I was ready to order a new atlas reefer and it was $18.99 cheap for n scale..... added shipping , it was 32 something...... na no way, anyone else feel this way.
Original Post
"HONGZ" stands for HO scale, N scale, G scale, and Z scale.
Post your non-O scale stuff here!
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Sounds as if the price is high for a N scale car. Were they sending it overnight?
Today's shipping costs for everything are very high and going higher all the time. It reflects the rising cost of labor, gas, etc. NH Joe
No Joe it was regular mail.
It was from a major distributor in the Baltimore area.
I have found using a shipping service is much cheaper when sending things out from my personal collection and then I only charge the actual shipping. I think a lot of companies use the shipping (and handling) charges as an extra profit center.
I also have a problem with that major auction site that automatically includes sales tax and adds sales tax to the shipping charge. Don't know how legal that actually is.
@lionelflyer posted:I also have a problem with that major auction site that automatically includes sales tax and adds sales tax to the shipping charge. Don't know how legal that actually is.
Almost every state requires the collection of sales tax on internet sales.
But that shipping does seem a bit excessive - N scale car could probably ship in a small flat rate priority box for a lot less.
@lionelflyer posted:I have found using a shipping service is much cheaper when sending things out from my personal collection and then I only charge the actual shipping. I think a lot of companies use the shipping (and handling) charges as an extra profit center.
The expenses to send most of the staff to York has to be covered. John
I regularly ship small packages under a pound First Class mail, and the postage is less then $5. It's certainly justified to add some expensive for labels, boxes, and packaging, not to mention the time to pack it up. However, $14 for an N-scale car seems a bit excessive. 
I regularly buy R/C car parts from a warehouse that’s about 1200 miles from my house that are about the size and weight of a N scale car. Most of the time I only get charged a $1.99 flat rate for shipping. It sounds like the shop in Baltimore is trying to make extra $$$ off their shipping charges.
I saw a model plane I was interested in on that ‘bay site that was $23., but the shipping was $67.! Nah, don’t need it that bad!
Simple answer is vendor may view shipping and handling as an additional profit opportunity...for everyone who walks away like yourself, there's probably one who pays the $14. I spoke with a vendor who wanted to charge $9.95 to ship a $20 capacitor the size of an SD card, when other's were charging $2. When I questioned the vendor about the aggressive charge, I was told that shipping cost had gone up.
Bottom, line the vendor lost my business that one time and won't be called for future needs...
@cta4391 posted:I regularly buy R/C car parts from a warehouse that’s about 1200 miles from my house that are about the size and weight of a N scale car. Most of the time I only get charged a $1.99 flat rate for shipping. It sounds like the shop in Baltimore is trying to make extra $$$ off their shipping charges.
They must be getting a special shipping deal, the cheapest First Class shipping rate I see nowadays is $3.31 for a 2 ounce package! That's for fairly close locations, it goes up over $4 for shipping across the country with the same package.
I have found that the Flat Rate shipping boxes from the post office are usually a pretty good deal. However, it still will cost about $20-30 to ship anything in one of them. Plus, the large is not all that big.
I have found just the opposite. I ship from home and the flat rate is always higher than using your own box, unless you are sending something very heavy. Also, as @mowingman mentions, there isn’t even a box that fits rolling stock.
I'm with John, I very rarely use the flat rate boxes as they virtually always seem to cost more. In addition, most of the stuff I ship won't fit in a flat-rate box. I try to ship small stuff First Class, much cheaper as a rule.
$14 might be a little high, but not enough to get upset about. I've passed on items due to shipping charges, and I've also swallowed hard and paid for something that I really wanted or needed.
I've found that the minimum charge for shipping anything is usually $10-13. IMO, companies that charge less than $10 probably either ship a lot of tiny items, or they are subsidizing the shipping cost in their markup. I don't blame them for wanting to standardize their shipping process, which often means using a larger box than necessary for some items.
My experience is that companies that cover the shipping in their markup, such as Amazon, often under-pack the items because they have built a certain amount of breakage into their pricing. I don't want my trains to be under-packed - would you?
1) Call and ask why the shipping cost is so high (only effective if it's a small operation and you can talk to the owner), 2) wait until you find the item in person at a shop or show, 3) find the item at another vendor, 4) buy more than one little thing - I'll bet that the shipping for 3 or 4 cars would have been the same or only slightly higher, 5) decide that you really want it and pay the charge.
@mowingman posted:I have found that the Flat Rate shipping boxes from the post office are usually a pretty good deal. However, it still will cost about $20-30 to ship anything in one of them. Plus, the large is not all that big.
I think that the inability to fit cars into the flat-rate boxes is part of a conspiracy among the small scale folks to keep us O-gaugers down.
@John H posted:I have found just the opposite. I ship from home and the flat rate is always higher than using your own box, unless you are sending something very heavy. Also, as @mowingman mentions, there isn’t even a box that fits rolling stock.
My experience as well, but using your own box assumes that you have one that will fit. I have dozens of broken-down boxes but can never seem to find the right size. A pile of boxes is not a recipe for domestic tranquility.
