Save Money Frustrations on Your Shipping Costs!

Points to Remember when Chose Shipping Options for Holidays or Gifts

Ever experience the Shipping Cost and Delivery Time Blues? Some of the worst frustrations you as a buyer face when purchasing anything Online usually surrounds your shipping choices at Checkout, especially if you are buying ‘last minute’ for a holiday gift or birthday. However, you may be only working with your own perception of shipping times (the time it takes to be delivered a package to your door) and the actual delivery moment.

First up is the Major Question facing you: Are you buying a present that has to be delivered before the event passes or are you buying it for yourself? If it’s a gift, birthday or Christmas, you are smart to buy any gift such as a  women’s pea coat in advance! Ground Shipping is far less expensive and often you may be getting Free Ground Shipping as well, so use it! Normal Ground shipping in a perfect world for a fine  leather bomber jacket is from 4 to 10 Days Delivery with major carriers.

Put yourself in place to take advantage of Ground Shipping and possible free or discount shipping offers. You can save yourself anywhere from $6 to $25 pending on item weight and distance. Most jackets run around $15 to $23 Ground and other items can cost even less, and sometimes shipping is offered Free through many retailers or for special sales periods or events. Use Free as much as you can! If you shop a lot Online, then you can really save yourself some big cash. Last minute shoppers or bargain basement shoppers can end up paying through the nose if it has to be there in time for the event.

If you don’t plan ahead, 2^nd Day Delivery is a little more painful, but you can still manage it. Just remember that shipping delivery only counts when the package leaves the dock, not when you buy it online . You buy it at 3:00am in the morning means nothing in regards to the shipping you chose at checkout for your men’s  nylon bomber jacket. The Order still have to be ‘processed’ and that can take a day, or two. Companies are not required by law to ship right away, they are just offering a speeded up process due to computer technology and nothing happens instantly as they would have you believe. Plus, some warehouses are just faster than others. Usually, 2 ^nd Day and 1 ^st Day Shipping receives priority with the Retailers and Shipping Warehouses. Still, buying such shipping does not get you any free passes if you are placing the order the day before everyone leaves at Noon!

It is still amazing to hear Customers complain about their ‘shipping’ issues around the major holidays. The Customer buys into the Carrier’s Commercialized Perception and still expects that ‘perception’ to work in the real world; a perception created by the dreaded TV Commercial. Often, there are a lot of people who have to be in a lot of places at the right moment in time to meet that TV Commercial ‘Perception’ of their services for the customer. 90% of the time things go pretty good. It’s the other 10% that causes the hair pulling, anxiety, and teeth gnashing. Mother Nature, a lost email, someone key down with the flu, delivery to wrong address, or a simple road accident all fall in that dreaded 10% failure range. In other words, real people can and do experience moments of failure. Those wonderful TV Commercials with guaranteed delivery don’t talk about that.

Besides the 10% failure rate, a lot of hurtful frustration is deliberately perpetrated onto last minute shoppers looking for bargains. It’s not the Carriers fault either. It’s the Major Discounters using their TV Commercial Time to offer up Free 2 ^nd Day Shipping on most of their foreign made goods just 3 Days before Christmas, knowing full well that 99% of Warehouses ‘close’ at noon 3 days before the holiday! Fooled you did they not. However, they got their sales. Others are blamed later and excuses are many, and apologies frequent. But they got their sales at the expense of your gullibility. At the risk of quoting B.T. Barnum, “There’s a sucker born every minute”. By suckering you into the Free 2 ^nd Day shipping promotion, you bought into it with them knowing full well that 80% of those sales would not be delivered on time.

In the Shipping Reality World all Retailers and Online Shoppers live in, that is often the big bugaboo. Television commercials are especially to blame for the false perception. Notice I said ‘false perception’, not ‘falsehood’, there is a huge difference so don’t get confused on that. Television Commercials are created and designed to give watchers a great ‘Perception’ towards a product. The commercial is not for the who, the why, or the when. The commercial only wants to play on making you desire their product , trust their service, or to accept their idea of quality. All Commercials want to feed your ‘I want this’ part of your brain.

