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Friday, December 12, 2025
Shipping $5 items
I ordered an item for around $5 from Amazon here in Belgium today. Amazon Belgium is relatively new, and Belgium is a relatively small country, so the Amazon Prime membership only costs €2.99 per month, or even cheaper €25 per year. The same Amazon Prime membership for Germany costs €8.99 per month, and in the USA it costs $14.99 per month or $139 per year. While I generally do try to bundle my Amazon orders up for less environmental impact, sometimes I just need an item fast. And with Amazon Prime offering free shipping as long as the item comes from Amazon and not some Amazon Marketplace provider with his own logistics, I paid no shipping costs on that $5 item.
Also today another $5 item I ordered from a smaller online shop arrived. It was something I couldn't get elsewhere, and so I bought it despite the rather outrageous $20 shipping cost. The parcel is small, less than half the size of a shoe box, and light, so I really don't see why shipping it would cost $20. I have a serious suspicion that this smaller online shop has made more money from me by fleecing me on the shipping cost than the profit margin on the $5 item was. It probably makes business sense for smaller operations to have a relatively high floor on shipping costs, so people rather do bigger orders.
Two $5 items bought online, shipping costs between $0 and $20. I wonder how much it actually costs to ship items for an online company. I guess Amazon has built their whole operation around having the fastest and cheapest logistics, and the same parcel costs them a lot less than it would cost me if I went to the post office.
As an European, I am very much used to prices being quoted already including value added tax. Earlier this week I got a board game I pre-ordered, Lightning Train, directly from the publishing company. The game was just below €50, but besides €14 in shipping I then also paid another €13 for VAT. So there is another trap that can make an online order unexpectedly pricier than I had thought. No wonder I end up buying stuff on Amazon whenever possible. They don't always have the lowest quoted price, but with the VAT already included and no shipping cost often end up cheaper than other offers.
- posted by Tobold @ 4:23 PM Permanent Link
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I used to work for a larger company that was international. We had an exclusive shipping contract with UPS and we got 90% off on domestic shipping and 50% off on international. It meant that we shipped "next day air" for less than a typical ground shipment would cost. This told me that shipping is already marked up incredibly high....
I've worked retail where we shipped orders. "S&H" charges were whatever the shipping actually cost rounded up to the next $5 increment, but with a minimum of $3 above the shipping. So if shipping was $16, then we'd round to $20, but if it was $18, then we'd charge $25. So yeah, there was a bit of fleecing going on there for sure. And this was 30+ years ago. I'm sure "S&H" policies of many places alloow for even higher charges now.
My current job we are technically a global company, but we're still small enough to be classified as a small business by the US govt. Still and all, I have to make purchases for employees in the UK, France, Spain, India, Vietnam, and the Philippines at least semi-regularly. My experience with Amazon in all those countries has varied widely, and weirdly enough in Europe it tends to be slow but cheap, while in Asia it's moderate and moderate, then in the US it's fast but expensive, so take that with whatever proverbial grain of salt you like.
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I've worked retail where we shipped orders. "S&H" charges were whatever the shipping actually cost rounded up to the next $5 increment, but with a minimum of $3 above the shipping. So if shipping was $16, then we'd round to $20, but if it was $18, then we'd charge $25. So yeah, there was a bit of fleecing going on there for sure. And this was 30+ years ago. I'm sure "S&H" policies of many places alloow for even higher charges now.
My current job we are technically a global company, but we're still small enough to be classified as a small business by the US govt. Still and all, I have to make purchases for employees in the UK, France, Spain, India, Vietnam, and the Philippines at least semi-regularly. My experience with Amazon in all those countries has varied widely, and weirdly enough in Europe it tends to be slow but cheap, while in Asia it's moderate and moderate, then in the US it's fast but expensive, so take that with whatever proverbial grain of salt you like.
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