Not sure why this came into my head, but it is a daily annoyance for me. The likes of eBay started the trend a few years back (I remember well, spending a week updated all my listings). They decided to be a good seller you must offer free shipping.
But shipping isn’t free… it costs money… so it’s added to the price of the product. So if you buy 2 items, you’re paying twice for postage. I spent hours and hours working out multibuy discounts so my customers didn’t lose out.
Web shops followed suit, and now the likes of etsy are encouraging it… but WHY??? It doesn’t actually make sense!!!
I love the free shipping when you spend over a certain amount, or free shipping for a weekend.. those are great deals, but free shipping on everything, all the time, means the postage is included in the price.
In the past, I would have spent time, seeing what else the seller had on offer so I could get the most out of my postage… now, I just buy one thing.
We do shipping by weight/size, so you shouldn’t get over charged. Included in that is an amount for packaging, but a lot of the time we spend more on packaging than we should. However, we feel our prices are fair, and you can live safe in the knowledge that if we offer free postage, it will be free and not added to the price.
So, when you see FREE POSTAGE, just double check that it’s actually a good offer 🙂