Madeleine Jacobs
Recently I’ve been clicking on ads, particularly in Facebook. I found one for really happy tennis shoes. The price was good. It was a buy one, get one free thing. But in checkout, they added on $20 for shipping!
Another ad was for a set of new kind of watercolor brushes with a built-in water reservoir. It said, “Free shipping.” I put the set in my cart and found they added, “$4.99 for insured shipping” with no way to opt out of it.
A third was a pair of earrings. They were really nice. When I put them in the cart, they added $8.00 for shipping. Even with priority, insurance, and tracking the cost of shipping wouldn’t be half that.
Now all are sending me emails, acting like I abandoned my cart because I got ‘distracted.’ There was actually a way to reply, so I did, to all of them, telling them why I didn’t finish the order.
I like good deals. I realize it costs something to ship things. I had my own website, made arts and crafts. Some of them cost a bunch to ship. I always paid for insurance and tracking. I priced my items so that I came out all right with listing ‘free shipping,’ because I felt people decided on the main pages whether the price was reasonable for the item.
I don’t even mind paying a reasonable shipping charge – if you’re not advertising ‘free shipping.’
Bait and switch, or killing the deal by charging WAAAAAY too much for shipping brings out my hostility!
creativeartworksblog 