One of my responsibilities as a blogger is to inform the public of ripoffs and scams. Well, have I got a doozy for you today!
My friend Kat ordered three comforters, for herself and each of her two sons, from this outfit called ABC Distributing. She chose to shop with them because they had good prices on the bedding. She is a single mom, money is tight, so she is always looking for the best deals she can find.
Too bad these people are ripoff artists supreme. The way they get you is with the shipping. They charged her $46.80 to ship just one comforter. Then they slapped her with a charge of $95.80 to ship the other two. That is $142.60 just to ship three comforters, which is almost 100% of what she paid for the items themselves.
Just to show you what bullshit this is, I went to L.L. Bean’s website, and put three queen-sized comforters into my shopping bag, and went to checkout to see what the shipping would cost.
click on this image to embiggen
As you can see, to ship three queen-sized comforters via Federal Express costs just $10.95.
For the sake of comparison, I went to QVC.com, where I had bought a comforter set many years ago. I don’t remember how much the shipping was back then, but if it was something outrageous, damned straight I would have remembered it. I randomly picked a comforter and put three full/queen ones into the shopping cart.
click image to embiggen
See? over at the Q, they give a discount for shipping if you buy multiple items. So the shipping here only came to $17.44. But I think that you only get the discount if you buy two or more of an identical item. But still, it seems that $8.72 to ship one comforter is pretty much standard at the Q, so if Kat bought three different ones, her shipping charges would have still been under $30.00. That is WAY more reasonable than $142.60!
I could go to various shopping sites and take screenshots all day, but I think you see what I’m getting at here. There is no way in hell that it really costs $142.60 to ship three comforters within the continental United States, via a carrier like FedEx or UPS, which are what most companies use. Kat lives in Florida, BTW, not in Outer Mongolia or some other far-off place. If it really did cost that much, companies like L.L. Bean and QVC would be losing money out the wazoo, and would not be able to afford to stay in business, if they charged what they do for shipping.
This whole thing with ABC Distributing is a big steaming pile of bullshit. Let the lesson that Kat learned from this be a lesson to you all…ALWAYS check the shipping costs before clicking on that “place order” button. If they won’t tell you upfront how much this will cost, shop elsewhere.
Kat should file a complaint against this company with the Better Business Bureau in whatever state these ripoff artists are in. They cannot be allowed to continue to rip people off like this!
This has been a public service announcement from your friendly neighborhood Ailurophile.
The really crappy part is that if you return the items, they only refund the price of the items, not the shipping charges.
That’s how they are making money, on the shipping charges.
I know about costs from other companies, so I figured the shipping costs would be the same, nope.
I emailed them and they said they are sending me an itemized statement by snail mail explaining the shipping costs.
Good.
When it gets here I
m going to scan it and post it so people can see exactly how they calculate such outrageous prices for a package that weighs 9.40lbs.
Yes, you read that right, the 1 box with the 1 comforter in it weighs 9.40lbs according to the UPS website, so there’s no way in hell that it should cost $46.08 to ship it.
No fucking way!
I’m looking forward to seeing that. I really want to know how they got at such high numbers.
People on ebay do this shit a lot, too. Some sellers use this tool where you have to plug in your zip code to see the shipping cost, and it is almost always way more than it should be, often a lot more than the cost of the item. It’s always at the very bottom of the page, I guess they are hoping that nobody looks at it. I tend to only buy from those who charge a flat shipping rate, as in whatever the going Priority Mail rate for an item of that size is.
I’ve sold stuph on ebay, and I’ve always just charged what it really costs me to ship the item. I don’t do bullshit like charging for packaging, since I recycle old Amazon boxes and packing materials, or use Priority mail boxes that are free at the post office.
It’s very bad business to deceive people like this, especially in this economy. This ABC outfit is just shooting themselves in the foot, because people will get wise, spread the word, and then everyone will shop elsewhere.