Beemaster's International Beekeeping Forum
BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER => GENERAL BEEKEEPING - MAIN POSTING FORUM. => Topic started by: slacker361 on August 09, 2011, 10:45:39 am
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I will not mention the company as this is not permitted, but I went to purchase some votive wicks, some warning labels for candles and a small wax remover liquid..... total order before shipping 15.95... the shipping charge was 31.95...... ok I think I have to say this again 31 dollars and 95 cents for for about a pound of material ( if that) and twice the actual order total.....
Ok am I the only one missing something here..... I know some replies will be "well they have to factor in the handling cost also" which may be a ligit statement, but most folks figure that in on the price... and if that is the case , wow I want to be the packager at that company..... one could easily pull down 100K packaging material to ship
yes this has been a RANT......
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I bet that I know the company that you are talking about. They charged me for a 22 pound package and the real weight was 4 pounds.
I don't even look at their site anymore. One screwing is enough for me.
Larry
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Did you order on line or call the company?
In a situation like this I would call the company and ask about the charges. Im sure (if you are polite) that they will reduce the shipping costs accordingly.
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Did you order on line or call the company?
In a situation like this I would call the company and ask about the charges. Im sure (if you are polite) that they will reduce the shipping costs accordingly.
Stella that is what I though, This has to be a online mistake so let me call them... I was polite, and they told me that the shipping was correct.... I asked can you just throw it in a box and USPS it to me..... the response was we only ship UPS... So I went back on line , because the wicks were all I needed, 100 wick 5.95, UPS "ground" shipping 15.95..... What the Heck?????
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Go ahead and mention the company. This is a bee forum after all. They should know that customers are disgruntled and if voiced publicly can explain themselves and perhaps if in error, our voices can have an impact on their future proceedings. Heck, they may even give you recourse to make you spread good news instead of bad which we all know travels very fast.
Just be polite as possible and state the facts.
...JP
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Yeah Im with JP. I dont think that the Beemaster or Buzz either one would object.
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Ok I thought the by laws said that we are not supposed to do that..... I agree that it should be made public..... so I am going with the advice of the senior members here and I will mention the company....I would also like to mention that it was only shipping one state away from NY to PA.....
Removed company Name: Buzzbee
When I went on the site I thought wow I might actually have a one stop place to get my stuff..... but when shipping to the next state it 2 to 3 times higher that the order that you place...... OUCHH.........
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..... so I am going with the advice of the senior members here and I will mention the companyThe company is removed from this post.
That would be Jp-Im still a freshman :-D
Thanks for the info though.
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Is this why I NEVER use them? :lau:
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I just went back on their site and looked at the shipping info that they post..... It states......
The customer pays all freight and/or optional insurance charges. We ship small orders (0-500 lbs.) through UP S or US Postal Service . We ship large orders (500+) by common carrier truck. All shipments are FOB Greenwich, NY . Any breakage or damage in transit is the responsibility of the shipping company. Shipping by the US Postal Service will incur an additional handling and insurance fee. Depending on the season, orders ship from the warehouse in two to five days. We encourage all customers to plan ahead as much as possible for their active honeybee season in order to avoid delays during the busy beekeeping season (typically from March to August-but variable due to longitude and local climate).
Please note that it does say that they ship through the US postal service, However when I asked them to do this they said that they only ship through UPS........
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Thanks for the heads up.
Jim
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I really don't like companys that charge crazy shipping prices. I order A LOT of items on-line because I live in a rural small town so sometimes its hard to find certain items and I have learned to be really careful if there is no shipping estimate at checkout or they have a disclaimer in teenie tiny print that says they "may charge additional shipping" I always call or e-mail them to get the actual shipping. I love the places that charge $5 shipping no matter what :)
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That at times when the post office offers flat rate and regional rate boxes free of charge. They should make their money on the products they sell and not the shipping they charge. I run a small mail order business and I feel guilty when my site over-calculates a shipping charge. It can happen. I always refund the difference to my customers and send them an apology message, even with only being off by a dollar. So far everyone is happy and comments about our honesty in a very nice way. Triple charging the shipping is just insane. I do have their catalog and will appropriately file it in the trash dumpster.
PS You may ask them to use your UPS account number instead. That way you get charged by UPS and not them.
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UPS is usually much cheaper than USPS. they take less time too. have you tried some of the ebay stores? i'm pretty sure that's where i got my last batch of wicks and the cost was good. if you know what you want and you check out the online store reviews, it's a good place to get stuff. in addition, you have both ebay protection and paypal protection when you buy stuff.
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Ebay is also great because you get to see the shipping cost most of the time and because you can leave negative feedback if they try to pull a fast one on you.
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You can call them to place the order and talk to them about the shipping, or just wait until December for some free shipping deals.
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No offense to the original poster but if you didn't find out what the shipping rate was before you placed your order, its hard to knock them for charging what they did. If they told you one price and you received another, you have a valid complaint.
...JP
edit: Removed company name: Buzzbee
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Ohhh I didnt order, not at those shipping costs...
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Ohhh I didnt order, not at those shipping costs...
My bad, thought you did. Good for you!
...JP
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JP,
We do not encourage open forum bashing of companies or individuals here so do not entice them. If you really want to know, take it to PM's and that way Beemaster Forums will hold no liability from a lawsuit if it were ever to happen. And you know it can.
