News, Views, and Promotions
2016 Shipping Increases & Quality Matters January 14, 2016 08:29
As we near our 18th anniversary in business, the PopCultureSpot.com Team has seen shipping rates rise well above inflation year after year with no slowdown in sight. All three major carriers are increasing shipping charges that will generally increase rates by 12%-23% based upon delivery location, weight, and package size.
Outside of some major corporations that subsidize shipping with "free" or ultra-low rates, it just isn't reality for all the other businesses that constitute nearly all the mail-order merchants in the United States. We have done everything possible to mitigate shipping costs even switching to our extremely fair flat-rate shipping system.
Here at PopCultureSpot.com, we're not a behemoth company with shareholders and the bottom line trumping all. We provide exciting and unique products with many of them being exclusively produced for us. The difference is that we are very keen on quality control. Do you ever notice that you might go to a certain store and they or their merchants have prices that way lower than elsewhere? We understand that your first inclination might be that it's awesome because the prices are so low. Many times, they are so low that the products are actually being sold below the cost that the business paid. But, things aren't always as they appear.
We've found that so many products are cheap knockoffs that fail. In our world of toys and novelties, we find that many competitors are using way thinner plastics or parts that are made to fail. It's one of our major differences, we seek out quality products, quality materials, and provide to you quality care.
As for the 2016 shipping rate increases, as of today, we're holding steady with out flat-rate shipping charge within the United States. Our average package shipping rate will be increasing 18%. We simply want to let you know how much we value your business and we're doing absolutely everything we can to mitigate the cost increase.
We also invite you to view our first Vlog that directly addresses the issue of quality control and product standards.
2014 Shipping Carrier Increases February 11, 2014 14:55
All of the major carriers (USPS, UPS, & FedEx) have increased their rates in what has become an annual ritual the past several years. The average increase works out to about 5.6% over the 2013 pricing. As we wrote about in 2013, we went through and altered many of our shipping rates to reduce them as greatly as possible in order to provide the lowest rates possible. Not only did we reduce the rates, we added in additional tiers to bring down costs even further.
With the 2014 increases implemented by the carriers, we've been able to absorb the cost in all pricing tiers except for our base United States Standard Shipping, which we've had to increase the rate by 25 cents. That's not too bad! All international rates have remained unchanged.