How do you handle shipping to buyers in remote areas such as NWT?

[performancepartsracing]

We don't ship CA Post, so we don't want to use the calculator for pricing.  We currently have free shipping, but have no way to exclude remote areas with outrageous shipping costs, such as the Northwest Territories.  Anyone have a good solution?

[reallynicestamps]

Well, to begin with, Free Shipping just means that the cost of shipping is included in the asking price.

Which is cheapest:

$5 item with $10 shipping or

$15 item with Free Shipping?

Basically you have to decide how much you are willing to 'lose' on each transaction. I assume you are using either a courier like UPS /CanPar/FedEx or shipping by Greyhound/Voyageur bus.

And I assume that each time you ship the cost is different. It will cost the shipper more to ship within a province than to the opposite coast.

So you are already making this calculation.

How often has this problem arisen?

If it is rare-- like this is the first time in this century-- then just remember that you won't make money on every sale and write it off as a loss come tax time.

Or add a little to each shipping AND HANDLING charge to cover these occasional losses.

I was kicking myself last night as I wrapped a heavy book shipping Flat Rate to Europe at 2013 prices. We all do it, with luck not too often.

[reallynicestamps]

Hey-- fun fact. Many couriers don't actually serve remote communities but instead offload their shipments to ..... Canada Post for the final leg of the journey.

Sometimes it's worth doing a little research on prices.

[mr.elmwood]

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@reallynicestamps wrote:

Hey-- fun fact. Many couriers don't actually serve remote communities but instead offload their shipments to ..... Canada Post for the final leg of the journey.

Sometimes it's worth doing a little research on prices.

---

I was gonna say the above.

Sadly, unless the customer lives in a major city along the Trans Canada, they are all remote.

[cumos55]

All listings have the same cost for shipping throughout Canada,  and that includes any destination  north of 60....

A buyer from Nunavut will usually buy one item each year....

Postage is expensive to Nunavut because there is an airmail component added... that does not occur anywhere else in Canada.

I add up the total cost of postage paid by all buyers, and usually there is an amount greater than the amount actually paid for postage by a seller....

All of the other buyers pay for that extra cost for postage to that one Nunavut buyer..

Postage also gets expensive to remote area of Newfoundland-Labrador  and BC... and the number of purchases by these remote buyers is very, very .....very low...... and if they buy more than one item  a seller can adjust for the actual postage for that one parcel

Over a 12 month period the full cost of postage paid by a seller is covered by all buyers and not necessarily by each buyer for each purchase separately.....

Look at all sales... at the total cost for postage paid by the the seller  for all sales,  and then paid by all buyers..... and everything should work out...

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If you sell one item weighing less than one kg to a Nunavut buyer,  the extra cost for postage would be about $10.00 (as an example)

If one sells 1000 items that extra cost of $10.00 is one penny a sale

sell 500 items....  it is two pennies a sale.

Sell 250 items and it is four pennies per sale...

sell 100 items and it is 10 cents per sale....

So far in 2014,  buyers have paid about $200 more for postage than actual paid by this seller to mail all parcels.

[maximus7001]

We have been sucessful with this problem by disclosing this issue in the item description of every one of our auctions. In most cases the remote buyer contacted us and we sent a shipping quote for their remote location. Sometimes they don't read the description and win the auction so we just point out the disclosure in the description and ask for the extra actual shipping cost. We have never had anyone be angry about this and they have always payed the extra. Had one the other day to a remote part of Newfoundland that cost $9 extra.