Update to small order shipping tiers ($49.99 still ships free)

by Tim Haas

Team,

Just wanted to let you know about the latest updates to the shipping tiers.

  • Orders under $49.99 are now calculated based on weight and location
  • Orders of $49.99 or more still ship free

(You can stop reading now if you're already bored. :D)

But why?

Over time I've found that a lot of my flat rate orders are losing money or breaking even. I realized these problematic orders have three things in common:

  1. Margins. Most flat rate orders are for supplies, which are low-cost and low-margin.
  2. Shipping weight. Most supplies are heavy and bulky, which require expensive shipping
  3. Shipping location: A significant number of flat rate orders are shipping to the west coast (I'm looking at you, California).

As time went on, these problematic orders were starting to negate the profitable ones. I realized I would have to raise the cost of my flat-rates again to counteract this, but that would have disproportionately effected small orders and people east of the Mississippi (the bulk of my small orders), so this option was a non-starter.

How does this effect me?

If you're only ordering a couple of items (e.g. a pack of penny sleeves and a pack of toploaders) your calculated shipping costs will most likely be roughly the same as the old flat-rate costs. Reason being, anything under 16oz can ship USPS First-Class Package, which is dirt cheap (shout out to the Post Office!).

If you're ordering supplies in larger quantities (e.g. 20 toploaders) you'll see higher shipping costs, but remember that free shipping will kick once your order hits $49.99.

Folks that are west of the Mississippi will see prices kick up a bit in all scenarios; sorry yo.

So why are you telling me this?

Transparency.

My goal with this iChooseYou is to be an asset to the community that's free from bullshit and pricing games. When you come here you should expect to get fair and transparent pricing. I have no desire to ever own a yacht, so I can prioritize the community over profit.

This solution is the most straight forward and effective option I could come up with that allows me to target the problem orders (cheap, heavy, and far away) while keeping costs relatively the same for everybody else.

I could have played games with pricing stuff over MSRP and kept flat rates (aka light price gouging) or concocted some weight-and-location-based flat rate tiers, but that gets complicated really fast and has about the same net effect as the simple solution.

Questions? Concerns? Different ideas? Etc?

Just holler at me. I'm always happy to chat.

Oh, and if you notice a shipping cost you think is way off just let me know. I've gone through and weighed all my inventory to make sure they're accurate, but mistakes happen. :)

Cheers.

 

-Tim

 

 

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