Kifaru Shipping Charges

[COlineman78]

By "arent set up for that" are you saying they dont have a mailbox?

By they aren't set up for that I mean it would take $20k to pay a software engineer to account for the size and weight of items to determine if it's small or light enough to be sent via USPS for cheaper and integrate it into their website.

 

[dotman]

At my previous employer I had a UPS business account and was shipping things for next to nothing all the time. 12 dollars was not the minimum.

Was your previous employer a small business with a handful of employees? I ship stuff for work and my company pays $4 but when I ship in a similar container it is around $18 for me. A company like Kifaru isn't getting much more of a break then when you and I ship personally.

This seems to come up more often with Kifaru's growth but they are still a tiny company. Yup it has kept me from just buying something small and I either go to a competitor of theirs or get it when I get a bigger valued item. It just is what it is, if Kifaru wanted to change they would but they probably would need to also hire a few new employees to handle the added volume of shipments in turn losing more money overall to do this.

 

[COlineman78]

Also, it's an extra 2-3% in tax to go pick it up locally. A lot of times it's cheaper to ship it.

 

[Laelkhunter]

12 dollars is the minimum for shipping to a residential address on both Fedex and UPS.

I have found the same prices here. It is a little cheaper to ship to a business, but not much. USPS has the flat rate boxes, but by the time you add additional insurance (anything over $50), you have to pay more, and I find USPS service SUCKS !! My mail carrier didn't deliver a pair of Sitka gloves to me when I met her at the mailbox because she said she couldn't fit the soft envelope in her car, even though it had been scanned earlier that it was "out for delivery" (that's why I met her at the mailbox). She then went back to the Post Office and scanned the package saying there was no safe place to leave item at recipients mailbox, and a notice was "left" for recipient to pick up item at Post Office- No notice was left.
Anyway, prices are going up for shipping.

 

[dotman]

I have found the same prices here. It is a little cheaper to ship to a business, but not much. USPS has the flat rate boxes, but by the time you add additional insurance (anything over $50), then you have to pay more, and I find USPS service SUCKS !! My mail carrier didn't deliver a pair of Sitka gloves to me when I met her at the mailbox because she said she couldn't fit the soft envelope in her car, even though it had been scanned earlier that it was "out for delivery" (that's why I met her at the mailbox). She then went back to the Post Office and scanned the package saying there was no safe place to leave item at mailbox, and a notice was "left" for recipient to pick up item at Post Office- No notice was left.
Anyway, prices are going up for shipping.

And even the USPS flat rate prices have jumped $1 or more in the last year.

 

[Felix40]

By they aren't set up for that I mean it would take $20k to pay a software engineer to account for the size and weight of items to determine if it's small or light enough to be sent via USPS for cheaper and integrate it into their website.

It would take a regular person a few hours to go through and find the items that are small enough to qualify for first class and offer usps shipping for those items. My wife runs a small business from the house. She ships 3-5 various sized items across the country every day. Its really not that hard.

 

[tipsntails7]

By they aren't set up for that I mean it would take $20k to pay a software engineer to account for the size and weight of items to determine if it's small or light enough to be sent via USPS for cheaper and integrate it into their website.

I could give a shit about the shipping costs, it costs what it costs, but thats a ridiculous statement to make. 20K..... you could build an entire new website for less then that.

Only certain things would qualify and it's not like they have a ton of stuff.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[COlineman78]

It would take a regular person a few hours to go through and find the items that are small enough to qualify for first class and offer usps shipping for those items. My wife runs a small business from the house. She ships 3-5 various sized items across the country every day. Its really not that hard.

So now you want them to manually go through and decide what can fit, which I agree isn't all that hard, and then refund a difference in shipping costs for orders that qualify only to be bitched at because the website said that they might qualify and someone takes that to mean that a cargo panel, which is too big but is just an accessory and therefore they think it should qualify. It's much less headache to deal with a few people whining about the cost of shipping.

 

[dotman]

It would take a regular person a few hours to go through and find the items that are small enough to qualify for first class and offer usps shipping for those items. My wife runs a small business from the house. She ships 3-5 various sized items across the country every day. Its really not that hard.

And is she the only employee? Does she also have a store front, who builds her goods and does quality checks? There is always more to every story and nothing is an apple to apples comparison. Good thing is no one is forcing us to buy, we get to make that choice for now.

 

[R_burg]

12 dollars is the minimum for shipping to a residential address on both Fedex and UPS.

This is factually incorrect according to UPS. Page 71: Access Denied

The minimum is 9.08.

Was your previous employer a small business with a handful of employees? I ship stuff for work and my company pays $4 but when I ship in a similar container it is around $18 for me. A company like Kifaru isn't getting much more of a break then when you and I ship personally.

This seems to come up more often with Kifaru's growth but they are still a tiny company. Yup it has kept me from just buying something small and I either go to a competitor of theirs or get it when I get a bigger valued item. It just is what it is, if Kifaru wanted to change they would but they probably would need to also hire a few new employees to handle the added volume of shipments in turn losing more money overall to do this.

