Dear online retailer, this may shock you, but I do not wish to pay $27 to ship a $30 item.

[LeftyMom]

You have a location four freeway exits from my house. I'm shopping online because it's a zoo. Actually, at the zoo I'd get peanuts, so it's worse than that.

It won't cost you that much to ship the item. You're a big national chain, so I'm sure your shipping account with Ups is better than ours, and sending a 15 lb item cross-country runs us maybe $9. And you have an warehouse here in NorCal, so sending me the thing should cost maybe $6 or $7. If it needed packaged I'd pay a few dollars- note, not $20, think maybe $5, I'm ordering a toy, not one-of-a-kind art glass- extra for handling to cover time and materials, but I know it's in a box already and it's not delicate, so yanking it out of the warehouse and slapping a shipping label on it is simply a part of doing business.

If you want my custom, either bring your shipping cost down into the same zip code as what it costs you to ship the item, or set up a store pickup option so I can go get it with minimal interaction with the crazy crowds.

Really, think about it.

LM

[barb162]

1. I wanted a tree delivered to my house earlier this year.

The delivery charge ($400) was more than the tree. The place was about 50 miles away.

[LeftyMom]

2. And you could rent a truck all day for $50 or so.

I always wonder who prices things so that nobody in their right mind would buy them.

[Gormy Cuss]

3. That's why it's called shipping and handling

so they can fudge the "handling" part. If the shipping cost is flate what also happens is that the people who live only one or two FedEx or UPS zones away from the warehouse subsidize the cost to ship to those 6 or more zones away.

This year I've send lots of free or minimal shipping offers -- I think the retailers are hurting.

[ghostsofgiants]

4. I paid like $32 shipping on a $27 article of clothing once.

From Urban Outfitters. Fucking ludicrous. They have cool shit, but fuck that, I'm not buying anything from them again, haha.