We need to address shipping policy...Re: 611 Book

[NW Mailing List]

Jimmy,

 

There is no way to know the actual cost of shipping when an order is placed
and yet we and every other vendor expects payment before an order is sent.
Neither we nor the customer knows if an order can be sent in a single
package or require multiple packages. An order for a book or a poster will
require two packages. An order for multiple books may require multiple
packages. If we were to use media mail than books would require separate
packages from other products which takes us into more multiple packages, You
also assume that shipping is simply postage and ignore the fact that the
order is shipped in some type of container and generally includes some type
of packing - neither one of those are generally free.

 

As an example, you can buy my books "Billion Dollar Coalfield" or "Coalwood"
directly from me or from multiple vendors. My order blanks for "Billion
Dollar Coalfield" price the book at $75 plus $7 for postage and packing. I
set that price before I shipped the first book. In reality, media mail
postage is currently $8.72, the corrugated book wrappers I send the book in
are $1.28 each and I wrap the books in 3 feet of bubble wrap which cost me
$0.45. So my total current shipping cost of $10.45. It probably averaged
about $8.50 when the book went on sale in 2010. If I sell the book on
Amazon, I only get $3.99 for shipping so I price the book slightly higher.

 

Given the extra cost of packing products the commissary attempts to use as
much free packing material as we can get which is why we generally use USPS
priority boxes. 

 

As I noted orders are paid for before they are shipped. We don't know a
customer's postage cost until a package or packages is ready for shipment.
You are suggesting that at point to contact the customer and say your
shipping costs are "X" and you only included an amount of "Y" for shipping.
Please provide the additional funds before we can ship your order or we owe
you "Z" because you included too much for shipping. What makes your
suggestion unrealistic is someone would have to load all of the packages in
a vehicle, transport them to the post office, stand in line until a clerk is
available, have the clerk process all of the packages, determine the
postage, and then whoever took the packages to the post office would have to
reload the packages and bring them back to the commissary so everyone could
be contacted on the actual postage cost and the additional money obtained
before the packages could be sent. Once the additional postage was obtained
the packages would have to be reloaded and taken to the post office and
dropped off.  

 

On international shipping we normally check at the post office on the
expected shipping rate because of the high cost of shipping. We don't do
that for domestic orders.

 

If you go through the process of what is required to determine actual
postage and the inherent delays associated with order shipping as customers
are notified of actual shipping costs and orders await new payments, it is
easier to understand why NWHS and probably every other vendor uses some type
of pricing based on order level. Every vendor struggles with the break point
for the different pricing levels. We could raise our prices on shipping and
certainly break even, but we haven't chosen to do that because we raised
them last year. 

 

When the BoD discussed shipping costs in a digital age it recognized that a
postage deficit would increase, but the actual cost of some products such as
drawings could go down if they were sent digitally and the overall margin
could be expected to increase. The  goal for the commissary is to increase
the margin. That requires a balance between the price of goods sold, postage
costs, and digital pricing. You can afford to lose on some items if you make
up for it on other items.

 

My suggestion is, if you find this an unreasonable policy, you should run
for the Board of Directors and, if elected, participate in these type of
discussions. They occur at every BoD meeting as the BoD attempts to balance
the wants of the members and the requirements for volunteer hours to achieve
those wants.

 

Alex

 

 

 

From: NW-Mailing-List [mailto:nw-mailing-list-bounces at nwhs.org] On Behalf Of
NW Mailing List
Sent: Monday, November 02, 2015 7:54 AM
To: NW Mailing List
Subject: We need to address shipping policy...Re: 611 Book

 

 

On 10/29/2015 4:39 PM, NW Mailing List wrote:

In 2014 the commissary had  a loss of $520 on shipping. Through Sept 2015
our loss on shipping is $973.43 which is 1.79% of our gross sales. Our
objective is to break even on shipping.

One of the reasons we have a deficit on shipping is we lose on shipping when
we have to send an order in multiple packages. While this doesn't apply in
every case, it does apply in many cases. A second reason is we haven't
raised shipping rates in 2015 even though there have been some increases
from the post office. We expect to see continual shipping losses as we send
items digitally with a minimum handling charge rather than a shipping rate
based on the commissary order amount....Whatever we do, we don't expect any
changes in our postage pricing policy.

Alex,
    I find your explanation incomprehensible and I have to question why we
are losing money on shipping. Why are we allowing this to happen? Multiple
packages or not, customers should expect to pay the actual cost of shipping
and not a penny more. It seems that we do indeed need to look into our
postage pricing policy and revamp it to where shipping costs are the actual
amount.

Jimmy Lisle

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