This was a large company.

HOWEVER... One of my good friends works for a small bio-medical device company and they spend probably 2000 a so in month on shipping and they receive a discount via UPS. So I'm not buying that a retail company like Kifaru, albeit small, doesnt receive one.

 

[dotman]

This is factually incorrect according to UPS. Page 71: Access Denied

The minimum is 9.08.




This was a large company.

HOWEVER... One of my good friends works for a small bio-medical device company and they spend probably 2000 a so in month on shipping and they receive a discount via UPS. So I'm not buying that a retail company like Kifaru, albeit small, doesnt receive one.

Oh I bet they do but what we would pay $15 for they may pay $13, they are not getting a huge discount.

 

[R_burg]

And I am sure Aron is over there laughing at us and rolling his eyes and saying everyone complains on the internet and you know what, I agree with that... We spend thousands on gear and these shipping costs obviously arent breaking us.


But the point is: Its 2017, step your game up. Charge me a reasonable amount for shipping, especially on small items.

 

[COlineman78]

I could give a shit about the shipping costs, it costs what it costs, but thats a ridiculous statement to make. 20K..... you could build an entire new website for less then that.

Only certain things would qualify and it's not like they have a ton of stuff.

I'm a software engineer and if it took me 6 weeks to implement it would cost you 20k. A website that costs less than that (as you refer to) is implemented using open source code and modifying it with very little customization, what I am talking about is custom work. If I were to quote that work without knowing too much about how things are done under the covers I would estimate 3-6 weeks of work, so 10-20k.

Yes, I agree only a few things would qualify; but if someone were to order 50 of those items it wouldn't qualify, so there is custom code to be done.

 

[AdamW]

I buy small things from a vendor like 1ShotGear.

 

[Felix40]

Online postage calculators arent a new thing. $20k is laughable. As I was saying, my wife makes custom items and sells them through an online store. Thats what kifaru does. She charges actual shipping at the time of checkout. A shipping label is printed and then the package goes right in the mailbox. Its that simple.

Other businesses are doing it too. I just ordered a shirt from hunt to eat. Shipping was $3.88 usps first class. You cant tell me that they spent more designing a website than kifaru. Even if it would cost $20k and thats the only excuse they have.......that fancy wrapped toyota truck cost a hell of a lot more than that. Tells me they just dont care about offering cheaper shipping.

 

[dotman]

Online postage calculators arent a new thing. $20k is laughable. As I was saying, my wife makes custom items and sells them through an online store. Thats what kifaru does. She charges actual shipping at the time of checkout. A shipping label is printed and then the package goes right in the mailbox. Its that simple.

Other businesses are doing it too. I just ordered a shirt from hunt to eat. Shipping was $3.88 usps first class. You cant tell me that they spent more designing a website than kifaru. Even if it would cost $20k and thats the only excuse they have.......that fancy wrapped toyota truck cost a hell of a lot more than that. Tells me they just dont care about offering cheaper shipping.

And I guess that is their choice, like it or not you don't have to buy from them.

If your wife gets 200 orders a day starting today do you think she could still keep up without taking a hit in margins? Let's say on avg it takes her 10 mins to package and print labels per package, that's 2000 mins away from her making products and about 33hrs of her time. So she hires 2 people at $9hr, sales go up and down but her employees wages remain or does she lay that employee off from week to week, raise prices or maybe stop offering cheap shipping on low margin goods to reduce time spent on items that don't make money? Maybe she loses a few customers but overall business is good. What should she do?

Just things to consider.

 

[COlineman78]

And if they just sold T-Shirts I'm sure they could offer cheaper shipping. If your wife does it manually like your previously said, then it certainly isn't done at checkout. Now if it was done via an invoice like EBay offers then yes but that's not at checkout. Hunt to Eat uses a standard e-commerce plugin, most likely to a open source backend like Drupal, but their shipping costs are much more definitive and scale linearly with number of items. Kifaru also couldn't use a standard e-commerce site out of the box due to the complex customization involved in frames and offering so many color and fabric options. And you're probably right, they probably don't care too much about offering cheaper shipping right now for small orders. From what I've seen of their order fulfillment system it is already extremely manual and could do with some serious streamlining. I could see them dropping some coin in the not too distant future to make things more efficient.

 

[rhunter424]

Guys you are way off point. The real reason the shipping prices are high for small items is so that you buy more stuff so it's not so ridiculous. Marketing 101.

 

[Felix40]

It doesnt take any extra time. Thats what Im saying. You have to put your stuff in a box and label it one way or another. Unless the sytem they use now is just to pile up everything that was sold that day and then the ups guy sorts and boxes it all and makes sure the right stuff goes to the right place.

 

[COlineman78]

Guys you are way off point. The real reason the shipping prices are high for small items is so that you buy more stuff so it's not so ridiculous. Marketing 101.

True... MtnOps now discontinued their free shipping with $100+ and I haven't made an order since. Been waiting till my supply is decimated so I can make a big order.