Hi, I was interested in buying about $100 worth of Pathfinder Adventure Card Game merchandise, including Class Decks and the Mummy's Mask Base Set, due in part to the current April sale.
However, I was staggered to find that the only shipping option available - USPS - was charging over $90 in shipping. When I simply instead tried to purchase a single class deck, the charge was still almost $70 in shipping. I'm based in an Australian city, but this seemed nonsensical.
For reference, I have purchased a single class deck (Occult Adventures Character Deck 1) before through Paizo.com in January, and shipping only cost $6.22 at that point. What has changed that has increased the shipping costs %1000 as the only option, dwarfing the costs of any products I purchase?
With that in mind, I'll need to look for a different merchant to buy through at this rate, though I'd have preferred to buy from Paizo directly. I'd like to hear back from Customer Service first to make sure this isn't some kind of bug.
P.S. The site layout is still mangled from the redesign. Links are often dead and redirect to the homepage, and navigating back and forth through Store link chains are a headache. From "Pathfinder Adventure Card Game / Expansions / Class Decks", for example, selecting "Expansions" simply shows "Class Decks" anyway, and selecting "Pathfinder Adventure Card Game" redirects to the info page for the product, not the Store page. In fact, actually trying to navigate to different store sections rather than constantly being shoved out of the store page seems near impossible without directly just typing in the likely URLs you want.
P.P.S. There's a spelling error in one of the Mummy's Mask decks, spelled something like "Adveneture".
Jacked up by 11 times, though!?
Then it's effectively impossible (well, unreasonable) for me to purchase from Paizo for the foreseeable future, then. No means for me to make use of the current sale, so I'll probably just sit on it for the time being. Thanks for the info, though.
The class deck sounds like an error to me. I suspect the $90 is correct though, unfortunately.
I’m also in Australia and bulky things (like the big boxed sets) are really pricey nowadays. Shipping companies are taking advantage of the ongoing boom in internet shopping, I suspect.
Hello Yewstance,
It looks like you have set the shipping address to an address is Washington state. The shipping on that is $14.06 going through UPS Ground. To ship the entire order to Australia it would have to go through UPS International, which can be very expensive. The previous order was just one deck and was able to ship through standard post, which is usually a lot cheaper. To go standard post a package needs to be at least 50% bound printed material which the cards are not, or weigh less than 1 pound.
Diego,
The current shipping address was changed to Washington to test the cost. The address listed was previously used to purchase Skulls and Shackles as a gift to a friend (whom I was visiting and, in fact, played with). My normal address is in Australia.
Incidentally, at the time I switched to the Washington address to test, the entire cost was still about $40-50. Again, a single class deck for my Australia delivery was, at the time, about $70.
To test, I've just tried re-ordering. The costs for the Washington address (used originally for a gift purchase, and thus the address is still saved) have decreased from when I tested it a couple of days ago... as have most of the others.
From what I can observe, when I originally looked through the store, I had my full $100 cart, and was charged about $90 for USPS International. When I changed the cart to just 1 class deck, it was still by USPS International (and charged about $70 - I can probably dig up a screenshot if desired), with no option to change shipping. When I changed to the Washington address and refilled my cart to the original ~$100 bundle, the cost was still rather high (Something like $50, I think?).
I think that the shipping was always "USPS International" when I kept changing these. I should stress that it absolutely did not give me any other shipping options for either address.
When I go back to try now, its defaulting to Standard Postal Delivery for small orders (class decks) at the much more reasonable and familiar prices (though higher than the $6.22 I'd had in January), as well as a much cheaper US shipping costs for the Washington address, again with standard orders. Various shipping options are not available for the Washington address now, too.
It seemed like the USPS International shipping was 'locked in', even after refreshes, on my previous cart, giving me absurd prices even for small orders. It seems largely better now. The full $100 cart for delivery to Australia is still exceptionally high ($92.04), but purchases of just class decks are adequate, thank you.
Though, the class decks only remain 'cheaper' as long as I'm purchasing during this 50% off sale, otherwise the shipping makes them more expensive than other sites by quite a margin, so unfortunately I don't think I'll be making use of the subscription models. The full base sets, even with this generous sale, are simply far too costly to ship when purchased from Paizo. So the USPS-related costs still seem very high, as a piece of feedback. Nevertheless, the extreme extent of my original issue has been removed (at least for class deck-only purchases).
Hello Yewstance,
Thank you for the information. I didn't do anything to the order so it is concerning that what you are seeing is changing. We are currently having some issues with shipping that the tech team has made top priority so I am passing the information in your post along to them in case it is related or is part of the issue.