Free Shipping is an advertising gimmick.
It really means your cost for shipping is included in your asking price.
Which is cheaper->
A $15 item with $5 shipping?
A $20 item with Free Shipping?
And you pay the same fees on the buyer's ENTIRE payment, including the sales tax that goes directly to his local taxation authority.
If you advertise Free Shipping and don't raise your asking price to cover your costs, your $15 item sold for $10.
Look into Expedited Lite labels if your items are less than 2cm thick and 500 grams when packed. Note that there is a problem /glitch with this service at the moment (mid-december 2025). These are tracked and start around $6.
Or think about shipping LetterMail domestically, which is legal within Canada. No tracking but starts at $1.24.
How many shipments would you have to lose in a year, for the cost of tracking every one of them to exceed the procurement cost + shipping cost when sending without tracking?
Cookie Jar Insurance means putting a few virtual pennied from each purchase into a virtual Cookie Jar, as a self-insurance premium against problem transactions.
And not just INR/NAD claims.
For the time you forget to mail the shipment because its at the bottom of a little used purse, or when you send a red sweater instead of the blue one ordered, or when, as every seller will do one of these days, ship Customer A's doohickey to Customer B, and Customer B's thingamajig to Customer A.
You raid the Cookie Jar for return shipping and a fast refund, before the customer opens a Claim.
