Here we go again.
If you’ve been stopping by for a while, you’ve probably seen one of my rants about Amazon.com’s refusal to ship any food-related products to Hawaii. This includes non-perishable items that could easily be delivered by mail or by UPS Ground, both services that Amazon regularly uses. Doesn’t matter that I’m willing to pay the delivery cost. They just won’t do it, for some as yet undisclosed reason, although they’ll deliver other much larger items, sometimes without shipping charges.
So yesterday I had the experience again. All I wanted was to buy a package of reporter’s notebooks, those handy notebooks that you can easily stick in a pocket.
So I hopped online and checked Amazon.com. There they were, just what I wanted. A pack of 12, shipping weight 2.5 pounds. That’s nothing for an outfit that will ship a mattress to Hawaii. I added a pack to my shopping cart, headed for checkout, and got the dreaded message in red:
This item cannot be shipped to the address you selected. (Learn more.) You may either change the shipping address or remove the item by clicking Delete.
Initially I dismissed this as just another aggravating Amazon policy, and turned to other online sources.
Not so fast. OfficeDepot.com? Won’t ship to Hawaii. Staples.com? Won’t ship to Hawaii.
The message kept being the same as I worked down the list of places selling this simple item.
*OfficeSupplyInc.com currently does not ship to PO Boxes, APO/FPO, Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico or international addresses.
Shoplet.com offers standard UPS Ground shipping on all items, but won’t ship to Hawaii even though their preferred UPS service is available.
Somehow these online retailers refuse to use the available UPS Ground service, which is readily available to Hawaii as to other parts of the US.
So even if they’re unwilling to just drop the things in the mail because they standardize on UPS, there’s just no rational reason I can come up with for refusing to ship to Hawaii.
I can’t help suspecting that there is some sort of restraint of trade issue at work, perhaps a distributor’s deal that restricts availability, I don’t know.
What is clear, though, is that this is a general policy that directly and unnecessarily impacts Hawaii consumers.
The state, or the federal government, should investigate the reasons behind this restraint of trade and determine what, if anything, can be done to change the policies of online retailers.
While I was freshly steamed from my foiled search for notepads, I ran into United Airlines, which has been my choice as primary carrier to the mainland for decades.
I remembered that in years past, United would give you a break on reservations you had already paid for if a subsequent fare sale would save you money. Several times, we requested and received a credit when prices dropped on tickets we were holding. It was a good deal for consumers, and I wondered if that policy still exists.
After a bit of searching, I came across the company’s answer in a list of “frequently asked questions”.
And the answer seemed to be good news. Yes, a credit is available, it said.
If I have purchased a ticket and a new, lower fare is introduced, can I obtain a credit?
When we introduce new fares or reduce current fares in a particular market, you may change a previously purchased ticket (purchased on or after March 20, 2009) to the new fare if:
* the change is made prior to departure;
* you do not change the flight, date, origin, destination or stopover points;
* reservations are confirmed in an appropriate class of service;
* all fare rules are met; and
* the lower fare is not a united.com-only fare.
Good deal!
But then I read down further into the fine print, after the instructions for requesting the credit. After the telephone number to call came this understated disclosure:
A $150.00 administrative fee will be assessed for domestic (U.S./Canada) tickets.
So you can apply for a credit if fares drop but it will cost you $150!
Lesson: Read carefully to the very end before declaring victory.
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My understanding of this is that shippers make deals with carriers. And the deals don’t include Alaska/Hawaii.
Even a “USPS” shipment can be snagged in a deal. I’m pretty sure it was an Amazon order — I got a USPS tracking number, but whenever I entered it on the USPS website, it said the number was unknown. But when I tracked my order from Amazon.com’s website, it showed my order moving out of their facility and on its way to Hawaii (slowly).
Finally, USPS tracked the shipment — it showed pickup in Aiea and delivery to me. Amazon was using another service to take it to Aiea where it was dropped in the mailbox, or something like that, for the last day’s journey to me.
