Going postal over the real meaning of free shipping
By Beth Teitell
Thursday, November 24, 2005
With the Category 5 holiday-shopping season bearing down on us, the U.S. Public Interest Research Group has issued its annual toy-safety report. You know, the yearly ranking of the Most Likely to Put An Eye Out. That’s great for the kids, but they’re not the only consumers at risk this time of year. I wish the group would use its bully pulpit to raise awareness of a dark force threatening the adult buying public.
I speak of free shipping.
I know what you may be thinking, because it’s what I thought before I got sucked in just the other day: What’s not to like, it’s free, right? Order whatever you like - or, in my case, whatever you don’t like. Why not? It’s free.
Well, heh heh heh. That’s how the 79 percent of retailers offering free shipping say ”ho ho ho.” If they really cared, they’d offer free return shipping - and do away with the dreaded caveat ”free shipping with orders over fill-in-the-blank.”
But holiday spirit only goes so far. So they prey on the weak, the lazy, the Internet shoppers who promise themselves they’ll return the hated item tomorrow, OK, the next day, first thing next week, until it sits so long at the back of the closet that even the merchandise-credit-only period has passed.
”What is it about boxing something up and shipping it back that’s so hard?” a friend asked. Gee, I don’t know, maybe it’s facing up to the fact you’ve just spent $14 for the pleasure of trying on a shoddy piece of merchandise (which of course looked lovely in the catalog, photographed at a distance on a gorgeous Size 0 model running through a meadow, not on a schlumpy working mom standing at the sidelines of a kiddie music class in the community center basement).
But the words ”free shipping” do something to a girl’s head, I’ll tell you. ”I threw away a catalog because I didn’t see anything I liked,” a friend told me, ”then I got a coupon for free shipping and I fished it right out of the trash can.”
Under the influence, she ordered a pair of short suede boots.
”Do you like them?” I asked. ”Not enough to pay the shipping,” she said. But apparently enough to pay $75 as long as the shipping was free.
Free shipping is like an Internet virus. By the time you’ve opened the message offering something for nothing, your emotional hard drive has already been corrupted.
