Another "cost of shipping" rant

I decided to buy a Carter bandsaw blade. I prefer to buy from the direct seller rather than Amazon, if the prices are reasonably close.

If I bought the blade from Amazon the cost, with shipping, would be $36 ($8 of it would be shipping).

If I bought the blade from Carter the cost would be 37% higher or $50, about $20 of that is shipping.

I realize Amazon has a great advantage when it comes to shipping but Carter charging $20 to ship seems excessive.

Note that I also was looking at a blade from Highland Woodworking and the shipping cost, for basically the same blade, was $8.

I'm no shipping expert but I would think if Highland can ship for $8 Carter should too.

I'm going with Amazon.

I'm with you Dennis. Oh, but don't forget their main excuse, shipping and "HANDLING"!

In their defense, Carter has never been shy about pricing things at the premium level. It's part of who they are.

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Originally Posted by glenn bradley

In their defense, Carter has never been shy about pricing things at the premium level. It's part of who they are.

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I don't mind a premium price for the blade but for the shipping too?

Businesses do have handling costs when preparing an order for shipment...labor and materials. "Yuge" organizations like Amazon can bury that, but "less yuge" companies cannot. And raising the price on individual items to compensate for "free" shipping doesn't work well because they lose money on small orders and the consumer pays more for larger orders than they would have with a typical shipping/handling charge. As Glenn poins out, smaller businesses often take more care with preparing things for shipping, too, because returns due to damage cost them more proportionally.

We have all been a bit spoiled by "free" shipping from many of the online marketplaces so it hurts a little more when that's not available from smaller businesses.

I mentioned in the humor thread that I saw a cast iron Dutch oven on the bay . Cost was about $100 but shipping, from Japan, was $30,000. Yes dollars not yen.
Bill D

Some manufacturers that sell through distributors and retailers tend to charge higher prices when they sell direct. They don't want to undercut their retailers. Shipping is very expensive if you don't do high volume to get massive discounts. Carter may not ship enough to get a good discount. Finally, they may not ship enough retail orders to have an efficient shipping department to deal with small retail orders efficiently. If the only thing you do is warehouse items and ship them you can be a lot more efficient on shipping retail orders when you don't have to worry about manufacturing.

The Carter blades on Amazon are being shipped from Peachtree Woodworking, not from Amazon.

Some businesses use shipping for margin recovery...

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Originally Posted by Brian Elfert

Some manufacturers that sell through distributors and retailers tend to charge higher prices when they sell direct. They don't want to undercut their retailers. Shipping is very expensive if you don't do high volume to get massive discounts. Carter may not ship enough to get a good discount. Finally, they may not ship enough retail orders to have an efficient shipping department to deal with small retail orders efficiently. If the only thing you do is warehouse items and ship them you can be a lot more efficient on shipping retail orders when you don't have to worry about manufacturing.

The Carter blades on Amazon are being shipped from Peachtree Woodworking, not from Amazon.

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As I was completing my order with Amazon I saw that it was actually shipped by Peachtree so I didn’t complete my Amazon order and went directly to Peachtree.