|
We have no shipping charges that are as much as the goods themselves, with the exception of the flat-rate options. These options are intended for orders with multiple items, and they say as much in the description.
Yes, we do charge a very small amount more than the cost of postage to ship these items. On average across all orders it's less than a dollar difference. There are a number of reasons we do that:
First, we have a variety of items that require shipping, and there is always some degree of variation in what it costs us to ship those products. By allowing some leeway in what we charge, we cover ourselves in cases where shipping costs that little bit more than we expected.
Second, we have to pay for packaging if we want the books and other products to be shipped undamaged. Again, there are a variety of products, and a near infinite number of combinations of products that we could face in orders. To ship promptly, we have to keep a small variety of shipping boxes and the like on hand, and that costs us extra money.
Third, there's a great deal of time involved in the packing and shipping of these orders. The more orders we get, the more time it takes to pack them up every night, which is typically the last thing I do before I go to bed so that I can stay a day ahead of our promised ship date. When you have a to-do list like mine, time REALLY IS money, and hiring someone to help would be even more expensive.
Lastly, shipping is ultimately a service which we provide for a fee. There's very little point to offering a product or service at cost or at a loss, it's usually a giant waste of resources to do so. Our resources are limited enough so that we cannot decide to give yet more away. We already give away the comic, the store pretty much HAS to make money to make up for that. The upcharge on any given shipment is negligible, but that very minor upcharge allows us to continue to offer shipping through this store.
In the end, the shipping is as much a product as anything else in the store, and I'm certain that if you compare our rates to the rates of other online stores with similar products you'll find them to be fairly comparable, because they have the exact same problems that we do. They may have a different volume of orders, or different customer locations, or different average orders which allow them to approach the problems differently, but in the end it comes down to everyone is offering the least expensive shipping that their individual business can handle.
^-^'
_________________
I <3 Parker
|
Login
FAQ
Search
