We always try to listen! As many with shipping experiences in small businesses have noted, it's a continuing source of angst...but we try to do our best. The time spent picking and packing a $10 order can be the same or more than for a $200 order, and although we appreciate any order, when we get one for the brass housing ferrules that nobody else has, and maybe a bell, there's a gap btw what it costs to get that bad boy in the mail and what the customer hopes to spend getting it there. In some companies, I imagine that the shippers are entry-level and often the lowest compensated. It's not that way here. We have two shippers and we treat, and they treat, their jobs as career jobs. Their pay is 45 to 50 percent of mine, and even so, there's no fluff--them or me. In return, you get a package packed better than any other company in the world, I believe. Last week there was something I had to send to a friend. I try to do this personal stuff myself, but I was busy. I boxed it up, even cut the box to size, and did a perfectly functionally good job of it. But I didn't slice the tape before folding it, and my box-bending wasn't crips, and the tape held it together asymmetrically. I overtaped it. About an hour later Robert brought me the box and held it up to me like it was a birthday cake and said, "Uh-uh." I was afraid he'd do that, and it was a shameful moment, but it's cool that he puts as much effort into his job as I do into some bikey thing I do. I just said, "Sorry..." and he had the grace to not rub it in. This may make it seem as though you're paying for fanatical packing, but it's not like that. Robt and Jenny are super efficient, too. Lots of times when the margins are high, shipping costs can be absorbed into it, and then...like, the $189 44lb Huffy fat bike I bought and wrote about in RR44, the shipping cost was $18 or something. LL Bean charges nothing. That doesn't mean their shippers work for nothing or they're losing money on it; it just means the selling price can absorb it all.
Anyway, there's only so many words I can write about this without coming off like a whiner, and I've got nothing to whine about. This is just a chance to thank those of you who have experience in shipping and with our shipping and have taken the time to speak up...and then, to try to explain some behind-the-scenes stuff. And finally, yes, agreed, on the need for instant knowing exactly where my package is. The days of patiently waiting for the Wells Fargo wagon are long gone. Analog shipping may be on the outs, but it's what we've got for now, and ... if we get your order by 1pm on a Tuesday, there's a 90 percent chance it'll go out that day. On Thursday, June 23, 2016 at 3:22:49 PM UTC-7, Belopsky wrote: > > Ordered gloves, ferrules, a couple washers.. > > $9 for surepost. > > And estimate delivery? July 1st. Ridiculous, right? > > All of those items would fit into a flat rate envelope and be here in 3 > days vis USPS. > > Grant, hope you and others are listening. > > > Thoughts everyone? > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
