Menards Pricing ...

OGR Webmaster posted:

romiller49 posted:

Shipping/handling goes right to the bottom line. It is a money maker as it should be.

Shipping and handling are money makers? How in the world do you come up with that?

There is no "profit" in passing along shipping costs.

As for the handling, someone has to pick, pack and ship your order. Does that person work for free? NO! What about the box and packing materials...are they free? NO!

Anyone who thinks that "shipping and handling" are a profit center doesn't understand the costs involved in running a business.

Rich,

Agree if they are passing along actual shipping and handling costs.

Went to order a few small products from a company, (not train related) and at most the already boxed items will weigh 10 pounds total and fit in a 12" X 12" x 18" box. Regular shipping came to $128. I asked if that staggering and outrageous amount was 5 hour delivery from California. They replied, no it is their regular 2 week shipping and I didn't understand how complex and difficult it is to ship. I told them no thanks! They clearly are using shipping to pad the bottom line.

However, it has been my unpleasant experience to see on Evilbay, folks will sell an inexpensive product or a product for way less than it should, only to discover the price to ship the item is astronomical!   Is this limited to one or small number of eBay sellers?  Sadly, it is my opinion that this practice is common on eBay.
In the one case, Shipping is most definitely a Cost Center.

If you look back at EBay, at one time they did not charge any commissions or fees on shipping. Back then I knew people who intentionally charged almost nothing for the item itself, and charged very high prices for shipping to avoid the commission. Eventually EBay caught on and started charging the same fees on shipping (thanks for ruining things for the rest of us).
But shady sellers could still beat the system. If an item was returned, the seller only had to refund the purchase price, not the shipping. Plus the buyer had to pay return shipping. At a minimum this would discourage buyers from returning anything, and if they did, so what! All the profit was in the shipping anyway.
So Ebay fixed that by making the seller pay return shipping and refund the original shipping.

I guess some sellers still charge low prices and high shipping to grab peoples attention. IMHO, if you are buying anything online from any seller, shipping always needs to be added into the purchase price when making a decision.

Nothing wrong or evil about EBay. They do their best to keep the sellers honest. And there are dishonest buyers out there too.

Maybe it is because an Amazon warehouse is close to our home.  We have had packages delivered by a person driving a private car.  Almost like Uber for Amazon.

I can hardly see the train in the distance in this topic.