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Comment by bluetidepro | Hacker News Reader

I agree 100% with this. It's appalling how many other sites (esp. the direct manufacturer ones, like you mentioned) use dark patterns with their shipping/handling prices. It really does make you understand why everyone wants to use the big sites like Amazon, at least they are pretty straight fwd when it comes to the price, shipping, fees, etc. Nothing worse than getting down an e-commerce funnel only to find you wasted 10+ mins filling out stages of forms to then find the shipping/handling cost is absolutely ridiculous, and have to bail.

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It's not a dark pattern that shipping actually costs everyone that isn't Amazon a lot. Go get a shipping quote from UPS or FedEx for sending a desk across the country. It's not going to be any cheaper than these stores are charging. They're not hiding extra profit in their shipping fees.

People are so used to Amazon Prime that they have no idea what things cost to ship any more. I run a small online store and every 1-pound package I mail out costs $8-12 in postage by the cheapest shipping method available to me, at commercial shipping rates. If the box is over a cubic foot in size and going to a state on the other side of the country, it can quickly double or triple in cost.

Amazon has $120/year in Prime subscription fees to subsidize the displayed shipping costs, puts some of the shipping fee into the item price (they're rarely the cheapest for most products, especially very cheap or very heavy ones), has a warehouse within 20 miles of every American so that nearly everything they ship is a same-zone local shipment, and has their own delivery network so they don't have to pay carriers. No other business has those things.

It IS a dark pattern when they don't show you that cost until the final step after you have invested time getting there. You misunderstand, I'm not arguing that it costs money to ship things, I understand that to be true, I'm saying it's a shitty dark pattern when you aren't clear about that cost up front in the funnel. People can be honest, there is nothing stopping them from doing that.

They don't know the cost to ship you things until they know what's going to be in your cart and what address it's getting mailed to. Shipping costs are based on package dimensions, weight, and distance between the sender and recipient. This is the reason that in nearly every ecommerce platform, shipping costs get displayed at the second to last step of the checkout process, or in the shopping cart only if you provide your zip code there. They don't have the information needed to run a postage quote any earlier.

Again, you still aren't following. I'm saying many sites don't do that. You are correct, I should be able to see estimated shipping from my cart on any e-commerce site by just putting in a zip code in, and them knowing what is in my cart (product wise). It's a dark pattern that MANY sites don't do this, they make you fill out a ton of info to get to that point. It's sketchy and a dark pattern to put that many walls behind a final price including shipping. I understand there has to be a few walls, but you wouldn't believe how many sites put extra walls in there to try to "trap" you in their funnel.

Where you see dark pattern is in fact a limitation of most ecommerce platforms. Shopify, which powers millions of retailers website, doesn't offer this out of the box. You need the advanced plan ($$) and on top of that you need a special app/theme that would allow you to do it before checkout.

Yeah but to be fair, nothing stops them from providing the "shipping cost" or an estimate of it, next to the price of the product. They make no effort to kinda tell you how much this thing would cost to deliver.

Heck, they could show you "current shipping cost" estimate next to your cart total. They could also show you the delivery cost total if you were to add this item, next to the item you intend to buy.

It can be a solved problem if they attempted to do so, and as technical people we should be able to identify their BS when we see it. Even giant/big retailers don't do it because they know that greater than zero amount of people will just say "fuck it, I spent all this time filling the cart, I'm not going to bargain shop shipping prices, might as well buy it from here."

Honest sites let you enter a zip code at the very start of the shopping process and display an estimated shipping cost as you're looking at items. Dishonest sites make no mention of shipping costs until you're at the very end of the checkout process.

I think in many cases it's not a matter of dishonesty, but of laziness, lack of care, or not wanting to pay for a better checkout experience.

Also, there’s probably A/B testing that shows orders of magnitude less engagement if you put any blockers in the way of seeing the product.

It doesn't have to block you from seeing the product. Some e-commerce sites let you enter a zip code on any page to get estimated shipping prices, but don't require you to. Some let you enter a zip code as soon as you've added something to your cart. Some don't do estimated shipping prices at all and don't give you any idea how much shipping will be until you're at that step of the checkout flow.

Fair enough. I suppose I'm just used to what I'm used to. Shipping prices only seem to be something surprising nowadays with Amazon. Before that, it was accepted and commonplace. I wonder if that makes it a dark pattern now.

I'll disagree again.

The market price for shipping a table across the country is more than what Amazon charges. They have built shipping into their pricing through different methods.

What does that have to do with what I said in any way? My complaint isn't that non-Amazon retailers charge too much for shipping.

I see your point about shipping costs not available until it's in the checkout line. I guess I disagree that it is dishonest or malicious - they didn't take your money.

And if you pay attention you’ll notice Amazon already has their own freight logistics network and is setting up an air logistics network at exponential scale.

Just wait until prime members can overnight something from an Atlanta Whole Foods to an LA Whole Foods for 5 bucks. Then people will really forget how much it costs to ship things.

I’m convinced they do this on purpose. The more time you’ve invested, the more likely you are to acquiesce and pay their exorbitant shipping fee.

I guess I am in the minority because as soon as I see a shipping fee more than 7-10% of the cost of the item I immediately start looking elsewhere. Numerous times I've just decided to not buy an item because I didn't want to pay the shipping costs.

Or.... small companies don't have economy of scale logistics operations?

As commented to someone else's reply, you don't understand what I mean by a dark pattern. There is a difference in having a shipping cost, vs hiding the shipping cost in the funnel. They hide it in the funnel, that IS a dark pattern. There is nothing wrong with charging for shipping, but don't be shady about how you present that cost.

Tell the truth: if you went to a website, browsing for something you might buy; and, before you were shown their catalog, you were required to enter your postal information (can’t just be zip, since you might be in another country), and you couldn’t even see prices, would you stay on the website? Or close it?

I know what I would do. They’re putting too many annoying barriers on my idle browsing.

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