Shipping costs for GB store to overseas

Hey,

I've heard a lot about high shipping costs for the GB store to overseas orders, especially the UK and Europe. If you think the shipping costs are high, can you do me a favor and take screenshots of the shipping costs for a t-shirt or hoodie from our store to your address and also include a screenshot of the shipping cost for a t-shirt or hoodie from something like Etsy or Woot or Zazzle or something like that? Preferably if you can get a screenshot of the full drop-down of shipping options. (Don't actually have to place any of these orders; just get to the point where you see the shipping, screenshot it, then cancel out.)

I just want to get an idea on whether the shipping is really ludicrous or whether it's within the bounds of reason considering VAT and customs and all that. Just feel free to insert the pictures into this thread. Thanks for any help!

Hey Rorie, I do not have much evidence but I do often purchase art prints and other items from the U.S. I usually pay between $15 and $25 dollars for U.K. shipping. I expect sending a few shirts will be less than that, But posters about the same.

Here's the shipping costs to London, UK. Any but the cheapest option more than triple the price of the T-Shirt, and even the cheapest one nearly doubles it.

This is to the UK comparing Giant Bomb to Shark Robot, I went on Woot and the only shipping choice was $5 (which seems weirdly low).

An overseas shipping cost of about $10-15 seems fair to me, but when the shipping is nearing the price of the actual t-shirt it makes it a lot harder to justify buying one.

Delivery from within the UK is often free or a couple of pounds (but then again the country is really small).

Here's what buying and shipping a hoodie to Finland would cost me. The cheapest shipping option doubles the price.

For reference here's a hoodie order from Threadless, shipping is only 10 bucks.

Here is one from Etsy.

Here are the shipping costs to Glasgow, Scotland. Will probably be the same for the whole of the UK.

This is shipping to an address in Poland. A big issue is that larger ordes scale like crap:

Here's a bunch of stuff from the T-shirts page on Etsy, shipping to the UK. No shipping options for anything as far as I could see. Giant Bomb seems generally more expensive than anything else, but not extortionately so.

Ok, here is a comparison for Poland

Etsy did not give me any shipping options, maybe because I wasn't logged in?

Hey Rorie, just an idea. Does the fact that the Pound, Euro and such are so much stronger than the Dollar have anything to do with it? Just spitballin' here

Gallery

$4 (£2.45) for Teefury, £4 for Cafepress, but being t-shirt specialists presumably they have something worked out or ship them over in bulk. Top 3 US-sourced Etsy shirts are £9.74, £9.42 and £8.17 shipping. $18.63 (£11.41) for cheapest shipping from Giant Bomb. I guess it's down to using USPS First-Class?

VAT and customs isn't paid up front so I am not sure how that enters in to the equation, most sites just have a disclaimer saying that local taxes are the responsibility of the buyer.

Here's my most recent GB shop order which I made last week (pulled from my email receipt) followed by a Threadless and then a Etsy cart (from a San Francisco seller)

It's for 3 shirts each as I ordered 3 the GB store with it being shipped to the UK, really hoping that I don't get any extra charges from revenues and customs.

@alwaysbebombing: That isn't taken up front, its taken by revenue and customs when it reaches the U.K. in the form of import taxes (on top of VAT and initial shipping) . I got sprung once with a music CD I ordered from PlayAsia once had to pay £25 up front at the door otherwise the postman wouldn't give me the parcel, the order only cost me £20 total before that point. The import fees only happened that once, and never from the US. I've had to pay VAT on a few things from the US but still fairly rare, depends on the Customs officer or the whether the handler decides to pay them up front decides though.

Huh, now I feel like ordering something from Etsy. For reference I had a bulky special edition game shipped to me via Priority Mail Int. for $40.

That's to Australia, my last Threadless order was $24.15 in shipping for 4 t-shirts. Also I'll point out that GST isn't paid on imports under $1000, and that there are no import duties on items from the US due to the FTA.

When I order from Amazon in the US (I live in Europe) they do claim VAT and customs up front, just for the record. I don't know if Giant Bomb does that, but Rorie probably knows.

