What's the Deal with Free Shipping??
The first time I was introduced to the concept of online purchasing with free shipping was through Amazon.com. They had a deal back in the day (long before Prime) when you could get free shipping if you bought more than $25 worth of goods. That was always a nice perk, and I remember pushing my purchases up over $25 several times to get the free shipping (showing how effective their marketing strategy was, I suppose).
When we first launched this website, we listed shipping costs for one simple reason: on every desk we procured for our customers we incurred a cost for the item and a cost for shipping, so on every transaction we charged our customers a fee for the item and a fee for shipping. After a while though, we realized that people were really upset that they were being charged $100 for shipping on some items. (Ironically, we often are charged up to $500 in shipping heavy items, and were often undercharging customers to keep from scaring them off with shipping charges).
Finally it hit us that we should simply offer free shipping on all products like Amazon and so many other sites were doing. We could then just charge one flat fee, with all charges incorporated, and there would be no extra or surprise costs during checkout. That has made a big difference for our customers. It wasn't so much that they didn't want to pay the shipping costs, but rather that they did not want any extra or surprise costs! So they really appreciate the all-inclusive cost up front, with no extras during checkout. I understand, because that's how I feel when I'm buying.
However, I just want to remind everyone of one simple truth: there is no such thing as free shipping. When a freight company ships an item across the state or across the country for you, they charge you. Every time. Whether you're a cute little kid, a sweet old grandma, a small business like us, or a giant behemoth like Amazon. Everyone gets charged. The giant behemoth might get charged less for shipping because they ship so much, and we might get charged less than you because we ship more than you, but we all still pay. So when you receive free shipping, just realize it means your shipping costs have been incorporated into your other charges.
We try to offer our customers the absolute best prices we can based on how much the product costs, how much we anticipate shipping to be, and what our costs are to run the business.