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Original thread:
Post 46 made on Wednesday December 20, 2017 at 09:59
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On December 19, 2017 at 09:32, Craig Aguiar-Winter said...
I agree Emphatically . I do mark up my product to account for shipping. The only time that doesn't work is when I have to be competitive with the market price. Likely wouldn't be an issue with Triad. Also my orders normally qualify for free shipping anyway.

I should've edited that I say I hate shipping. Period. Stuff gets delivered to my house, and it's rare that someone is home to receive it, so I wind up having to drive quite a distance to go to the drop location. It's less convenient for me than going to the wholesalers I normally deal with when I'm in the area.

Craig

I have been arguing with myself over the "Should I meet the price from Amazon, Beast Buy or some other 'Sure we'll dump it and ship it free' place?" and have decided that if my customers want me to provide the post-installation service, they need to pay my price. If something fails, is Beast Buy/Amazon going to send someone to the house to fix it, will the client want to allow new people into their house (some people are very hesitant to have a large number of people flowing in and out of their homes) and will they have to be at home when the service appointment is set? My clients don't want a lot of new people in their house- some have been burned in the past, so they only let some contractors in when a trusted person is there, which means I and (a few others) have keys and security codes. That trust has value that a discounted price doesn't include.

If you can't be at your place to receive goods, have them delivered to a UPS store- it costs $5/box and the peace of mind is worth it. Or, if you'll be on site for the day the package(s) will be delivered, you can have them drop-shipped. With the 'Porch Pirate" thing being such a problem, I try to avoid deliveries to my place unless it's cheap and small enough to fit in my mailbox or under the door mat. I have had UPS drivers that would hide the boxes behind my house, too,

I just saw a news story on TV about Amazon in-home delivery- makes me want to never have a smart lock. I'll post a link to the video when I find it. They provide a camera that's supposed to show the delivery being made and it's not in real time- the TV news crew installed their own camera and showed both on screen, side by side- you could see the door open and the camera crew in the house, but the Amazon camera showed nothing.
My mechanic told me, "I couldn't repair your brakes, so I made your horn louder."


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