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It is not unreasonable for a customer to expect the price seen on an item to be what it will cost in total.

Amazon would be unusable for comparison shopping if you needed to go through checkout to get the full price with shipping.

Definitely, you should be able to get a shipping price without going into the checkout, Amazon makes it quite difficult compared to Aliexpress & eBay when it comes to finding out shipping prices, to the point that I avoid shopping on there with a rare exception occurring every 6 months or so.

For the average shopper, pricing in shipping and sales tax will make them buy more online. Breaking out sales tax has caused a 9% sales drop in states Amazon charges sales tax in.

>Breaking out sales tax has caused a 9% sales drop in states Amazon charges sales tax in.

Note it's really "collects" sales tax in. Buyers still, in principle, owe use taxes on the purchase--which individuals often don't pay of course.

I don't think it's so much a matter of whether sales tax is bundled or not though. For big ticket electronics purchases, for example, the same item is often available for the same price with "free" shipping from other online resellers who don't collect sales tax--and is cheaper for many consumers as a result.

Yes, but I also don't want to pay the individual shipping costs for every item in an order, when shipping them together is cheaper.

> " Currently, from one wholesaler I can order a 50lb box of hardware, and UPS charges them $21 to $23 to ship it from Chicago to Seattle in the span of about 18hrs and get it on my doorstep."

Not sure how they are doing that. The UPS rack rate for 50lbs from Chicago to Seattle is $83 via Ground, $161 for 3 day select, $252 for 2nd day air, and $310 for Next Day Air Saver. I can't see $23, even for ground...I don't know of anyone with a discount rate that good.

They push 10,000+ parcels like that a month, and send their shipping out to bid every year, helps to have big companies ordering tons of hardware from ya. 3 years ago they were on DHL which was great for DHL same day, I could order something at 8am and have it at the customer's site later that evening.

> Amazon & eBay have configured their fees to charge you more on any extra shipping line item to encourage sellers to make shipping "free".

Are you sure that is why? I thought it was because sellers started selling $1 items with $50 shipping and handling fees attached.

Also places where competitors are listed together are hard to browse unless "total cost" is listed explicitly somewhere (having to figure out whether the $19 or $5 with $5 shipping is better is annoying).

I had not known about the program, but I did notice all of the cheap electronics with "free" or low cost shipping from China and Hong Kong a few months ago. Since I was visiting China later in the year, I compared pricing between eBay and taobao on the things that I wanted. Surprisingly, I found that ordering in New York through eBay was cheaper than ordering in Shanghai through taobao on a significant number of items that I wanted. I have since ordered plenty of stuff from China through eBay.

I read (here, in an HN thread, IIRC) a while back that the Chinese government eats the cost of shipping items outside of the country (I haven't verified that, however, so it may be entirely incorrect).

That was the reason given why you can purchase an item online from a Chinese seller for, say, $1 USD -- including shipping -- and the seller can still profit from it.

Yes it's true. I just ordered some MR11 bulbs that are defective. (It might not be their fault. I think they send 220 volt, instead of 120volt halogen lamps.) It's not worth shipping them back. There's a weight/size limit, but many items are shipped free.

A bigger question. If more people took advantage of this free shipping paid for by the Chinese government; how would American companies compete?

(Since I here--Amazon has been slowly raising prices, and people don't seem to notice, or care. I noticed it with portable transistor radios at first, and MR11 bulbs lately. Personally, I'm getting tired of UPS trucks racing up and down my street, filled with a lot of stuff we probally don't need.)

Can anyone find any source on that? Sounds like an interesting read.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/storyline/wp/2014/09/12/...

Amazon does not need to ship world wide, they can pay DHL for most of the US and keep shipping in for example just NYC in house.