Greetings,
I've looking at getting a Arkham Horror expansions.
I have previously ordered Dunwitch Horror and its shipping was $23 (order num 1774492) going standard mail.
Now I am trying to order Kingsport Horror but the only shipping option is USPS Priority Mail at $48.
Is this a change in policy or are the stars right?
I would prefer to have the choice to ship it standard mail and have it take a bit longer.
Just to make it a little more weird I looked at Curse of the Dark Pharaoh
Revised expansion.
I only have USPS Priority Mail shipping option but the cost is $52 for shipping.
Given this is a small expansion I would have thought it would be cheaper to ship
Cheers
Stuart
Always check for availability on bookdepository when shipping internationally. (Currently unavailable but i suggest signing up for notification)
Always check for availability on bookdepository when shipping internationally. (Currently unavailable but i suggest signing up for notification)
As much as I love dealing with Paizo's Store, you are my hero for pointing this place out. Free shipping to Canada on everything? Wow.
Chief Technical Officer
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Greetings,
I've looking at getting a Arkham Horror expansions.
I have previously ordered Dunwitch Horror and its shipping was $23 (order num 1774492) going standard mail.
Now I am trying to order Kingsport Horror but the only shipping option is USPS Priority Mail at $48.
Is this a change in policy or are the stars right?
I would prefer to have the choice to ship it standard mail and have it take a bit longer.
Just to make it a little more weird I looked at Curse of the Dark Pharaoh
Revised expansion.
I only have USPS Priority Mail shipping option but the cost is $52 for shipping.
Given this is a small expansion I would have thought it would be cheaper to shipCheers
Stuart
The issue here is that the USPS has a 4-pound weight limit for all of their affordable international shipping services. Once an international parcel tops 4 pounds, the cheapest method to ship it is International Priority.
Dunwich Horror weighed in at about 3.25 pounds, so we could ship that via a cheaper method. Kingsport Horror weighs about 3.45 pounds, and the weight of the box and packing materials takes the parcel over 4 pounds, so it can only ship Priority.
As for Dark Pharaoh, it's currently en route from distribution, so we haven't got a copy to weigh yet, and it had an estimated weight that was probably far too high. I've just adjusted that estimate downwards so it should qualify for less expensive International shipping now.
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But how is it possible that other sites can ship much cheaper, like the afore-mentioned Book Depository?
I wanted to buy 5th printing of the Core Rulebook and I was shocked to see that shipping fee is 45$, whereas the book itself is 50$. Added to that is the customs tax (20-30% of the value of the packages with value over 75$), so I'd end up paying somewhere around 130$ for a 50$ book, if I wanted to buy through paizo site.
But how is it possible that other sites can ship much cheaper, like the afore-mentioned Book Depository?
There are many possibilities. They break down into one of three categories, however.
1) They're huge and can demand rate cuts from their shippers. (I'm thinking of Amazon here, but I'm sure there are others. Amazon also indulges in option #3, below.) Alternatively, they actually have facilities in multiple countries so they don't have to deal with international shipping.
2) The other companies are breaking the rules in some way. Sticking things more than four pounds in regular international shipments. Shipping books containing ads via media mail. Shipping board games via bound printed matter rates.
Just because they don't get caught doesn't mean they aren't breaking the rules.
3) They're taking a loss on shipping. Could be they deliberately undercharge on shipping because it encourages sales. Could be they oversimplify their rates because it is less work that coming up with accurate totals. Could be they do broad categories and eat the difference when a particularly heavy/cumbersome product like the Core Rulebook comes up.
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Chief Technical Officer
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Many places don't tie shipping charges to actual shipping costs. Take Amazon's third-party stores, where Amazon assumes that every book costs exactly the same to ship. For domestic standard mail, they figure it at $3.99, no matter whether it's a 4-page pamphlet, a slim paperback, or a complete Harry Potter boxed hardcover set. (There's just one place where they consider weight at all, and that's International Standard shipping, where they assume $12.49 for any book under a pound, and $18.49 for any book over a pound.)
Any third-party Amazon store selling the Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook will almost certainly lose money on every copy they ship. And I'm not just talking about paying more to ship than they get back in S&H; I mean that some of them will pay so much more for shipping that they won't even cover all of the cost they paid for the actual book.
For a company like Paizo, where many of our bestselling products are over four pounds, fixed-rate shipping is just not a viable option.