4 ms·

The one thing I'm not sure about foodoro is... I understand paying one shipping price if I'm buying from a food catalog. However, buying six things from six ven

by ibsulon 18y ago

The one thing I'm not sure about foodoro is... I understand paying one shipping price if I'm buying from a food catalog. However, buying six things from six vendors gets expensive pretty quickly. (Ten dollars of shipping for three fairly lightweight items?)

gcheong 18y ago
Probably not the weight so much as the need to have items shipped quickly to maintain freshness. Even so, when you pay almost as much in shipping as the food item the value add drops off rather quickly for me.
diN0bot 18y ago
Plus, I'd rather see a company encouraging people to buy local and depend less on high-energy infrastructure. I suppose specialty food shops could themselves buy local and avoid supporting mega-corp farms, and there are likely other 'goods' I'm not seeing right now. Nonetheless, this strikes me as the wrong direction. Maybe I'm temporarily blinded by recent 'rebuild better over the recession' optimism.
- patio11 18y ago
  Plus, I'd rather see a company encouraging people to buy local and depend less on high-energy infrastructure The high-energy infrastructure is the car trip to "local", not making additional use at the margin of mail trucks which would travel the same streets regardless of whether they had another case of organic blueberry jam on them or not.
- browser411 18y ago
  Shipping has gotten to be very efficient. There are studies that show that someone driving to a store (~15 miles roundtrip) produces a lot more carbon emissions than UPS delivering a package to their door.
KWD 18y ago
Not everyone gets the Amazon shipping rates. Shipping is actually one of the toughest areas to try and compete in for a small ecommerce site, and it's probably the number one complaint received since people have come to expect free or extremely low cost shipping. If using UPS/Fedex, you get the fuel surcharges, residential charges, and rural charges that can make a small profitable order become unprofitable (and cuts into profit margins of others). It can even be almost $10 to ship a 1-lb package in-state if to a rural area. And then you have to consider box cost, and void fill cost. I switched to USPS last year for 90% of my shipping, and it's still a loss at times from what I charge for shipping.
- jonknee 18y ago
  > Not everyone gets the Amazon shipping rates. No, but almost everyone can take advantage of Amazon's discounted rates. http://www.amazonservices.com/content/fulfillment-by-amazon.htm http://www.amazonservices.com/content/fulfillment-by-amazon.... It won't work for shipping food, but it can be a real money saver for non-perishable items. You don't even have to pay shipping costs if you sell the items on Amazon.com, just pay the fulfillment fee and the customer can use Prime or Super Saving shipping.

by ibsulon 18y ago

gcheong 18y ago

Probably not the weight so much as the need to have items shipped quickly to maintain freshness. Even so, when you pay almost as much in shipping as the food item the value add drops off rather quickly for me.

diN0bot 18y ago

Plus, I'd rather see a company encouraging people to buy local and depend less on high-energy infrastructure. I suppose specialty food shops could themselves buy local and avoid supporting mega-corp farms, and there are likely other 'goods' I'm not seeing right now. Nonetheless, this strikes me as the wrong direction. Maybe I'm temporarily blinded by recent 'rebuild better over the recession' optimism.

patio11 18y ago
Plus, I'd rather see a company encouraging people to buy local and depend less on high-energy infrastructure The high-energy infrastructure is the car trip to "local", not making additional use at the margin of mail trucks which would travel the same streets regardless of whether they had another case of organic blueberry jam on them or not.
browser411 18y ago
Shipping has gotten to be very efficient. There are studies that show that someone driving to a store (~15 miles roundtrip) produces a lot more carbon emissions than UPS delivering a package to their door.

KWD 18y ago

Not everyone gets the Amazon shipping rates. Shipping is actually one of the toughest areas to try and compete in for a small ecommerce site, and it's probably the number one complaint received since people have come to expect free or extremely low cost shipping. If using UPS/Fedex, you get the fuel surcharges, residential charges, and rural charges that can make a small profitable order become unprofitable (and cuts into profit margins of others). It can even be almost $10 to ship a 1-lb package in-state if to a rural area. And then you have to consider box cost, and void fill cost. I switched to USPS last year for 90% of my shipping, and it's still a loss at times from what I charge for shipping.

jonknee 18y ago
> Not everyone gets the Amazon shipping rates. No, but almost everyone can take advantage of Amazon's discounted rates. http://www.amazonservices.com/content/fulfillment-by-amazon.htm http://www.amazonservices.com/content/fulfillment-by-amazon.... It won't work for shipping food, but it can be a real money saver for non-perishable items. You don't even have to pay shipping costs if you sell the items on Amazon.com, just pay the fulfillment fee and the customer can use Prime or Super Saving shipping.