That is exactly why it is written into the bylaws.
Slacker 361:
Check with a mod before ignoring bylaws.
Beemasters words on a topic like this:
caveat emptor
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Slacker..I apologize...That warning should have came to me and not you. Wont happen again.
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It was not really a warning,just a FYI notice of policy at Beemaster forums.Have a good day all!
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This really s****. I posted earlier this year about a really bad product and the facts about why it was unusable and was immediatly deleted - took about an hour to have it ripped off the board.
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No offense to the original poster but if you didn't find out what the shipping rate was before you placed your order, its hard to knock them for charging what they did. If they told you one price and you received another, you have a valid complaint.
...JP
edit: Removed company name: Buzzbee
I called this company and the girl told me she didn't know what the cost of shipping was. I figured this is a credible company and figured they would be fair. Boy was I wrong. I will never call them again.
Jim
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I always ask if there is any handling fees or anything other than shipping. If so I dont care how much it is, I dont buy from them. If they dont figure out what they need to make a product profitable and include it into the price I find that to be fraud. Of course its legal but fraudulent in my book non the less. Sounds like this place has a ten dollar handling fee. I worked for a buddy and I dealt with UPS and one of their perks was that you could charge a handling fee and the customer did not know it unless asking because it was not stated on the label. The shipping charge total was printed but there was no way of knowing what the actual shipping price is without asking. It dont take long at 10 an order for a company to cash in. There was a guy making bee equipment not long ago (probably still does) and I asked the big question and he beat around the bush and tried telling me what the total would be with shipping. Thats it, im done, all I asked was if they charged a handling fee, either you do or dont. I dont think USPS has a way of adding a handling fee and im sure thats why this company did not want to ship that way.
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USPS also let you add in a handling fee without showing. You later print your commercial label in "stealth" mode, so it does not show the actual cost or any amount for that matter. The only way to find that out, is take the weight on check online what it would cost you to ship. Still commercial shippers get a discount on top of it.
This basically applies to all shipping companies like USPS, UPS, FedEx, etc.
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Imagine if you went to wal mart and bought a gallon of milk. Lets say it 3.49. You go to the cash register and bling, and bling. Cashier: "That will be $13.49 sir". You: "What, 13.49, the milks 3.49". Cashier: "Im sorry sir there is a $10.00 handling fee associated with each check out."
Would anyone put up with that? Nope, and you should not with mailed items either!
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The vendors view: the choice is always yours but we all know the price of fuel cost-
>Shipping is a funny thing to us, we're darned if we do and we're darned if we don't I guess. We can't ship via the USPS because we have had so much fraud with the Post Office and it takes a minimum of 30 days from the ship date to be allowed to file a lost or damage package claim. UPS does a far better job.
>The shipping prices on that item qty is $22.66 and the handling charge is $1.50. If you go to UPS.com and go to there time and cost estimator, enter the origin zip as 12834 the delivery zip as 16101 enter the pick up schedule, the 16 x 8 x 8 box the 5 pound weight(all carrier round up for small parcels to the nearest pound we come up with $24.67 on the UPS site. The current fuel surcharge is 9% of shipment value. So at the $22.66 price from (vendor) that is cheaper than the UPS prices online. Location is 474 miles from Greenwich, NY and the actual transit distance is likely farther given the box would be picked up at our facility then transported to the package sort facility in Albany before traveling to a package sort facility in PA before it gets on the vehicle headed to the customers house and delivered by the driver.
>The average UPS Ground shipment takes 44 people to process the package and that doesn't include the 5 (vendor) employees who are involved in the taking and processing and shipping of orders. With that 474 mile distance that works out to be $0.0478/cents a mile. I don't know about you but I can't travel that far that cheaply. I have a pickup truck that is a half ton and it cost $75 dollars to fill up last week and I have to fill it up once a week(I'm saving my pennies for a Prius or a Volt and some solar panels to charge it, take that Exxon).
This is why I try to wait on free shipping. Also I never got my money back from USPS for dead queens. I opened them up in the office everyone saw they were dead, it was the paperwork red tape!
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I too sell and ship , and if I did that to my customers, there is another vendor that will take my place..... When an item sells for 5.00 and this shipment is 15.95, and the shipment is less than a pound, the charge doesn't equate..... The item could have been put in an envelope and a first class postage I think would apply.... Even if you cant do first class, the ship all for 4.95 box would have sufficed.....
I personally would have been looking for repeat business, and when I spoke with the gentleman about the shipping charges and asked can you throw that in a USPS and mail it... If he would have said yes ,because that shipping charge is way out of line.... I would have been a repeat customer, and in return he would have made more $$ off of me....
I guess it doesnt really matter as I will not be purchasing from them ..... But it was just the extremeness of the situation as to why I shared with everyone....
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Don't get me wrong, I agree! Was hoping if it were brought to their attention maybe they will think twice next time. Maybe they will maybe they won't.
Spend your hard earned bucks with those that earn your business!
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I have actually not ordered from them before, for this very reason. I too called to see if it was an online error. Nope. That was the actual charge, so I took my business somewhere else. I have since purchased 7-8 hundred dollars worth of product from the other company and I've got many years of beekeeping left. It seems to me they would want to know that they are losing many customers due to their out of sight shipping prices.
njoylife10