Hi Christophe and others,
Not angry, but frustrated, frustrated that no one at 3D hubs consulted with any of us first before bring on these changes.
I run a hub for profit, it is not a hobby to me.
I have an inpectable reputation with my customers.
I have a profitable hub with many satisfied customers.
I offer a good service and produce excellent 3D printed parts and models.
I try to keep my prices just and fair.
I pay my share of profits to 3D Hubs.
I do all of this with my own hard work.
I will not apologize that I am a frustrated that 3D Hubs is putting a burden on my business with new shipping methods without what I believe, is a full understanding how shipping works where I operate my hub.
The United States and Canada are large countries and trying to determine shipping cost by location is a nightmare.
Most of this is due to the fact that package size, package weight and destination MUST be all determined in order to ship.
The shipping costs could vary greatly because something might weight an ounce more, or the package is a ½ inch wider or even if a package is going to a different zip code within the same city.
It is so difficult to calculate shipping costs that even most APIs used in eCommerce don’t often get it right. It is one of the largest complaints that online stores have with their shopping cart providers, that real time shipping estimates are either not offered or not accurate. Take Shopify for instance, they only offer real time rates if you pay a premium, however, they don’t include the package size as one of the parameters so it is useless because every rate they quote is incorrect so most Shopify store use a third party API instead.
The other issue is that Americans have become very sensitive about shipping costs. The shipping rates in this country keep on going up and up to the point where smaller stores cannot compete with a company like Amazon with it’s vast resources and customer base because they are able to negotiate lower rates with their shippers such at FedEx, UPS and even the USPS. Also they have their own delivery people in large metro areas.
If real time rates are not available most online merchants will try to come up with an average shipping rate perhaps based on region.
This means that you will be losing money on some shipments and over charging customers on others. Brian has said that you could always adjust the shipping costs afterwards, but again, it has been my experience that if a customer thinks that you are trying to inflate shipping costs they will perceive you as a dishonest merchant and won’t even give you the chance to make the adjustment and shop elsewhere.
And most merchants will agree that Flat Rate Shipping or Shipping by Region is a LAST RESORT.
In fact there have been studies done that say customers would rather pay higher product prices than pay for shipping. This is all well and good but this type of pricing model will not work with the services that we sell on 3D Hubs and keep in mine that what we do sell is a service not products per say.
I envy you that you have a much simpler shipping costs approach and still maintain profitability.
What do you do if a $6.00 printed part could cost anywhere from $1.00 to $12.00 to ship depending on location?
Brian said that perhaps we could offer Free Shipping. Free Shipping would only work if you inflate the prices to the extreme for your services and than only if other the hubs also up their prices. You have to be very careful or all your hard work in the past building up your business could go down the drain very quickly.
3D Hubs was designed for the Euro Market and understandable so.
I understand and respect that.
However, there are now so many hubs in North America that perhaps 3D Hubs should think a North American version of the 3D Hubs more in tune with the way business is done in North America.
Certainly eBay does this, they have different eBays for different parts of the world and there is a reason for this.
After all we don’t have VAT here and 3D hubs has not may it easy for our State by State, County by County, Zip Code by Zip Code Sales Tax system that we have to use. In fact we have to do our own calculations for sales tax and add it to the order as an after thought. And certainly hubs in other parts of the world do not understand and could care less about the U.S sales tax system as I personally do not understand the VAT system.
So I say this to all my friends in the European Market, please have a little apathy for us here in the States.
We fear that our hubs might be in jeopardy due to a change that was never talked about until a few weeks prior to implementation.
We are concerned that we will lose profit and have to abandon our hubs and we do not want to do that.
I am sure that 3D Hubs will do their best to try to accommodate hubs in places where shipping has a vast number of variables like in the U.S. so I will no longer speak about this topic again unless 3D hubs has any questions they might want to ask of me.
If I have cause anyone to feel hurt or insulted then I do sincerely apologize, please this was not my intent, it was just the frustration coming out from the fear of the impact on my hub.
Sincerely,
Peter Zacarelli
The only order I have ever shipped with $20 shipping was going to Canada where 1oz costs $10. My highest shipping cost in the US after more than a hundred shipped orders was $12 for priority mail and that was a $600 order that used an entire spool of filament. I charge $3 for most orders and fanatically track everything and am generally a few cents in the black on shipping costs (postage, padded envelope and thermal label) overall.