Guess if you want good prices on parts, you will have to pay a bit more for shipping. Those parts do not find the way from the shelves to the boxes by themselves. Someone has to be paid to do it.
I didn't even notice the shipping I was happy to be able to get mags. But I do understand, I had just set myself a limit of 200. bucks and saty under it
I have run too many businesses and own one now that shipping is a part of it. We have an acct with UPS, FEDX and USPS. We are small and do not get any real deals on shipping costs. But we do get to access and print out shipping labels on line. I think we may get a small brake on costs but less than 5%. Move enough product like e bay or Amazon and they get heavily discounted shipping.
I do not know how much ArmaLite does in shipping, but I showed them low retail rates. As for 'somebody has to take it off the shelf and put in a box"...well the boxes are generally free for the small stuff. So its grab a free box and stuff in some packing and seal, call and they pick up.
Most companies relaize that hitting customers with big shipping costs hurts the company more than the buyer. Fact is they buy less product and do so less often. Free and low cost shipping is common in the US. When a company charges $18 for shipping a component that is not much bigger than a couple of packs of smokes and weighs about the same, you are getting ripped off. Want to cover you shipping costs and make friends, add annual shipping costs as a % of sales to the end price. Make that 20 rd mag $38.50 which is a 10% ship cost, now give the customer $5 buck shipping flat on all the small items. Your costs is about $5 bucks using USPS and you added $3.50 to your bottom line at the same time.
That is called running your company to be efficient, make increased profits and developing loyal happy customers.
ArmaLite, tell you what I will do, I will INCREASE your bottom line by 10%, DECREASE your costs by 10%...I will do this at MY COST, you PAY annually me an amount of 10% of the increase and 10% the decrease from your audited financials for 3 years. If you don't make more and save more you owe me nothing...
I give Armalite a WORLD of credit. They have not gone up one PENNY on these items as well as pretty much everything else on their site no matter WHAT kind of market we've all seen.
Any company that does that is a piece of GOLD in my mind.
We've all seen magazine and even plastic mags going from 50 to 80 bucks each from scalpers and companies that held their prices even though they could EASILY have charged more and gotten it are damn stand up companies in my mind.
Shipping is all part of doing business as is overhead, running a warehouse, production and paying everyone involved with an operation.
Complaining about prices and shipping costs is fine and all but the bottom line is, Armalite rates with TOP scores in my mind for the products they produce AND the fact that even in this wild market, they have kept to solid pricing that is the exact same now as it was before the rest of the country went mad.
It's ArmaLites buisness how they arrange the money but Cowboy is right, cheaper shipping will help the sales. I get a good break when I buy postage online with ebay, $5.10 for the small flat rate box and have found if I can just figure in the shipping and call it free I get more sales. The ebay system makes this hard to do with large items if you ship overseas but I doubt they do that much. All the big vendors are going the free or cheap shipping route, I can't believe they are not making it up somewhere.
Personally I don't care, I know I'll pay the same no matter which way they go. I don't even remember what the shipping was on the last order, it's the total that counts and the quality that makes you forget the total!
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