I tried to order two small, light weight plastic items from Factory Direct Hobbies. Their prices seemed to be pretty fair and they offered a discount of $10 for signing up with your email address. The two items came to about $18 and then with the $10 credit would have been about $8. Great. except that when I went to complete the transaction they offered two options for shipping. The CHEAPEST OPTION was $19.09!!! The other option was over $30. This is ridiculous. I feel that they are just trying to make additional money by overcharging for shipping. So I just shut down my order but did not bother to clear the shopping cart. Later in the day they sent me an email to remind me that I still had items pending and would I like to complete the order. How thoughtful. So I sent a reply explaining that I thought that the shipping charges were way too high for the little light weight items I was trying to buy. I thought I might get a reply with some sort of explanation. Nope. But I did get another email to let me know that my shopping cart was about to expire. Wow, that really helps. So, I guess I will add lack of customer service to my complaint. Hopefully other people are having better luck than I am. I know I will not be going back to them.
shipping charges are flat rate based on how many items you buy.
When I order little brass parts from bowser, shipping is like $15.
When I order decoder from MB klein, shipping is like $20. That’s why I usually also throw in some cheap items that I needed anyways that were large(like building kits or cheap freight cars) in to justify myself.
I believe these model train websites dont take into consideration the weight of your items, or the size of the boxes. It just knows how many items youre buying and where theyre shipping it to.
If you dont like their shipping prices, look elsewhere. FDT may be making a few bucks from shipping, can you blame them?
Shipping is more than what you expect unless you are a big company. Smallest box USPS over $8 for the size of an HO boxcar, next size up is over $15, add any packing materials and you get the picture.
Thankfully places like Litchfield Station continue to offer reasonable shipping costs for lightweight items like decoders, wire, etc. $4 for regular shipping and $6 for expedited shipping. I only buy my decoders from them because everyone else’s shipping costs are so high. And Debbie from LF almost always throws in a “thank you” mint in with the purchase, which I give to my dear wife for her to enjoy.
It’s flatly unethical to charge more than actual shipping for “shipping”. If the vendor want to call it “handling and shipping” then they can charge whatever they want, but if it’s more than a couple bucks over actual shipping I won’t buy from them because handling is simply a cost of doing business. Pricing their products so low that they have to charge a “handling” fee to stay afloat is misleading the buyer, which is just another form of dishonesty. Post the actual cost of the product, and add on actual shipping cost. Period.
My thoughts exactly. I have bought other heavier and larger items from other vendors and paid a lot less shipping.
And in answer to another comment: yes I will be buying my items from some other vendor. I can’t afford to buy a big lot of items at one time just to try to spread the shipping charges out over many items.
It should be pointed out that the 2 reminder emails you received were automated sent by the order system and NOT a real person. Your reply email probably didn’t go to a person but to a noreply email address.
I used to ask my LHS to order stuff for me from Walthers. He always did a weekly order anyway, so I would just drive there on Thursday afternoon and get my shipping free. That was really great if I just needed some tiny item or detail part.
Yes. Well, if you order soap from our website you will find that we charge for shipping exactly what the post office charges for us to those boxes, 8, 15, and 45 or whatever. It depends only on how many bars of soap you want.
Now then if you want wine, we only ship altar wine by the case, and only to the ND, SD area. The price for shipping is between $99 and $130 and it does not matter if you want one case or ten. 35 pounds or 500 pounds shipping is the same price. They charge by the hunderedweight, but I have never figured out how it works.
I agree that shipping charges are often pretty high. USPS has had another price increase and even their Flat Rate boxes are now very high. They have their FRB prices just a few pennies more than what they call Retail Ground which doesn’t make sense to me. Media mail for bokks, mags & videos is still very rasonable.
I don’t know about UPS because I’ll never use them because of their poor service and refusal to pay damage claims and FedEx has been way too expensive when I wanted to ship.
It’s up to the seller or business to charge what they want and many add in handling & picking charges which rightfully shouldn’t be listed as shipping charges. Some list ACTUAL SHIPPING and others don’t. The ones that don’t feel it’s ok to add in handling and anything else.
I painted for a hobby shop that charged the actual shipping charges from USPS plus added the time for an employee to drive the packages to the PO as well as packing materials. The employee drove very slow and took the scenic route judging by what he charged me even back then in the 1975-85 period.
Who knows? I’d say avoid those that charge more than you feel is right and find another shop. I avoid Klein’s because of the long delay between when I order and when they BOTHER to actually fll my order. I’ve had them take 8 days to pick the stuff up off a shelf and put it in a box and that doesn’t count the shipping time. just not acceptable to me especially since they closed the store and are soley an internet store. There are other places with better service.
Also remember that USPS is having delivery issues blamed on the pandemic. I don’t know about that. I have a package shipped from Mineapolis on 9/7 that stll hasn’t made it to me in NW Arkansas by 9/27. USPS states IN TRANSIT.
I do the same. There is a small old-time hobby shop I go to sometimes and I get him to order stuff in as well. I just phone him up with my order and he calls me when it is in. I pay retail but no shipping.
I have PWRS close to me as well but I would like to see this young guy stay in business so help him out often.
Same deal here. If someone wants me to ship them a woodcarving, I will find out what it will cost me to ship it and charge them that price, nothing more. wdcrvr
I’m not defending any dealer here and can only speak from my personal experiences. I buy all the time from MB Klein. When they closed the retail store and went mail order only, I saw their shipping charges changed, and as far as I can see for the better. Now, I always get free shipping over $100. The USPS charges look fairly accurate, based on Priority mail charges. I always check the cart to make sure I get free shipping from them, or a least a reasonable fee based on what I buy. Decoders are light weight and if I buy a few, it’s over $100. USPS gives the dealer up to a $50 insurance on their order and anything after that you have to pay. If the order is lost, the first $50 is on someone (never lost anything from them or anyone else for that matter).
Trainworld has a shipping charge and I think it’s fairly high. I buy from them when they offer some deals on engines and freight cars, then the carges seem more in line.
I can’t speak for the one the OP mentioned since I think their deals are not that great. Just my opinion.
Do your homework on what you want. The legwork is worth it…
Im not justifying what they are doing, but Im trying to give a reasonable explanation as to why.
I agree, that’s why I dont buy from them , nor trainworld unless I have to. MB clein will always be my go to.
The only way a company could make shipping charges be affected by what you order, is if every item in the inventory has an additional weight/size/shipping charge multiplier value, which in most cases, is a bit too complicated. Large companies like amazon do have that, they always show package weight and dimensions in item description.
Or, its manual, like ebay, when you request an invoice from the seller and they tell you the exact value.
Some companies will charge an upfront cost for shipping, then charge the actual amount to your card/refund the difference. IIRC, Trainworld used to do this at some point.
I have seen this on ebay. A seller will have a BIN price that really looks good until you look at what they are charging for shipping then you can see it’s just a ploy to add to the price without making it seem so. Kind of like what some restaurants were doing in our area long BEFORE Covid. Instead of raising food prices they would increase drink prices because a lot of people didn’t notice until they got the bill, in fact one restaurant even removed their drink prices from the menu. I became an avid water drinker after that. Just give me your best price, this should include your cost of doing business after all I understand you need to make a profit, but if you try to hide it in shipping it just becomes a shell game.
