Thoughts on store.giantbomb's shipping prices?

Hey, I've heard a lot of people say that shipping from the GB store is pretty bad for them, especially overseas. Part of this is probably just shipping from SF versus the east coast (to Europe, anyway), but I wanted to solicit some feedback on the matter in the hopes of bringing it to our warehouse partners. If you've ever noticed any egregiously bad shipping rates for orders, I'd like to know where you live and whether you've noticed similar shipping prices from other stores in the U.S. for similar items. Most of you are probably taking advantage of International mail shipping which HOPEFULLY is cheaper than the prices used to be, but that only allows for 4.4 pounds of shipping weight, so anything over that might be a lot more money. But if that's the case and you think our shipping rates are higher than other stores, I'd like to know, especially if you can point me to specific other services that have much cheaper shipping options for you. I don't know if our warehouse will ever manage to match Amazon or anything but let me know!

I ordered a t-shirt to Ireland and it was very reasonable, like around 12-15 euro. Not sure what a heavier package would be tho.

@splodge: I tried to order a Dirty Three T-shirt from Australia and the shipping to the US was something bonkers like 40 USD.

15 euro sounds like the GB crew is doing alright on this front.

The four big orders I've had shipped to the UK were:

• Shirt, $5.25 shipping
• Hoodie, $23.50
• Snapback cap, $7.88
• Beastcast mug + shirt, $35.63

With import taxes on top, this usually means that my orders end up costing roughly double the listed price. It definitely puts me off making more orders (especially after the trouble with the Beastcast mugs, but I made my grievances known to Rorie at the time).

@rorie: Some items are priced out of what I personally deem reasonable to buy to Ireland. Mostly the more delicate or bigger items.

The skateboard is $40, ceramics are $13. Things like tshirts ($3) and the sweatshirts ($10), that's fine. Hoodies are $15. That's sort of getting into being too much. As others said, when you start adding import taxes onto it, it really adds up.

I think it's mostly fine. I get the skateboard and the mugs being more expensive because they're big items. I will say though, that if there was a distribution site in Europe so the prices could come down I'd be a lot more likely to order more than one to two shirts a year.

How long ago was this? Does it still give you the same rates now? That sounds like an error that we should correct.

@rorie: Oh, no. Not you guys. There’s a(n amazing band) called Dirty Three. I attempted to order a shirt from Australia to the US from them and the prices were astronomical.

From what I’ve read, you guys make shipping overseas pretty affordable.

Example from the recent sale:

I had an order for a hoodie, cap and 2 t-shirts ($116USD).

Cheapest shipping to Australia was like $31USD, with the 2nd cheapest option (USPS First Class International) at $33.25USD.

Then I added the cyberpunk t-shirt and USPS First Class International rocketed up to over $50USD so I guess I hit some kind of weight threshold there. I think the cheapest option remained at ~$31USD.

I ended up removing the cyberpunk t-shirt from the order and making a separate order for that, paying $5.25USD for the cheapest shipping.

This worked out pretty fine for me, as I didn't have the cyberpunk t-shirt delaying my other items and I could get a slightly faster shipping option on the stuff that will ship sooner. I think paying ~25% in shipping from the US to Aus is fairly reasonable. All the "fast" shipping options are ridiculous - for a single t-shirt UPS Worldwide Saver is $75 and Global Express Guaranteed is $109 but I always expect that stuff to be unreasonable so I never think of it as an option.

Overall I think the shipping prices are fine - sometimes it just pays to fiddle with your order a bit if it seems too much.

Honestly it’s the UK import tax and “handling fees” from Royal Mail that cause the biggest impact. Not much you can do about that! The shipping from GB itself has always seemed pretty reasonable, considering.

The skateboard deck and the mug were pretty high, $30-40 to the UK, and in the case of the deck i had to pay an extra customs charge, but where else am i going to get a Giant Bomb skateboard deck :P. Shirts and the coin were very reasonable.

I live in the SF Bay Area and had to pay $7 for shipping for a combined order of hoodie+t-shirt. Can't imagine how more expensive it is for anyone living outside of California.

Not bought anything yet, but when I compared the shipping to other smaller US stores it seemed pretty expensive.

Looked at shipping 2 mugs and the cheapest shipping price to London, UK was $28.88. By comparison, Penny Arcade's shipping fee for 2 mugs was $16.85.

