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Is there a way to save on shipping? Like if I order more than $X.XX worth of stuff is there an option that would wave my shipping costs? I feel like the costs for shipping within the USA are high compared to other web sites that I order from. I have canceled my order a few times now because I get to checkout and see the price after shipping.
CEO
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Is there a way to save on shipping? Like if I order more than $X.XX worth of stuff is there an option that would wave my shipping costs? I feel like the costs for shipping within the USA are high compared to other web sites that I order from. I have canceled my order a few times now because I get to checkout and see the price after shipping.
The only shipping savings we have right now is that you get $10 off your shipping on orders of $100 or more. As for the costs being high, we actually pass on the costs we get from UPS or USPS. Some of the smaller websites incorrectly ship products, usually via media mail or book rate, but we have found that they are using those classes incorrectly, and if the US Postal Service finds out, they can fine you big time. The larger the company, the more risk there is. So we follow the rules and give our customers the lowest shipping prices that we can. We actually have a very sophisticated code that tries all sorts of variables to find the lowest possible cost.
-Lisa
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Some of the smaller websites incorrectly ship products, usually via media mail or book rate, but we have found that they are using those classes incorrectly, and if the US Postal Service finds out, they can fine you big time.
-Lisa
Just out of curiousity, why can't you use these rates?? The description seems to fit in with a majority of your products (especially the subscriptions).
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Just out of curiousity, why can't you use these rates?? The description seems to fit in with a majority of your products (especially the subscriptions).
There can be no promotional material in the books, including the last 2 or so pages of every pathfinder book, any item cards, the catalogs,if any of the promo pins form GenCon find their way into package, the christmas cards, ect
media mail/book rate requires(everything below this is taken from one of Vic's posts that Ikept in my own little FAQ file):
Books, including books issued to supplement other books, of at least eight printed pages, consisting wholly of reading matter or scholarly bibliography, or reading matter with incidental blank spaces for notations and containing no advertising matter other than incidental announcements of books. Advertising includes paid advertising and the publishers' own advertising in display, classified, or editorial style.
"Announcements of books" is further defined as follows:
Announcements of books may appear as book pages. These announcements must be incidental and exclusively devoted to books, without extraneous advertising of book-related or other materials or services. Announcements may fully describe the conditions and methods of ordering books and may contain ordering instructions for use with a separate order form. Up to three of these announcements may contain as part of their format a single order form, which may also serve as a postcard. The order forms permitted with these announcements are in addition to, and not in place of, order forms that may be enclosed under 2.4.4a or 2.4.4b.
Pathfinder AP #21, there's some question of whether they'd count page 91 ("It's Your World Now"). It talks about books in general, but it doesn't specify a particular list of titles, so it's not immediately clear if that page would be classified as as "the publishers' own advertising in display style," which is disallowed, or as an announcement of books, which would be allowed. I think the Planet Stories ad on the following page pretty clearly serves as announcement of books, while the Yetisburg card game ad after that is clearly not allowed. Since the "Find Your Path" list on the following page mentions card decks and map products, it's also not allowed. I think that the "Golarion Needs Heroes" page after that would be ok, though.
The bottom line here, though, is that to offer Media Mail rates, every ad in every one of the many thousands of books we sell would have to be examined in detail and classified, and that's just not going to happen. (I think customers would probably also be confused that one Pathfinder AP Volume might cost more or less to ship than another.)
As for why other companies might offer cheaper shipping, I can only conjecture. Certainly, some of the smaller guys just don't understand or follow the postal regulations. (Eventually, this will cause a giant problem for them.) Bigger companies, like Amazon, often charge you less than it costs them to ship because they're willing to take less profit on each sale to gain higher volume. We're not a big enough operation to be able to do that. Generally, our shipping costs include the cost of postage, the cost of the packaging materials, and a handling fee to help defray the cost of our warehouse, equipment, and associated staff.
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Ha I'll order $100 worth of stuff if I can get my wife to agree with it. Thanks for the very descriptive answer, I have lately become a pretty big fan of paizo and really want to support you guys. I will keep this information in mind and try and just deal with the cost of shipping. I'll also work on making large orders :)
Ha I'll order $100 worth of stuff if I can get my wife to agree with it. Thanks for the very descriptive answer, I have lately become a pretty big fan of paizo and really want to support you guys. I will keep this information in mind and try and just deal with the cost of shipping. I'll also work on making large orders :)
Just make sure that it is $100 or more, not $99.98 or anything like that. ~grins~ Can you tell that I almost made that mistake before?
Why does it cost $7 to ship a small trade paperback book?
Even on Amazon.com this rarely ever costs more than $3.99. And free with $25 or more in purchases.
You could ship that Media Mail and save me some money. I don't need it in a hurry.
Amazon often looses money on shipping. It is part of the business model. Media Mail is not an option.
Many of Paizo's products are available on Amazon. If purchasing there makes better sense for you, they are entirely supportive of your decision to do so.