Shipping charges are the least of my problems.
I haven't had a LHS for better than 10 years now whereas I had 3 to choose from within a 10 to 15 minute drive from my home way back when. The closest one now it a minimum of 30 minutes away, up the Interstate and tolls to boot.
Another problem for me is trying to find what I want or need. This past Friday, I drove to Hobby Lobby, Michaels, and Hobbytown USA looking for modeling paint. Total joke. I will no longer bother with Hobby Lobby or Michaels. Hobbytown USA was poorly stocked. I wound up mixing various shades of the colors that I needed from half filled (or less) bottles of old Pollyscale paint.
Then, there is eBay. I am a big fan of eBay, but lately the prices that are being asked for locomotives and passenger cars are outrageous, not only New items but also Used items. I won't overpay and apparently neither will anyone else because those items just sit there day after day after day.
So, as I say, shipping charges are the least of my problems. Availability and pricing top my list of complaints.
Rich
Alton Junction
So the product you bought on Ebay, made by DCCconcepts, who is British a company, only sells for L10.79 over there, or about $14.00 US.
If that guy bought a batch wholesale from them, waited for them to be shipped the cheapest way, and now he is selling them on Ebay for $23 he is just barely making a reasonable margin - for someone likely working out of his basement.
Sheldon
John,
When a brick and mortar store buys stuff, products come in boxes containing many items, from a distributor or manufacturer, and the incoming shipping cost per item is VERY low.
Back in the day, when lots of regional distributors sold to local hobby shops, many of those distrubutors had their own delivery trucks and offered free delivery for orders over a specific amount.
The brick and mortar store has no outgoing shipping cost if you pick the item up in the store.......
A $23 item likely costs the retailer $14. How exactly are they supposed to ship that to you for free and make money at current postal/UPS rates after factoring in packing supplies and labor?
It takes considerably more labor to pack and ship one small item like that than to sell it to you "in store" or pack up a large order and send it to you.
On Ebay, you never know how the seller came to have the merchandise, or why he is selling it. So his costs may not be "conventional" and he may be making all he needs to make - which may be nothing.
Amazon has a complex deal with vendors - and much that comes directly from AMAZON warehouses is sold at VERY small profit margins, like Walmart, because with their volume they make it up elsewhere. They are busy getting you to always shop there.
MicroMark is a little bitty company compared to AMAZON - they can't do that.
Buy from whomever suits you, but you are wrong if you think they are "ripping you off" on the minimum shipping cost.
They likely still don't make a fair markup selling a single truck turner with the $9.95 shipping. Their hope is you will place larger orders that they can fill efficiently and the shipping charges will be a much smaller percentage of the cost.
Even for retailers who are now buying most hobby products direct from the manufacturers, margins are slim.
Nobody is getting rich selling model trains.
My comments come from 10 years experiance working in a hobby shop, half of that managing a train department.
I misplaced my MicroMark truck tuner several months ago. I put off buying a replacement hoping it would turn up but I've reached the point where I have several pieces of new rolling stock that need it. MicroMark has a minimum shipping charge of $9.95 which seems exorbitant when it is almost half the cost of an item. A week ago I bought an item that I needed to have from another vendor with the same $9.95 minimum shipping charge which was almost 4 times the price of the item. I bit the bullet because I needed the item but vowed never to buy from that company again. I was about to do the same with the truck tuner but before I did, I decided to check ebay and Amazon to see if I could get a better deal. I found an ebay seller offering what looked to be the same truck tuner as MicroMark plus a second smaller tuner for less than MicroMark charged for the one AND offered free shipping. It was a no brainer to buy from that vendor.
Had MicroMark not charged such a high shipping cost, I would never have even looked at ebay so their shipping charge cost them this sale. All vendors, whether online or brick and mortar, charge for shipping. With brick and mortar stores, the shipping charge is factored into the price of the item. I have an Amazon Prime membership. This doesn't give me free shipping. It means I pay a flat rate for shippiing for an entire year no matter how much I buy from them. I don't have to pay shipping on each individual purchase which makes me more inclined to buy from them rather than make a trip to a brick and mortar store. When I shop on ebay, I always check the shipping charge and add that into either the asking price or the bid price to figure what an item is going to actually cost me. In this recent purchase, there was no additional shipping charge. The vendor had factored his shipping cost into his asking price for the item. I ended up saving about $13 from what I would have paid MicroMark for a like item and got a second smaller tuner on top of it. Another vendor was offering the MicroMark tuner for $23.99 including shipping which is only about a dollar more than MicroMark charges without the shipping added in. It seems to me a dollar for shipping seems a reasonable charge for such a small item.