Free shipping is a lie, but the average consumer thinks of dealing with shipping costs separately as pesky, and Amazon & eBay have configured their fees to charge you more on any extra shipping line item to encourage sellers to make shipping "free".
I don't see "free" shipping going away, nor do I see Amazon's new delivery service succeeding where DHL and other have floundered in the past, since you need a certain volume in that business to even be viable, and Amazon has stated they can't push that volume alone to make running a shipping service make sense.
What might happen, and what I hope happens is the lower end, smaller businesses get better next day and 2 day shipping prices. Currently, from one wholesaler I can order a 50lb box of hardware, and UPS charges them $21 to $23 to ship it from Chicago to Seattle in the span of about 18hrs and get it on my doorstep.
Another much smaller vendor I deal with can't get anywhere near that pricing, half that weight/size box will run me $150 easily, with ground (a week and change) being $40 usually for a 25lb box from them.
Edit: Another layer to this is USPS and China Post teamed up a while back and offer Chinese sellers dirt cheap ePacket shipping, where 1lb of goods can be moved to the US for $5, whereas USPS charges $50 to the American seller to ship something to China [1]. Essentially, it makes American online sellers uncompetitive in our own market. This is why people like Trump, since he says he'll put a 35% tariff on foreign imports and end programs like ePacket (not supporting him though, just to be clear).
Definitely, you should be able to get a shipping price without going into the checkout, Amazon makes it quite difficult compared to Aliexpress & eBay when it comes to finding out shipping prices, to the point that I avoid shopping on there with a rare exception occurring every 6 months or so.
For the average shopper, pricing in shipping and sales tax will make them buy more online. Breaking out sales tax has caused a 9% sales drop in states Amazon charges sales tax in.
>Breaking out sales tax has caused a 9% sales drop in states Amazon charges sales tax in.
Note it's really "collects" sales tax in. Buyers still, in principle, owe use taxes on the purchase--which individuals often don't pay of course.
I don't think it's so much a matter of whether sales tax is bundled or not though. For big ticket electronics purchases, for example, the same item is often available for the same price with "free" shipping from other online resellers who don't collect sales tax--and is cheaper for many consumers as a result.
> " Currently, from one wholesaler I can order a 50lb box of hardware, and UPS charges them $21 to $23 to ship it from Chicago to Seattle in the span of about 18hrs and get it on my doorstep."
Not sure how they are doing that. The UPS rack rate for 50lbs from Chicago to Seattle is $83 via Ground, $161 for 3 day select, $252 for 2nd day air, and $310 for Next Day Air Saver. I can't see $23, even for ground...I don't know of anyone with a discount rate that good.
They push 10,000+ parcels like that a month, and send their shipping out to bid every year, helps to have big companies ordering tons of hardware from ya. 3 years ago they were on DHL which was great for DHL same day, I could order something at 8am and have it at the customer's site later that evening.
> Amazon & eBay have configured their fees to charge you more on any extra shipping line item to encourage sellers to make shipping "free".
Are you sure that is why? I thought it was because sellers started selling $1 items with $50 shipping and handling fees attached.
Also places where competitors are listed together are hard to browse unless "total cost" is listed explicitly somewhere (having to figure out whether the $19 or $5 with $5 shipping is better is annoying).
I had not known about the program, but I did notice all of the cheap electronics with "free" or low cost shipping from China and Hong Kong a few months ago. Since I was visiting China later in the year, I compared pricing between eBay and taobao on the things that I wanted. Surprisingly, I found that ordering in New York through eBay was cheaper than ordering in Shanghai through taobao on a significant number of items that I wanted. I have since ordered plenty of stuff from China through eBay.
I read (here, in an HN thread, IIRC) a while back that the Chinese government eats the cost of shipping items outside of the country (I haven't verified that, however, so it may be entirely incorrect).
That was the reason given why you can purchase an item online from a Chinese seller for, say, $1 USD -- including shipping -- and the seller can still profit from it.
Yes it's true. I just ordered some MR11 bulbs that are defective. (It might not be their fault. I think they send 220 volt, instead of 120volt halogen lamps.) It's not worth shipping them back. There's a weight/size limit, but many items are shipped free.
A bigger question. If more people took advantage of this free shipping paid for by the Chinese government; how would American companies compete?
(Since I here--Amazon has been slowly raising prices, and people don't seem to notice, or care. I noticed it with portable transistor radios at first, and MR11 bulbs lately. Personally, I'm getting tired of UPS trucks racing up and down my street, filled with a lot of stuff we probally don't need.)
I don't see "free" shipping going away, nor do I see Amazon's new delivery service succeeding where DHL and other have floundered in the past, since you need a certain volume in that business to even be viable, and Amazon has stated they can't push that volume alone to make running a shipping service make sense.
What might happen, and what I hope happens is the lower end, smaller businesses get better next day and 2 day shipping prices. Currently, from one wholesaler I can order a 50lb box of hardware, and UPS charges them $21 to $23 to ship it from Chicago to Seattle in the span of about 18hrs and get it on my doorstep.
Another much smaller vendor I deal with can't get anywhere near that pricing, half that weight/size box will run me $150 easily, with ground (a week and change) being $40 usually for a 25lb box from them.
Edit: Another layer to this is USPS and China Post teamed up a while back and offer Chinese sellers dirt cheap ePacket shipping, where 1lb of goods can be moved to the US for $5, whereas USPS charges $50 to the American seller to ship something to China [1]. Essentially, it makes American online sellers uncompetitive in our own market. This is why people like Trump, since he says he'll put a 35% tariff on foreign imports and end programs like ePacket (not supporting him though, just to be clear).
[1] - https://www.skubana.com/e-commerce-trends/the-usps-epacket-p...