Shipping price inconsistencies?

[Anon]

What's with the inconsistent shipping prices I'm getting? Will they continue to rise? 

In January, the coop charged me $5 to ship a small box.

In April, the coop charged me $6 to ship an even smaller box.

Today, to ship 1 box of ParaCleanse, the coop wants to charge me $8.

I only live a few hours away. I can individually ship 10 boxes of ParaCleanse to the coop for that price. What's the deal? 

I have other options, but I wanted to support the coop when I could. Today's shipping quote is just too unreasonable. 

[Cory]

Price increases are happening for postal rates. Plus we had been shipping at a bigger loss before, so we adjusted for that when we could no longer hold down the price.  The base price for us to ship anything at priority speed is essentially $8. https://www.usps.com/ship/priority-mail.htm

This is also why at one time we had the minimum order being $14.99 and it was $5 shipping because the profit from the item sold in most cases made it so we didn't lose money. In every variation we try, it won't work out for everyone. We had people complain the minimums are too high. If we slow shipping speed down, complains we are too slow.

In this specific case, my advice s to buy more than a time, because the shipping won't go up and it's better for the environment. Or as you said place the order from somewhere else. There are companies that will ship it slower and cheaper. At this moment we don't offer that service, however we may in the future.

[Patrick_G]

Here it is

[Patrick_G]

Here’s a quote for shipping one plant from an popular competitor to Aquarium Co-op.

 

[Anon]

Thank you for the quick reply! I understand now. I didn't realize you only shipped priority. I'll just have to continue to show my support through membership. 

On 6/23/2022 at 9:56 AM, Patrick_G said:

Here’s a quote for shipping one plant from an popular competitor to Aquarium Co-op.

 

I would pay priority shipping for plants. A box of ParaCleanse could be sent first class with just a few stamps; that's why the quote was concerning. 

[Patrick_G]

First class small packages start at $4.50 these days, but I understand where you’re coming from.
I ordered Paracleanse  this week and added 3-4 items that I know I’ll be needing in the future. Like Corey mentioned, the shipping cost was the same as for just the Paracleanse so that helps. 

[Guppysnail]

Thank you Cory for keeping shipping reasonable while not taking a loss so ACO can continue offering the best of the best in freshwater supplies 🤗

[Cory]

On 6/23/2022 at 10:01 AM, Anon said:

Thank you for the quick reply! I understand now. I didn't realize you only shipped priority. I'll just have to continue to show my support through membership. 

I would pay priority shipping for plants. A box of ParaCleanse could be sent first class with just a few stamps; that's why the quote was concerning. 

The problem is, we serve many different types of customers. It sounds like you are ordering para cleanse ahead of time. You also live local. Imagine if you needed the medication asap cause the fish was already sick? They also announced a few months ago, that first class is getting slower. It's now up to a 5 day service.

You stated that you're close, and so most services we use would be overnight for you. However For someone in Florida, that same service may be 5+ days.

We are aware of offering options. In the past however, people make lots of mistakes. With 10,000 orders a month, most people default to whatever is pre selected. This leads to people getting angry when they chose cheaper slower shipping, and it doesn't arrive as they expect. Also we can't use the slower shipping for live plants.

Do know that we take shipping very seriously and have plans in the next warehouse to try and offer more options to accommodate more of our customers needs. Most probably don't know that we have to sort packages for the carriers, so for USPS that we use right now, we'd have to separate everything going to Washington vs all the other states. We have to separate all international mail. Introducing first class, makes for 2 more separations, one for first class in Washington, separate from priority Washington, and then all other first class to the other states.

The good news is, if we offer UPS ground in the USA, what 90% of businesses use, it'll be slow and cheap. But since it doesn't use airplanes, we can include more than 2 products with lithium ion batteries. Also we can ship our compressed co2 system that is in our retail store only right now. However this requires us to make it easy for a customer to know that if they ship it slow, they could have these products also, or in bigger quantities. However if you add a live plant, we can not ship it ups ground that takes 10 days to get there anymore. 

So a shipping matrix as it's called can be very complex and making sure users understand the limitations and intricacies is important. We hope in the future to be able to accomplish this with a larger warehouse for all the sorting options. Right now it's a traffic jam at the end of the day with semi trucks picking up packages. We need more loading docks to accommodate more carriers at the same time.

Lastly, I do want to thank you for your continued support. Rest assured we will keep trying to improve our services to everyone as we can. While often not easy, we do try and work through it.