Book Reviews and Money Saving Tips

One of my pet peeves is the hidden costs of shipping. I’m guessing that the retailers hope you will ignore the cost of shipping once you get to checkout. I just was on the Walmart site and was going to buy something that seemed to be aggressively priced. It had free shipping to the store. If I wanted to go to the store I would not have been shopping on line. Duhh! It would not give me the price with shipping until I went through the checkout procedures. Guess what! Not worth my trouble when I think they are playing head games. Give me the full price before I have to put in my credit card not after! Lost sale due to annoyance! You would think these guys would learn by now that annoyance probably costs them far more sales than sneaking in the shipping costs at the end earn them in sales. Grinch me not!

Basically if I go to a site and find what I want at a price I feel is fair I tend to buy it unless they hide the shipping charges. Hidden shipping charges drive me and I suspect drive an enormous number of people away from a site. Show the shipping charges before your customer is expected to put in their information and you will retain more customers. How dumb does the vendor assume we are when they want all the information, including credit card, before they kindly let us know their shipping charges are outrageous. Why else would you hide your shipping charges? Buyer beware is even more important on the Web than ever before. If a site doesn’t give you the shipping charges prior to collecting your information, GO SOMEWHERE ELSE! If we all boycott the sites that think they can play bait and switch with shipping charges hidden, maybe they will wise up and give the consumer some credit. The $6.99 item including shipping is a much better deal than the $4.99 item with the hidden (until you ...