In other words, they and other vendors seem to be using a discount service with rates and conditione different from the services you see if you go to a UPS website as though you were going to ship something yourself.
There are a couple of re-shipping services on the Continent which will receive your packages and re-send. I’ve used three of them with success. But it does add more cost to the order, often wiping out any savings. But not always. And when I needed something I was willing to pay the extra to receive, I was very happy to do it.
One more. I ordered something from 47th Street Photo via Amazon. They had rates posted to ship to Hawaii. It was a camera gimmick I couldn’t get elsewhere at that price, if at all. But when I got to the last checkout screen, the shipping had gone up to UPS 2nd Day Air, costing many times the price of the gimmick. The much cheaper rate posted on 47th’s Amazon shipping rate page was not selectable.
So I emailed the vendor through the Amazon website and got a message to call. I did. They offered to send it if I ordered direct, not through Amazon. I could do so right then and there on the phone. I let Amazon know about that, because it seemed to me like it might be a kind of bait-and-switch. No reply from Amazon.
For me, Amazon is a love-hate relationship. I’m not sure they care about the customer (me). 47th Street Photo is no doubt a big profit center for them. Who cares about a guy ordering a cheap thingy from Hawaii.
I lived on the Big Island for 5 years and trying to find a merchant that would ship Priority Mail was always an issue.
For those occasions when a merchant is being difficult, check out Aloha Forwarding (www.alohaforwarding.com). You can have your order sent to them, and they’ll forward the package to you using Priority Mail. They charge a small handling fee, but they don’t upcharge on postage and they get commercial rates. As long as you understand the intricacies of how the Postal Service charges and don’t try to forward something light and bulky, you can save money.
We also can’t ship out of Hawaii. Local businesses are simply not on a level playing field with the Manland. No wonder our economy is in the dumps. It would be a simple fix for Congress, but our pols ignore the problem.
When I tried to order thermal cups last spring, Amazon told me no shipping to Hawaii. Went to the vendor’s website and read the same thing. Emailed the vendor directly, they apologized and allowed me to place the order directly through them. All of this vendor’s on-line sales move through Amazon, so it seems like they are bound by Amazon policy. However, I was pleased they found a work-around.
Can’t ship out of Hawaii?
No prob, Bob (Burl). We have an equivalent discount rate for shipping from Hawaii as we do from our main warehouse in Austin, TX.
The reasons we don’t ship from here:
1) the fedex ‘last pickup’ is way too early.
2) there is *NO* overnight from Hawaii to the mainland. (There is overnight from the mainland to Hawaii.)
3) warehousing costs are HUGE here
4) union labor: less work for more cost.
When shipping overseas or abroad is a problem, a forwarding service is probably in order. I used Shipito when I was studying abroad. Just purchase something as you normally would online and they will forward it to you. Check them out. http://www.shipito.com
Walmart, LL Bean, Orvis, JC Penney’s and Norm Thompson will ship via US Postal service and will ship to Hawaii, Alaska and US territories. So does Zappos. Walmart is the most difficult to order from of the above.
The food issue is mysterious: maybe Amazon thinks the state to state prohibitions on certain fruits, vegetables, etc. will be changed as a shipment is in transit.
Also, the office cultures at UPS and Amazon might be too comfortable in their cubicles to actually talk to each other about change. It’s hard to know whether UPS is following Amazon’s lead or vice-versa. Which makes it way too easy for them to blame each other.
I lost 50.00 to Amazon by trying to download a gift certificate. Incredibly, I got an error message that read: “This balance has been credited to another account.”
No amount of emailing or calling resolved the loss of funds. Nobody I communicated with even acknowledged that misapplying $50.00 of a customer’s money could possibly be a problem.
Wow. Maybe Amazon plans to use my 50 bucks to pay for shipping your merchandise to Hawaii.