Shipping options are sometimes pure chaos

I ordered a few t shirts from overseas. Shipping was $3 and it took two weeks. If I in Canada try to buy a few t shirts from hot topic website, the shipping is roughly $50 and it takes 3-4 weeks, and it's all shipped from inside the country.

I have no idea how shipping works, cause that shit makes no sense to me.

Postal services have agreements about delivering mail for each other. Some countries mail services, like China for example, heavily subsidize shipping.
- It is not China that subsidizes the shipping - we are who does that. Because China is a developing country. And they make sure as hell that it stays that way for exactly such reasons, while also trying to look like a world leading nation.

Tell me about it. Hawaii has its own obstacles with various things on a regular basis.

I need a replacement laptop battery that costs $50.

But you cannot get an individual battery not already inside a laptop shipped to you by the usual options, because hazmat shipping restrictions make it prohibited or too expensive for the seller to pay the fees.

I can have it delivered to a freight company and have them forward it to me via sea for $270+, or have it delivered to a friend on the mainland, and have them send it by USPS Ground (also comes by sea in a few weeks) for about $15.

I ordered a portable power station from Amazon from the one and only company that would deliver here, and while I did get it for the usual free shipping to everywhere else in the US, I looked later in the day after making the order, and they had changed their allowed shipping areas to exclude Hawaii like everyone else.

Someone fucked up… and a big mahalo to them!

So are you saying I could buy like, a dozen laptop batteries, take them on a trip to Hawaii with me, and then sell them to pay for my vacation?
- Im sure trying to smuggle a dozen lithium based batteries onto a passenger plane would go over super well with the TSA. They would probably even pull you into the nice private Polite Conversation Room.
  I'm pretty sure the phrase the TSA would use to describe a dozen laptop batteries in a suitcase is "an incendiary device".
- With the right connections maybe.
- They don’t want that, for the same reasons
Alaska has the same issues.
- It’s maddening. Just figuring out how to get something here without extortion.
  I needed a specialized patch cable that I could only find at one company. It could be dropped into a flat rate usps box and sent for less than $8, but the only option they would do is FedEx for a little over $90.

I had something like this where they wanted an extra $140 for shipping so I can get it in two weeks instead of two months.

I opted for the linger wait, still got them in 2 weeks.

Uh that's nothing. I bought in one site that sold imported foods from USA. And they are bastards. Until you go to pay it doesn't tell you shipping price until last minute, which then you discover is kind of expensive, and add that to the products that aren't usually cheap.

But that's nothing the worse is that when there a season event, Halloween, Christmas, etc where usually people are going to buy USA exclusive stuff, like some types of candy etc.

They have a logic that plays around with the dates so the cheapest shipping says is always after that date, so after Halloween or after Christmas, etc. Unless of course you buy it like 2 months in advance. And the "express" or whatever is called the shipping option is even more expensive. Thank God I have found other alternative pages but man. .. they are bastards.

You could try the cheap option but I am pretty sure I did once and they actually hold up until the dates would match to actually send it.

Yeah when "express shipping" means "were not even gonna process your order" that's almost straight up extortion

I once had a $100 shipping option that was one day faster for something that cost like $30

I mean the cost of the item itself doesn't really have much to do with the shipping cost (unless you're also paying for insurance on the item). Weight and the size of the box are far more relevant.
- yes, but these were pants that weigh maybe a pound and are a little 12" x12" plastic bag

I want to hear the story behind people who click the massively expensive shipping

Guess either rich or its for a company, most expensive shipping I have had to chose at work was $5000 same day air freight and I know that easily gets dwarfed by other companies when they really need something fast.
- Ford once made my company pay 100k usd for same day international air freight of about four pallets. The reason was a mistake of theirs, in the end I managed to recover the money but yeah, there's companies out there that can an do spend crazy amounts of money to not stop a production line. Especially if it's not their money.
With that price I imagine it's freight. Thursday is probably a dedicated truck and Friday-Wednesday is probably on one with several other orders.
If this is some piece of equipment that's replacing a broken one the $700 is probably worth it when the lack of this is possibly costing you thousands of dollars each day that you don't have it, or even worse losing a customer, especially if it doesn't get there 'till Wednesday, since installation could take a couple and then you're out a whole other week.

Link the item you coward.

Got to love these blatant money laundering schemes

They want you to upgrade to Prime.

I have prime and this is how it looks to me.
I live in the middle of nowhere, 7 miles from work. Amazon will ship to my work address in 1 or 2 days, but it's 7-10 days to my house. Same UPS Dist center, same FedEx dist center, same number of post office hops.
Shipping is witchcraft.
- I used to work in a distro centre booking 3rd party deliveries for out of metro stuff and I would often run into places where they would delivery to one suburb and not right next door, like literally driving down the highway and will delivery to the houses on the right hand side but not the left hand side..
- Same. If it’s critical or high value, I’m buying direct anyway. So for stuff on amazon, I just wait until my total items hit $25 and get free shipping which usually arrives earlier than scheduled. And that’s like once every 2 months.

But I NEED it on Thursday!