@rorie: We pay import charges (if they decide to make us) on our end in the UK, so that has nothing to do with shipping costs. But it can double the price of something if we are stung with the import charge.

To England.

Date 08/08/2012

• 1x 2010 Member Tee - 3X-Large for $10.00 each
• 1x Whiskey Media 2012 Tee - 2012 Member Tee / Small for $15.00 each
• 1x Lincoln Force Tee - Navy / Lincoln Force / Small for $10.00 each
• Subtotal : $35.00 USD
• Shipping : $22.37 USD
• Total : $57.37 USD (which was about £36.73 at the time)

Date 10/22/2013

• 1x Hardcore Duder Tee - Hardcore Duder / 2X-Large for $15.00 each
• 1x GB2013 Members Tee - GB2013 Members Tee / Medium / Grey for $15.00 each
• 1x Tested Blockhead Tee - Blockheads T-Shirt / 3X-Large for $15.00 each
• 1x Giant Bomb Flight Club Tee - Giant Bomb Flight Club Tee / Medium / Navy Blue for $20.00 each
• 1x Giant Bomb Throwback Tee - Black / Giant Bomb Throwback Tee / X-Large for $20.00 each
• Subtotal : $85.00 USD
• Shipping : $44.06 USD
• Total : $129.06 USD (which was about £79.18 at the time)

(Speaking as someone who has bought things internationally for 25 years, and is currently pursuing a career in logistics.)

It is more of a factor that the UK is literally 5,000 miles from San Francisco. The exchange rate is irrelevant as far as the shirt vendor is concerned, though perhaps they feel better on your behalf that your money is going farther? :/

Surface (truck & boat) shipping over that distance is a huge amount of time and fuel. Air shipping uses yet more expensive fuel, and increases cost for the convenience of time and to reduce demand so it is in balance with supply (the number of cargo planes).

The U.S. recently had long overdue significant increases in parcel shipping costs. The postal service is in serious financial trouble. Private couriers have no reason to be competitively cheaper so long as there is demand and the number of international carriers remains small.

One way vendors reduce their shipping costs is by having depots in multiple regions. It is cheaper for a business to transfer cargo to itself in another region, which can then distribute at more reasonable rates. I'm betting the GB shirt vendor isn't big enough to have this kind of global market power.

The other two major ways that shipping costs are offset don't really apply to GB: huge volumes, and baking extra costs partially into the sticker price. Would you pay $10 more and get free shipping? Of course you would, happens on eBay all the time. Or at least it used to before every seller tried to wriggle out of fees not applied to the shipping cost.

@fattony12000: Can you get me the order numbers for those orders?

Shipping of 2 shirts from Merch Now to Australia.

Looks like your problem is with USPS.

As a duder in Scotland the shipping is so high, I only bought stuff from the store when I have the year subscriber voucher in order to make the prices "Normal".

@rorie hey I ordered a hoodie a few days ago and yeah the cost of shipping it to Australia doubled its price more or less, don't have a screenshot, I also may have put a typo in the delivery address, is there any way to change that? Hoodie was $35 and the lowest shipping available was $30.19

Greetings from Denmark!

GB Store:

Threadless:

Yeah, not buying any GB merch anytime soon, as much as I'd like to...

PMed you.

In case you, or anyone else, was wondering, I was simply posting those historical orders rather than a current order to try and add some old, deep data to this discussion. Plenty of people are posting what it costs them right now, I thought I'd kick it back to the old school.

Another historical:

Members tee (part of membership, discount international shipping) to UK, 09/09/2010, USPS $10.

One Whiskey Media Store tee to the UK, 11/11/2011, Shipping (USPS First Class Mail Int'l): $14.10.

Two Giant Bomb Emporium tees to the UK, 09/12/2012 (American date format), Shipping (USPS First Class Mail Int'l): $15.15.

@rorie: Another pretty big issue we have is that T-Shirts that are bundled with memberships are charged pretty ridiculous import duties. Because the label on the package places the value as the whole membership rather than the shirt itself we can end up being charged around £15 on top of the pretty high postage fees. I think this would be fixed by simply changing the label to represent that package's actual contents.