Hopefully that information is helpful in some way.

I'm from the UK (England), never use my voucher for clothing as i continue to resub just due to the shipping cost. I understand the clothing comes the US therefore has a cost associated but for me I'm so used to free delivery across everything i purchase it just isn't worth it to me to pay the delivery. Maybe GB could look into companies in the Europe who produce and deliver clothing, you could then allow them to take a cut, they can then provide the store items without or a reduced delivery cost. May actually increase revenue as more people in Europe would be willing to purchase?

The costs are very high but more so because of the taxes than the shipping. I usually have to calculate the price almost doubling.

No real legal way around this unless you get a European location to ship from.

It's better than in the old days though, when the actual shipping costs were also insane. The international mail option is much cheaper than the other options if you order something small and light, although the delivery time is very vague and does not offer tracking.

Same her (Scotland) never buy anything due to shipping and have never used my voucher. I liked it when there was an option to give it to charity. I would do that than let it lie un-used or if shipping was a bit more reasonable.

Just placed my first order recently, the new logo mug. $15 for the mug, $22.80 for shipping (but I did pick the slightly more expensive USPS option). Thankfully, I dodged import tax on that one (guess I got lucky, maybe because I picked USPS though) otherwise shipping would have tripled the cost.

I've only ordered Shirts from you guys and never had and issues, for the most part I find the shipping prices to be fair then again I live in the U.S.

I know one company that has had this issue in the past, specifically shipping to Canada and they will give free shipping on orders over $60 in the US and Free shipping or discounted on orders over $150 internationally, so really only bulk orders are able to take advantage of this, but I have no idea how you warehouse deals with international coasts as they are often so variable.They are also a rather huge independent company that does millions of dollars of sales a year and still have these issues so I doubt you make enough sales overseas to be able to set up a yearly contract with a company like UPS where you would be able to save some money on shipping costs.

I would never again consider ordering merch from you guys. You "tricked" me once with the rebate when I signed up to premium but never again. It's not your fault. It's just that I'm far away. The shipping was like 45% of the order so unless you can get good deals with shipping companies, you should just sell to your American fans.

I think when I ordered the GB mug a few years back the shipping was more than the actual item, I had a look at getting a new one. The Mug is $15.00 and the cheapest shipping 1-5 weeks is $13.13.

$22 shipping for a hoodie to the UK but from experience I also know that it'll be another $22 in "handling fees". Making it basically the price of the hoodie, so anything I want to buy costs double.

When ordering internationally through eBay, you can pay import fees directly to them at the time of purchase so you don't get hit with fees. I'm not sure how feasible this is for other companies, but it's nice to see how much it'll cost.

@winterreise: I haven't ordered anything from GB since I moved out on my own for this reason. I want a Beastcast mug or that new Cyberpunk shirt but it feels madly irresponsible to spend a third of the price in shipping for what amounts to a novelty purchase.

I live in Alaska and checked on a couple of things just to see. To get a shirt, shipping is $4.81, meanwhile a mug is $10.86 to ship.

@bobafettjm: Yeah Boston here, and I saw the same prices- $5 for shirts, $10 for mugs. I really wanted to buy a GB@Nite mug during the sale but couldn’t rationalize spending $10 shipping on a $15 mug.

My last order was for a t-shirt using my yearly premium discount, and shipping to Germany was about 8 USD. Pretty damn reasonable in my opinion, and it also came super fast.

The print on the shirt was a little messed up (the logo was off-center), but it wasn't really enough for me to justify making a stink about it and having to send a replacement across the pond. Also didn't have to pay any customs tax on it because the price was below the limit ... though I'll admit that I've been purposely NOT buying some of the more expensive stuff (hoodies, glassware, etc.) because of concerns about how big the shipping price would be on top of import tax.

@rorie Not sure about who your production/warehouse partner is, or what kind of order volume you get from European duders, but it might be worth looking into at least getting some stuff locally produced in the EU for orders coming from here? I imagine that might work well for T-shirts at least.

Yeah getting stuff to Australia kinda sucks shipping wise but not sure what can be done with the strong US dollar and usual Australia bull crap. I have ordered hoodies and stuff before but it's really hard to pull the trigger when shipping is almost the price of the item.