free shipping "Free Shipping" Who pays for it?

[Blaze_Zewi]

Online retailer shops such as Amazon, Newegg, TigerDirect etc. tend to offer these "free shipping". Don't they loss profit for doing it?

 

Hidden fee's?.... :rolleyes:

Those Fedex / UPS trucks don't drive themselves you know.... :laugh:

[+virtorio MVC]

A company like Amazon would generate so much business for delivery companies that they'd get a hugely reduced shipping prices. Amazon probably eats the rest of the cost to get more people to use their store over others.

[rfirth]

Don't they loss profit for doing it?

 

 

Not if it increases revenues. People love free shipping.

[jwjw1]

how does china get away with it on e-bay?....people win them 0.99 cent bids with free shipping all the time.... :laugh:

[Kami-]

how does china get away with it on e-bay?....people win them 0.99 cent bids with free shipping all the time.... :laugh:

Go to China and mail a package, you'll realise just how cheap it is (unless you try to mail something from a huge tourist area).

[compl3x]

I was going to buy some clothes from the Aus Footlocker site. When I got to checkout and they were trying to charge me $39.99 for shipping and told me the wait could be 30 days > close window.

 

Some shipping charges are outrageous.

[LittleNeutrino Veteran]

from experience with a former employer, usually they are able to do free shipping due to sub par shipping (getting spiffs from shipment companies, for shipping X amount of a certain style of product, shipping in provided packaging)  they are also able to do it with certain items due to very large markups. For example. Microcenter can ship you a Microcenter brand Ethernet, HDMI, USB, etc... cable for free because they made the cable for .50$ and sold it to you for $25 they can eat the $1 it cost to ship it to you in a plastic bag, and still have a nice profit.

[+InsaneNutter MVC]

Shipping is included with the items price, we have an eCommerce website at work and never used to offer free shipping.

A few years ago we increased the price of all the items a little, however offered free shipping. It's amazing how much more people purchased after that.

Now the website has grown we do get a large discount with Royal Mail / TNT, so we can keep prices competitive and offer free shipping.

[cooky560 Veteran]

Here at least no courier provides free shipping. The company / seller eats up the shipping cost in the hope of attracting more sales. 

[+jamesyfx Subscriber²]

A lot of places only offer free shipping when the order total is over a certain amount. That will be because the profit gain on getting a customer to buy more to obtain said free shipping will be higher than if the customer were to buy a cheap item and pay for shipping also.

 

For a lot of retailers it's not a hidden fee, because a lot of brick and mortar stores that also run web stores have the same pricing across the board. 

[Kami-]

<snip>

 

For a lot of retailers it's not a hidden fee, because a lot of brick and mortar stores that also run web stores have the same pricing across the board. 

Also some are cheaper online than in a traditional store; basically shipping is cheaper when you send out over 'x' many packages a year than it is for the likes of us mere mortals whom might ship 2-3 things a year and pay ridiculous fees.