I mostly use the free boxes from USPS. I have a few sizes,using the "shoe box" size the most. They are delivered free and store flat until you build one.
I also use a lot of the USPS free boxes, and I frequently build a longer box out of two shoe-box sized boxes. A common misconception with shipping is you have to have a ton of padding around the sides of stuff. In truth, the most damage I see is the ends of locomotives, that's where force is concentrated if they drop the box on the end. That's where I put most of my padding. I have gotten many huge boxes with a ton of padding around the sides of a large locomotive box, but no padding on the ends of the box! That's the exact opposite of what I would suggest.
Axial loading, wherein the entire weight of the engine is pile driven onto whichever end hits the floor.
@lionelflyer posted:I also have a problem with that major auction site that automatically includes sales tax and adds sales tax to the shipping charge. Don't know how legal that actually is.
Prior to about 2 or 3 years ago, vendors did not have to pay sales tax on items shipped to other states. There was a many decades old Supreme Court ruling that upheld this position. Basically, in the pre-computer age, no out of state retailer had a way to charge and collect out of state sales taxes without hiring an army of accountants. Every county in CA, for example, has a different sales tax rate.
Local retailers intensely lobbied Congress to change the law because they claimed that out of state sales were hurting their local sales because they had to collect sales tax. Congress wrote a new law requiring any vendor that did over $500K in sales in a state to collect and remit the tax to the state if the state requested it. The Supreme Court upheld the new law because computers now allow vendors to do this without an undue burden on their business. Every state that charges sales tax requested that the vendors do this.
All the big national vendors and auction sites probably do well over $500K sales in every state. Therefore, they are required to collect and remit sales tax on the sales that they make to customers within each state that has sales tax. Don't blame the vendor, blame Congress.
A small vendor, however, such as a hobby shop that does minimal out of state sales may not have to collect sales tax from customers and remit it to the various states. It will depend on local laws, etc. NH Joe
@New Haven Joe posted:A small vendor, however, such as a hobby shop that does minimal out of state sales may not have to collect sales tax from customers and remit it to the various states.
Correct, but the customer that buys from that small out of state hobby shop is legally required to submit the sales tax on that purchase! In PA, this is called Use Tax.
I almost ordered a box car (O gauge) from a dealer across the continent. Shipping was going to $23.00 and I thought "nope."
Capitalism is a good thing
Its those darn capitalists that ruin it😁
Shipping costs are a necessary evil
and they are getting eviler buy the week
Especially since they no longer meet delivery dates
Makes one question why they are so high
when you consider the lack of value
But this too we will overcome or not
either way, if we want it, we will find a way to get it
"Correct, but the customer that buys from that small out of state hobby shop is legally required to submit the sales tax on that purchase! In PA, this is called Use Tax."
GRJ is correct. In Virginia we have a new twist. On the state income tax return, Line 33 requires you to enter the Use Tax due, and if no sales or use tax is due, you are to fill in an oval. This means that if you have purchased from out of state and not paid a tax, but still fill in the oval, you can be nailed for intentionally filing a false tax return.
On USPS boxes, I have found that the flat-rate box is only better if you are sending something quite heavy, or for a long distance.
I've shipped well over 5000 packages in the last decade. I agree with John using First Class whenever possible. I also use the Priority Regional Rate boxes and Padded Mailers when appropriate, which cost less than Flat Rate boxes.
Our shipping cost is based on weight - $5 for those that can go First Class, and $10 for Priority. That used to leave a little margin for bubble wrap and other supplies. With postage rates increasing, now First Class usually costs almost $5, and today a 2 pound Priority package from Utah to NC cost $11.76. Obviously, I'm covering part of our shipping costs out of the sales price.
Back to the original post. If the seller normally uses Priority Mail, the cost starts at about $9. So $19 for the product, $9 for postage, and maybe 7% for tax gets you to $30. $32 does not sound like a rip-off.
With the cost of energy increasing, expect the cost of shipping to keep increasing too.
If it will fit, the USPS flat rate box is the only way to go...but...if an item is not particularly heavy and will fit in a regular box smaller than the flat rate one, it is usually cheaper over the same distance. The USPS shoe box is great for our O gauge stuff, but it is not a flat rate box. Hobby shop store shelves are empty as shipping from China where, a container used to cost about $3800, now it is $38,000. Loaded containers with things like train stuff, contracted at $4000, have been emptied and their contents warehoused, while the container is given to someone willing to pay 10 times the amount. For some reason, the actual containers are hard to find. Maybe they are all sitting on ships waiting to get unloaded in LA.
@CALNNC posted:If it will fit, the USPS flat rate box is the only way to go...but...if an item is not particularly heavy and will fit in a regular box smaller than the flat rate one, it is usually cheaper over the same distance.
Actually, the Flat Rate box is rarely the best value. For almost anything I'd put in the small Flat Rate Box I can ship cheaper using First Class. I actually compare the price of Priority Flat Rate and Priority before I decide, and usually simple Priority Mail wins the comparison.
