Shipping and handling

[Archive]

Posted By: scgaynor

Putting together the clues that Scott gave in his post, I am pretty sure he is talking about me.

I change $6 for shipping as a flat fee for all items that weight less than 1lb. A yearbook with 50 pages is the same price as a single Baseball Card. I currently ship most, if not all items, priority mail in a box to minimize damage. Within the next two weeks I am going to probably be switching to DHL/Airborne as my local post office can no longer handle the volume of shipping that I do.

The main reason that I have to charge $2.15 over the actual charge of shipping is because of my location. If I was living in a po dunk town in the middle of Iowa, I would not have to charge that much, but there is very little help available on Cape Cod. Everybody has a "Help Wanted" sign in the window. Most people who have low paying jobs on the cape are from Brazil or Ireland and they are only here for a few months at a time. I can't find a reliable full time packer for less than 30K a year. On top of that add the taxes that I have to pay over and above just the cost of thier salery. Now factor in the cost of shipping supplies such as bubble wrap, tape, packing peanuts, as well as warehousing (rent is $12 a sq ft), time that we currently spend transporting the packages to the post office, etc. After all of that Shipping is pretty much a break even for me.

I always mention the cost of shipping in the item description so that it does not come as a surprise to the buyer when they get thier invoice and I do combine shipping when possible.

Scott