Free shipping

[aet]

Just thought this discussion might be separated from the vendor talk.
It is kind mysterious to me that on one side consumer requires full transparency from the vendor but somehow can get over that " little lie " that no shipping needs to be paid with the order. Of course, not on the paper , but we all know that no postal services in the world working for free.
It's like going trough the receipt from supermarket and checking if discounted items went trough really as discounted but with tea this for some reason doesn't apply
Just an example :
357g cake shipping from Kunming is padded envelope. ( prices incl. 5% Paypal fee which vendor has to pay each transaction )

Thailand - 5.5$
US - 18.5$
CAN - 7.9$
NL - 14$
UK - 7.9$

So which country tea drinker you going to be in favor and which you are going to "rip off" ?
If my minimum requirement for cake is 50$ and I set it on free shipping for US ( which is the most of my customers ) , the final price will be like 69$ ...hey and there we have Free Shipping!
Means customer from TH will overpay 13$ , but hey..no worries , he/she also has a Free Shipping )))

I read, customer doesn't want to bother with details of the order because final price is what counts.
It does make a sense in point when Rayner ( airline company ) introduced some extra fuel fee and baggage fee ( not the optional additional fee , but actual basic one ) which was slowly adding up trough the steps of the proceeding the order. I think it was back in 2007 I was living in Ireland and flight looking like 50e would turned out to be 90e after final click. That was annoying alright. And for 1-2 hr flight I wouldn't bother about "quality" of the seats or meal included perks.

But with tea, I look it completely different way. Once you start having an idea about - price : quality - ratio ( or you will actually will desire to have a clue about it at first place ) , you will be searching for the actual selling price of the tea ( not with wrapped shipping on it which u have no idea how much is it ) .
Let alone that shipping 2 cakes is not a double shipping fee of the 1 cake , so you are getting "ripped off" on shipping even if you are in that "favor" country setup. ( to US 2x357g cakes will be around 23$ )
You will be able browse trough any website selling some puerh you have an idea about pricing and will be able to choose which one makes sense to sample and which not.

I understand that free shipping concept exists for long time and will be very popular all the time. It is ok if there is a flat shipping fee or differences between countries is +/- some $ , but from China those differences are pretty high. There is no flat rate shipping fee from China to abroad.

I'm sure community / consumers will have a different opinion , this is only mine though.
I still fight in my mind with do or not to do ,but inner conscious tells me be honest despite the marketing trends. For now )))

[Andrew S]

I think that the consumers who you want to attract and keep are not the ones who are asking for free shipping.

Andrew

[Bok]

I think that the consumers who you want to attract and keep are not the ones who are asking for free shipping.

Andrew

+1

And @aet thanks for putting all this down very clearly. Sadly many people do not really want to know what is actually going on...

[Bourder]

There is a Polish 'ebay' of sorts. Some time ago, they've introduced a free-shipping service - you pay ~$10 up front and then every order above ~$8.5 (in the case of parcel lockers) or above ~$21, I guess, (in the case of a courier delivery to your home) has free shopping. It lasts a year, so supposedly after ~5 orders you would be "saving money" (of which the site IS reminding you after shopping). What happened is that every big vendor or individual seller who agreed to take part in that service has increased prices of all their products. And if your order doesn't qualify for the free shipping, you still have to pay those prices. Overall, I really don't think the customers are the ones who benefit from the "free" shipping.

[GaoShan]

@aet, these are interesting points. I'm amazed that it costs so much less to ship from China to Canada than it does to the U.S. I've bought from a few vendors in China and have been charged a range of prices for shipping, from $10 to over $20. I'm not sure if it costs more to ship tea in a box than in an envelope, but I rarely buy more than 300-400 g at a time. I have a feeling that the shipping calculators or the companies themselves might overestimate the charges, possibly so they don't have to charge me more after I place my order. Nonetheless, the number sometimes seems arbitrary.

Also, I'd very much like to know what the "real" price of my tea is, or at least what non-Western vendors are charging. I think this is easier to do with puerh, since several vendors might list the same cake. Unless they can go to random tea markets in China or Taiwan, I don't think people can get this info for other types of tea.

[aet]

aet, these are interesting points. I'm amazed that it costs so much less to ship from China to Canada than it does to the U.S. I've bought from a few vendors in China and have been charged a range of prices for shipping, from $10 to over $20. I'm not sure if it costs more to ship tea in a box than in an envelope, but I rarely buy more than 300-400 g at a time. I have a feeling that the shipping calculators or the companies themselves might overestimate the charges, possibly so they don't have to charge me more after I place order.

the prices are constantly changing. They introduce some Covid Fee to each kg and next moth they cancell it.
Sometimes happens to us that we charge based on old rate and when we physically ship the parcel the Cov.fee is added ,or vice versa.
It is very hard to do it 100% all the time.
When we find that parcel got significantly cheaper after real shipping , we do partial refund ( return the difference ) . If some small anount , I'll put the note in my back office and treat customer with some extra sample in next order.
I like to keep my karma clean

[aet]

aet, these are interesting points. I'm amazed that it costs so much less to ship from China to Canada than it does to the U.S. I've bought from a few vendors in China and have been charged a range of prices for shipping, from $10 to over $20.

just double checked from EMS system directly and they raised the price again.
The cake in padded envelope is 10.6$ ( incl.ppal fee ) .
There was Covid fee 40CNY ( 5.8$ ) /kg , US - 30 ( 4.4$ ) CNY. Then they keep sending us updates with Yes / No ( cov.fee).
Keep changing it on monthly basis.
So as you can see, I can keep updating our shipping module every week for all countries and go mad ;-(

[GaoShan]

aet, these are interesting points. I'm amazed that it costs so much less to ship from China to Canada than it does to the U.S. I've bought from a few vendors in China and have been charged a range of prices for shipping, from $10 to over $20.

just double checked from EMS system directly and they raised the price again.
The cake in padded envelope is 10.6$ ( incl.ppal fee ) .
There was Covid fee 40CNY ( 5.8$ ) /kg , US - 30 ( 4.4$ ) CNY. Then they keep sending us updates with Yes / No ( cov.fee).
Keep changing it on monthly basis.
So as you can see, I can keep updating our shipping module every week for all countries and go mad ;-(

I didn't realize they changed the shipping fees so often. Under these conditions, it would make sense that companies would choose an amount that's a bit higher and stick to it. I also kind of assumed that your shipping calculator would keep up with the latest info and you wouldn't have to update it constantly.

You seem like a vendor who treats their customers well, and if you were called Fujian Craft instead of Yunnan Craft, I probably would have placed an order by now. I'm not much of a puerh drinker and I haven't been drinking much Dianhong lately, but your prices look good.

I still think higher shipping charges incentivize people to make larger orders, which is fine if you're familiar with a vendor and know that their tea will be good. There's a point where the charges become too high, especially for new companies and small amounts of tea. I wanted to buy 50 g of a tea from an American company for $25, but it would have cost over $30 to ship to Canada via DHL, and they didn't offer any cheaper options. That just feels like too much.

[Teafortea]

We move quite a lot and I tend to order from différent places. Not only I don’t look for free shipping, but I also pay a gigantic border taxes for just a small amount of tea… as a customer, when the seller is good, I don’t calculate shipping not taxes in my head, I want the tea. TTC does not out even provide free samples with orders, even big orders and I’m a repeat customer because their lishan does not make me sick. I usually skip the sellers who offer free shipping…. I ship myself stuff to my friend all over and I know that a tiny tiny package will cost at least 30€ to ship it…