exploiting shipping costs (expansys.ca)

michael_w

warning: medium sized rant

Since I live in Canada I like to buy from canadian companies because of things like border fees and longer shipping waits. Well I finally found a cool website with tons of stuff to fufill my geeky needs. I just finished looking over the site and decided to order a usb bluetooth adapter. I found this nice one - Ezurio go blue usb adaptor - It is only 45 bucks canadian and has a range of 250 meters.... perfect. I get to the checkout and to my disbelief I see the shipping cost for UPS Standard within canada is $22!!! 4 - 5 day shipping on an item that weighs less than a pound and they want $22 bucks. I'm dissapointed and pissed off they can scam people with this rediclous flat shipping rate. I sent them an email telling them basically what I've said here so we'll see what comes of it.

Time to end this rant and start looking for a better website...

janmike

Too many of those companies & people overcharge on their shipping. eBay is notorious for this. A few things that drive me nuts about that.

1) When the company or person charges more for shipping than the product costs.
2) When actual shipping is $5 and they $20.
3) When the company in Toronto charges more to ship to Canada than the USA.

When possible, I use prefer to use the Postal System in both countries. You can insure the package, limited on the weight, shipping is longer (but I do not care about time) and I have NEVER had damage with the Postal System. UPS, FedEx and the likes do their share of damage.

Somwhat paradoxical:
Paying more increases the probability of damage.
Paying less decreases the probability of damage.


Hmmm - How should I ship that package.

heiney9

Shipping on e-bay is ridiculous sometimes. I believe e-bay only charges their fee on the actual sale amount not on shipping. That's why you see something like a .99 cd but it's like $5-6 to ship it. If I see high shipping costs on an e-bay item I look elsewhere. Cpmpanies charge whatever they want and most times it's a complete rip-off.

H9

michael_w

I just got an email back from someone from the company. He said "The shipping is $22 CND because the items are shipped from the US not Canada. The shipping charges take care of all import fees for shipping to Canada from the US." I understand how importing fees are expensive but when you have a store in ontario, canada these fees should be added into the price of the item not tagged along later with the shipping. They also use a flat shipping rate based on the weight of the item. The weight of the item has bearly anything to do with importing costs. They're just trying to advertise a great price and get people far enough into the deal that they are not bothered by the $22 to 26 dollars for shipping.

I can't really say which company is safest to ship with because I've never had any damaged packages but I usually go the cheapest route because I'd rather wait a couple extra days than suffer the extra shipping costs.

michael_w

I just placed an order with NCIX.com. I picked up one of these for 31 bucks cdn. It should do just fine being a class 1 -- 100 meter range Also snatched a spindle of cr-r's with a free 96 cd case. The shipping cost a whopping six bucks cdn incuding insurance... Hopefully they'll show up safe and quickly then I can get some wireless awesomeness going

btw thanks to dave (phoneisbusy) for the suggestion to check out redflagdeals.com.

phoneisbusy

michael_w wrote:

I just placed an order with NCIX.com. I picked up one of these for 31 bucks cdn. It should do just fine being a class 1 -- 100 meter range Also snatched a spindle of cr-r's with a free 96 cd case. The shipping cost a whopping six bucks cdn incuding insurance... Hopefully they'll show up safe and quickly then I can get some wireless awesomeness going

btw thanks to dave (phoneisbusy) for the suggestion to check out redflagdeals.com.

You're welcome. You also have the option to specify pickup at one of their stores to avoid the shipping charges. There's even a Richmond store but you've lucked in on their $5 shipping promotion!

I've purchased two systems from them and they're pretty good customer service wise although you shouldn't expect any hand holding. They make their money selling in bulk.

regards

Dave

michael_w

OOO I didn't know they had in store pickups. I thought that option was something like you pay shipping charges there instead of getting it shipped to my door. Shipping was only six bucks so it's probably worth saving the time and gas to just have it delivered.

I tried to get the most out of the flat $6 shipping by ordering more stuff but other than the cds I don't really need anything else.

michael_w

OO I didn't know they had in store pickups. I thought that option was something like you pay shipping charges there instead of getting it shipped to my door. Shipping was only six bucks so it's probably worth saving the time and gas to just have it delivered.

I tried to get the most out of the flat $6 shipping by ordering more stuff but other than the cds I don't really need anything else.