failed to cost me a minimum $30; the last and largest item was an electric pressure washer, and that clipped me for $50.
Doubtful. Did the $40 include “shipping and handling?” Because some companies really take the piss on the “handling” part of it. A lot of them make a significant profit from this, and they benefit from the fact that it’s not refundable, so if you don’t like the item and return it they keep the shipping and handling.
Vunderbob, your pressure washer pretty much only cost an extra $10 to do. If some things cost you at least $30, then nearly $40 for the small pendant still seems just way too much, but at least it would explain things I’m sure.
Sprockets, it does state in the FAQ: “The shipping charges include insurance and handling charges to insure that if you order is lost, stolen or damaged it will be replaced at no cost to you.”
So yes, that’s another plus for them.
And yes, it does suck. I’ve always wanted an aromatherapy necklace, and this one looked nice. Poop.
And that excuse is basically dishonest, because how often does any of those things happen?
I order a lot of things online, and one of my pet peeves is that you have to go through the entire order process to find out what the shipping is going to be. That is an irritating waste of time, as I frequently say “oh screw that” when I see the charge.
I don’t know why companies who sell online haven’t realized that they are already operating at a disadvantage in that people cannot touch the merchandise and they have to wait for it. The other thing that occurs to me is that we end up paying the shipping on everything we buy in stores, but the cost is hidden in the price. It seems to me, therefore, that online shippers could bury the price of shipping in the products and still give us a lower price with a good profit for themselves, since they have no overhead to speak of.
where are you located, where are they located?
I can’t access their site, so I can’t tell if its a big, well run outfit, or some rinky-dink webstore.
I used to work for a UPS Store, so I can give you a pretty good idea of what they’d be paying.
Exactly. I’ve never seen anything get lost in the mail before. And recently I ordered from Amazon.com and got free shipping because I got over $25 in merchandise. Heck it made me want to buy more, but I couldn’t really afford it at the time.
I just hope it gets here okay. I have a P.O. Box address, but they couldn’t ship the PS2 game to a P.O. box for some reason (couldn’t find the reason in the FAQs), so I gave my home address as a shipping address instead.
Aioua, I’m in Maui, Hawaii. As for where they’re located, it seems they’re in Florida (3815 N. Cocoa Blvd, Suite 27, Cocoa, FL 32926).
I don’t know how ‘big’ they are, but they’re still in business after a few years, so I don’t know how much that matters. I found them by looking for places to buy a sword online years ago.
A caveat in regard to Amazon. It’s very easy to end up ordering not from Amazon proper but from an independent person on the Amazon website. I did that once without realizing it and when the order did not arrive I wrote to Amazon. I got the basic “It’s nothing to do with us, oh well” message from them, which shocked me greatly as I ordered from their website. Read the fine print.
Y’know, that did hit me when I looked at my shipment status and the items on the site in regards to the shipment, where it said something about where the items actually came from. That made a little light click on somewhere that maybe some things from Amazon weren’t actually from Amazon. I’ll try to be more careful with that in the future if I can help it.
Amazon got me with their fine print after Christmas. Using Borders gift cards, it turns out that you can’t use multiple cards on an online order, nor could my second card be used online at all nor can cards be used for discount items. Because I didn’t bother to read the fine print, I ordered stuff just exceeding the cost of the cards so that my Credit card would cover the rest. So when it is shipped they charge it to your credit card, not the gift card without telling you beforehand . And of course it can’t be refunded since the items have already shipped. I’m not that annoyed since I bought things that I would have eventually gotten anyway (at used price to boot). And since I didn’t read the fine print, I can’t really be that outraged.
You know, I never understood why so many restrictions on gift cards. Money is money, it’s already paid for, just go in and pick out what you want that’s already in essence been paid for and walk out.
And you’d think they’d want clearance/on-sale items to be sold quickly, it’s why they’re on clearance after all.
Ah, there’s you problem. UPS Ground shipping to Hawaii and Alaska costs about the same as 2 Day Air, and usually only takes 2 or 3 days. $40 sounds about retail price (assuming it would be shipped in a small box). The biggest discount UPS gives out (that I know of) is 50%, which is what UPS Stores get. I assume big corporations can get similar rates. Your guys are either not getting discounts, or getting small to middling discounts, maybe 10-25% off. I’d doubt they’re hitting you for more than $10 over the shipping.
Also, I’m sure big retailers will eat the cost on the occasional HI/AK order, but a smaller company will have to charge more for them.
That’s what you get for living in your tropical paradise.
Blargh. Stupid ocean with the stupid rock that I live on! I guess I’ll go look somewhere for an aromatherapy necklace and some good quality essential oils.
Now how to know which oils are cheap crap and ones that are good quality, and where is safe to buy them, that’s the question.
I don’t think things really get lost in the mail nearly as often as people claim. My guess is that the insurance is really to protect them from fraud, but it sounds better to say “lost in the mail”.
I almost got slammed by the Amazon/not-Amazon thing last week. I was looking to send a gift of 1 dvd and 2 finger puppets. Cool. Over $25, no shipping charge.
Wrong. The dvd didn’t total $25, and the finger puppets were from other vendors. Even worse, while the 2 puppets were made by the same company, they were sold by 2 different companies. My “no-shipping fee” order was going to have 3 seperate shipping charges. Each $4 puppet had almost $6 in shipping charges on it. My $25 order rang up at about $38. Not gonna happen.
Oh, good! I tried posting this yesterday, but the hamsters died (they got better) and I couldn’t.
The keywords you want in a google search are celtic cross aromatherapy necklace. You’ll get a bajillion hits for the same piece, some of them sold by people who aren’t trying to rip you off.
Here you go: celtic cross aromatherapy necklace - Google Search
Thanks WhyNot! I’m gonna go perusing the web today and see what out there looks like a good place to buy from. The only thing that worries me is that I don’t know what to look out for to know if a site is a good place to buy from where I don’t have to worry about my credit card info or other things being stolen. But I will take a lookie.
And I didn’t know that Finagle, though then again I guess the guy I bought my other one from didn’t know either. I bought a cane with a sword inside it at the swap meet in Oahu about three years ago. Shipped it over to Maui just fine as luggage. It’s in my room right now, it’s just for decoration, I never take it out in public.