I've ended up just abandoning one of my shirts at the post office because of that fee

@hakunin: That's just strange. It costs me $18 to ship that same t-shirt to Norway, and I have a lot more options than you. It seems like it's the same to Finland, if one user here is to be believed. Seems so strange that it should be any different to Denmark...

Men det er sikkert fordi Norge er så mye bedre enn Danmark! ;)

It would be nice for the company that ship these out to separate price and shipping costs. I ended up paying nearly twice the price for a hoodie in import taxes just because of that.

Norwegian import laws haven't changed since 1975 and hasn't been adjusted for inflation. It's a nightmare if you want to import anything.

@peakborn: I think you probably will man, I did. another £20 on top of everything :/

Damn man, how long ago was that? If you can't/won't pick the shirt up, I might be willing to...something something. PM me if you want.

Something.

JUST TO BE CLEAR. DAN IS NOT SELLING ANYTHING AND I AM NOT BUYING ANYTHING ON THIS GIANT BOMB FORUM WEBSITE. WE'RE JUST DOING SOMETHING.

Another comparison from Australia. They're about the same (somewhat cheaper at Topatoco) and they scale just as terribly with more stuff in cart.

Shipping to Denmark:

(No way I'm paying that)

For comparison, something like TeeFury is $4 shipping.

@fattony12000: haha sorry dude, was months ago and I've lost the dropoff leaflet thing

@fattony12000:

"This accompanied my order from 2012."

Sydney, Australia

#noshirtleftbehind #ourlongnationalnightmare #thatsokaynp

It sure did! Thanks for restating that point of fact!

By the way @rorie if you just would like to see the shipping cost the store gives us, you can just put whatever address in yourself. You don't really have to wait for us to take the screenshots for it. With the user info you guys have over there, maybe you can get a better picture of it than just from us forum posters.

Note how the shipping for a $20 T-Shirt is 89.4% of the cost price of said T-Shirt. USD.

Someone already posted a shot of Finland, so I don't have to.

Yeah, the shipping is pretty ridiculous. Last time I used the member coupon to somewhat normalize the price.

From my last order:

Discounts : $-15.00 USD
Subtotal : $5.00 USD
Tax : $0.00 USD
Shipping : $18.63 USD
Total : $23.63 USD

Just FYI, shipping costs should be somewhat lower now, both internationally and domestically. Not to the point where it's a major change, but it should be a dollar or two cheaper if you're overseas, at least.

Keep letting me know about egregious price disparities, though, and I'll continue to talk with our vendor about it. One major difference between our vendor and other larger sites is that we ship everything from a warehouse in South San Francisco, which is both an expensive place to work (minimum wage is almost $3.50 more than the federal minimum wage), and is also significantly further from Europe than sites that have warehouses on the east coast. I have a feeling both of those will probably make our shipping costs a bit higher than what you're gonna get from Amazon or other big sites, but again, I'm happy to continue to look into this stuff for you guys if anything crazy happens.

Used the code from my membership sub to pay for the shirt. Shipping to London UK just cost me $19.37.

Date 08/08/2012

/ordered

Barf that shipping...

• 1x VinnCo Maglift System Shirt - Black/Yellow Print / Medium for $20.00 each
• 1x Giant Bomb Nighthawk Poster - SIGNED Nighthawk Poster for $10.00 each
• Subtotal : $30.00 USD
• Shipping : $26.59 USD
• Total : $56.59 USD

http://www.giantbomb.com/forums/general-discussion-30/new-poster-in-the-store-1470038/

@rorie What do I do if I live in America (Pennsylvania) and the store tells me "Unfortunately there is no Shipping Rate available for your destination and/or weight of your cart."

I've ordered things from the store in the past with no issue (other than the abnormally high shipping costs). I even just ordered the VinCo shirt not long ago.

Ordered some stuff (I'm in the UK), thanks for looking into it @rorie :)