All Shipping Carrier Commercials are selling their services to you regarding their: 1) Speed, 2) Safety, 3) Time. You buy the time, they will deliver your new Camo Hooded Hunting Jacket safely and with speed. Anything else is just window dressing to fatten up your trust factor and imagination. We live, we vote, and we buy into our ‘perceptions’.

When buying or received Ground Shipping, the marker the Carriers set for themselves, is Delivery from 4 to 10 days. That allows a nice spread granting their selves a 6-Day cushion just in case they miss a timely delivery. That in itself should bring up a red flag. Their TV Commercial offers us that wonderful ‘Assessment’ of perfectness and excellence, but the reality is far different.

Plus, when 2^nd Day Delivery is chosen at Checkout, that means your purchase will be shipped 2nd Day, but only after it left the Dock in the hands of the Shipping Carrier, not the Retailer.

Note that once the Carrier has the Package, the Retailer is now out of the picture. 2 ^nd Day Delivery is often chancy due to Mother Nature, especially during November and December (those last minute Christmas bargains). Even Next Day Delivery can be frustrating here. Mother Nature can just present herself as a nasty far reaching winter storm that no one can stop let alone deal with.

If the Planes cannot take off due to bad weather conditions, delivery times get messy and faces serious delays. And the Shipping Carriers will set on the package and make no adjustment to the rate, not to the Retailer and certainly not to you.

So, your shipping habits may need some evaluation if you buy a lot Online:

• 1 Buy early, far ahead of your gift requirement time. Allow yourself some valuable time to make changes in case of stock issues and weather.
• 2 Look at the Calendar – realize Ground Shipping will stop during the Weekend. That truck will stop at Midnight Saturday Morning and not move again until Midnight Monday Morning.
• 3 Remember the Season you are buying in. Winter storms can be a nasty factor in last minute purchasing ordering shipping for a  Woman’s Pink Camo Jacket.
• 4 Free Shipping is Great and you should take advantage of it, but Free Shipping does not speed up the Delivery process.
• 5 Ground Shipping is indeed the best for all concerned, the Retailer, the Customer, the Warehouse, and the Carrier. More grace period for all people involved in the process. Many East Coast packages bound for the West Coast are flown by air from major Carrier Hubs, and that means weather can interfere at times.
• 6 2^nd Day Delivery is fine, can cost double or a little more, but still this takes place ‘when it leaves the Dock’. And if you buy on Friday, it will likely be a Tuesday Delivery. Even a purchase on Thursday can be a Monday or Tuesday Delivery pending on when it is picked up by the Carrier.
• 7 Carrier Pickup is when they chose to pick up the Package at the retailer or warehouse dock. Tracking is still 4 to 5 hours away.
• 8 One Day Delivery is expensive and often prohibitive. It still means Carrier Pickup and delivery depends from when it leaves the dock. One Day delivery is still very subservient to the weather.
• 9 Signature and insurance means a whole lot better chance you receive what you have purchased. We recommend both on any item over $25.00. Why lose cash for a stolen package or missing package? Insurance is cheap and a signature can establish delivery. Both protect you, the Customer. Think of this as a must especially for high priced items . Thieves have become quite good in recognizing packaging and you increase their odds with any package left at the door. Think of the Retailer here. No Signature means if the Tracking #Number shows & proves Delivery happened and you complain later it has not been delivered, what is the Retailer to do? Better yet, what is the Retailer to think? That Signature protects you and allows the Carrier to undergo an investigation of what is amiss and what is wrong. The Required Signature on Delivery lays a lot of responsibility on the Carrier and person making the Delivery. That Signature process is a real game changer for both You and the Retailer. It insures that someone will be responsible for getting your purchase to you.
• 10 Understand the ‘perception’ of shipping is far different than the real shipping process. Its human beings and so there will be glitches and failures and losses.  

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