Free Shipping isn't good. Here's Why!

"There's no such thing as a free lunch and there's no such thing as free shipping". It might work well for DVD's and apparel, but it doesn't work so well when you're selling sports equipment to sports teams. There's just to much money to be saved when we ship items out together. Take for example, the pugg soccer goal, which people love and demand free shipping for. All our competitors offer it with free shipping and we lose business when we don't give free shipping for this item - so that's why we have free shipping - but just on that item, at least for now.

But think about this! Most of our customers order more than one set of Pugg Goals and at the time of writing this, the cost of a Pugg Goal is $84.50 with free shipping. The real price is actually $75 with an average shipping cost of around $10 but instead we show $84.50 (Free Shipping!). This works great with 1 item, but how about when someone orders 2 Pugg Goals. Instead of showing $75 x 2 + $15 for shipping ($165), we show 2 Pugg Goals for $84.50 x 2 ($169). It's definitely simple to calculate with free shipping but customers actually loose $4 dollars with free shipping when they order 2 or more items. When a customer orders 4 Pugg Goals, they are losing up to $20 because of free shipping.

This issue gets progressively worse as you deal with heavier item and larger orders. We've done lots of research and free shipping is clearly not the way to go when you're buying items sold on Open Yard; which is why we've invested a lot of time developing shipping calculation software to help us ship items all around the country from all around the country. So, when you see our little 'calculating shipping' icon pop on your shopping cart, relax, because it's our little way of helping you save money and proof that we're doing our best for our customers.

Below is a little chart which shows how you save money without free shipping when ordering in multiple quantities just with one fairly cheap item. Unfortunately, we still sell more Pugg soccer goals when we offer free shipping but if you'd like us to change it back, please let us know! Let us know how you feel about shipping prices in general because with the continual swings in fuel prices,shipping and our perspective of shipping, is an increasingly important topic. We love hearing from you.

Just a side note. If you drive a car that gets an average of 20 MPG ( not even close if you're driving a classic "Soccer SUV") and you drive to the local sports show to get a scrimmage vest. At the very least, you'll spend around $4-6 in fuel and spend $4 on the vest, making that vest cost $10. Of course, you'll bring down the price if you buy more items all at once. To put our shipping prices in perspective, even for the small items, we charge $3.12 for this scrimmage vest and shipping is around $4.60 making the total $7.72. It doesn't seem like it when you see a little scrimmage vest with a $5 shipping fee, but our price is actually lower than if you were to get in your car, drive to a store and buy one. Cool huh! See you online and thanks for reading!