The shipping threshold - how much is too much?

I’ve never thought twice about crossing the free shipping threshold. I’m going to drink tea, whether it’s $30 worth of tea this time or $50. It’s gonna happen, I might as well order now and not have to worry about ordering in a couple weeks.

$50 seems average, so if it’s a company I know & trust I’ll usually save up my order until I hit that, and I’m often willing to add some extra teas to get up there. But if it’s a company I’ve never tried, and shipping is more than $5, I probably won’t try that company.

But it’s really nice to see places with $30 thresholds. That’s something I can justify.

I hate buying tea from a place with shipping over $5. I could send a couple books for that much, and that weighs much more than tea. I’ve never had an issue with tea being disturbed in a standard bubble envelope. Free shipping for $25 is the most I’ll probably go for. At this point in my life, I’m not often spending $50 in one place anywhere.

I generally agree that price + shipping needs to be reasonable. But I know there is a psychological component for me. For example, Harney has free shipping with $50 all the time. They have specials for free with $25. I always wait to order for one of those free with $25 deals to come along and I always order enough to have gotten the free with $50. :)

Generally, if the shipping costs more than 2/3 of what the cost of the tea is, I won’t buy it. Like if I only want one item from somewhere and the shipping is equal to the cost of the item, I generally decide I don’t need it that badly. I have made exceptions for an expensive tea that I absolutely adore and the shipping there is about equal to the tea cost. I’ve only done it twice, though, and don’t order anything but that one tea from that company. Unfortunately, their teas are so expensive that I’d end up paying entirely too much for tea, even if the shipping went down to under half the cost of the teas.

Companies that offer flat rate shipping get more consideration as well.

Being from the US I really, really wanted to try some David’s Tea and I sucked it up and paid more shipping than I would normally, back before they lowered shipping costs to the US. If they hadn’t done that, though, that first order would have been my last.

I am like others in that a $50 free shipping threshold is more tea than I usually buy at one time. Exception is at Verdant where some expensive teas can boost it up, but they have a threshold of $35.

I am also totally prey to the free shipping but more expensive product mind game. When I’m ordering a tea I don’t necessarily know if the price of the tea is a good deal, but I know the cost of shipping, so I can’t tell whether expensive shipping on a cheap tea is a good deal or not.

Typically I don’t want to pay more than $10 for a tea company within the states, and $15 abroad.

not to put in a pitch but i have gotten stuff from garret at mandala and they have a 5.00 flat rate i find hard to turn down. overall i think distance could have some thing i have had tea from china shipped for 8-10 dollars us that i have really wanted. but i usually buy a 357 to 500 gram cake on those orders. i think 5-8 is a great price point on shipping on the north american continent.

Well to note nothing is truly free, especially in business. When free shipping is offered it is to raise average ticket sales above a particular price. Its a carrot that gets people to spend more money. Most companies also inflate shipping charges to make the free shipping look even better.

When its offered at low levels such as $25 as stated in here, the only way that is possible is their products don’t weigh much (only offering tea and no teaware) and then their margins are will also tend to be higher than other vendors. But their are so many strategies when it comes to this.

As for my company, for orders under 1 ibs to continental US my shipping would run about $2.00. Orders over $65 get free shipping. The reason my free shipping is so high is because the teaware i offer is heavy and most orders will run 2 ibs at that price which cost me about $12 to ship. After 1 ibs shipping starts to get much more expensive.

I find it hard to justify paying more than $7-8 for shipping in the US. When I order tea, I like to try out lots of different companies to see what’s out there, so I usually buy smaller/sample packs that don’t weigh or cost much anyway.

I think $25-30 is a good cutoff for free shipping, If I plan on spending $30 on a tea order, that can quickly escalate to nearly $45 with shipping & tax, so I have to factor that in and ultimately I might end up buying less product.

I really appreciate everyone’s input on our posting of this topic. I did not realize shipping was such a lightning rod of a topic, and your responses have really opened my eyes. We are going to make some changes to our shipping rates/policies within the next 30 days as a result of what I have read here.

I took advantage of the Davids Tea free shipping b/c one of the items I just HAD to get was already $10…so I also got two tins and two teas so It came to $50 exactly.