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Comment by tyingq | Hacker News Reader

"Free shipping" is a funny one. For smaller businesses, it's basically subsidizing far away customers with nearby customer money.

I offer it not because I want to deceive people, but because we sell more that way. People like predictable upfront prices without having to tell anyone their location.

It is, of course, not "free". We just calculate the average shipping cost and pad the price.

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Part of it is that "free shipping," at least over a fairly modest purchase dollar amount, has become so prevalent from most large retailers that dealing with a shipping charge that's unknown going in and/or that gives sticker shock checking out turns a lot of people off.

The lack of free shipping can also be a clue that this retailer sends $3 widgets via $20 FedEx, or this moderately large item will be $100 freight.

In other words, free shipping sellers work hard to find cheap shipping. Those that do not offer free shipping seem less inclined to do so.

How much does shipping cost actually vary? I always assumed that first//last mile handling of a package dominates over the fuel/depreciation cost share of driving the item farther.

For usps rates, see here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1hyyaAYoi2P_CRWwrUJhB...

I don't know how much ups/fedex costs.

It's much higher for large packages to go long distances vs short. For smaller packages, it matters less, especially because USPS has their flat rate boxes, and UPS/FedEx have to compete with them.

UPS and FedEx charge for large packages by size, not weight. They call it "dimensional weight". And ding heavily for big+far.

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