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January 11, 2010 - 3:43am
#1
Stereophile recordings delivery charge (rant)
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John,
Actually I just found a letter while browsing a back-issue (October 2008) asking this very question to which you responded citing "contractural obstacles" which you hoped would be resolved "before the end of the year".
Has the situation moved on at all? If not, could you please just find a way of reducing the delivery charge?
One reason I bought my copy of this CD on Amazon. The shipping charge was US$6 to new zealand as against US$20 they wanted from stereophile to new zealand.
How ironic. The last CD I bought on Amazon (JM's fave Robert Shaw interpretation of Brahms's Requiem) turned out to have been delivered all the way from New Zealand - for
Interesting. Stereophile almost lost a sale because of the high shipping rate, but they don't mind letting Amazon ship their product for less. Perhaps they should open an Amazon Store and stop selling direct. Mr. Atkinson?
Good point, bertdw. However I was stubborn and had the benefit of a very helpful heads-up. I dread to think of the countless sales Stereophile has lost to international customers who, like me, got to the checkout and just said "WTF"??
So in my mind this begs two questions:
The sad thing here is that this is really just the tip of the iceberg. Such a download facility could be used to offer all manner of tracks (foc or charged) illustrating things like:
Stereophile is, at some fundamental level, all about optimizing the reproduction of music. Musical examples of these optimizations (on which JA and several other staffers are respected experts) would IMO add a completely new dimension to the magazine.
You must not know that Amazon gets a huge shipping discount because of the volume they ship. Not all persons and businesses are charged the same rate by FedEx, UPS, etc. I sent a box cross country to my son's family at Christmas. It cost $44.00. If my employer (a school district) could have shipped it, they'd pay $17.00, according to our warehouse coordinator. And we are small time shippers.
I don't know if Stereophile adds a nominal handling fee or if Amazon has international shipping points. But it's certain the biggest shippers get very friendly volume rates.
We get as high as 60% off on world shipping, depending on our usage per billing period and specific destinations.
Each contract for discounts is negotiated separately for each business by a sales team that is pitching for your shipping contract.
Ping-ponging (playing them off against each other) between UPS and Fed-ex sales teams and switching a few times can drop one's rates..IF their shipping levels are high enough to warrant those visits by the respective sales teams.
So you can see why the 'big guys' get such decent rates.
But here's the interesting thing, I don't generally buy from Amazon. I usually buy through Amazon, but from 'Marketplace Sellers' as they are almost always cheaper. The point is that Amazon (unlike, say, ebay) sets the delivery rates for different types of goods in order to prevent 'margin recovery' on the shipping. At one time at least there were scammers on ebay selling things like bulk packs of brand-name batteries for 99
JA,
Any updates here? I would love to understand if you are making any progress with being able to offer your recordings as hi rez downloads.
Interesting, Freako. Very interesting indeed.
Just dry-run ordered Flutter and Wow from amazon.co.uk and I get a delivery charge of
I am going to have one more run at this since JA has once again teased us with a mention of the 24/88.2 master of While You Are Alive in his review of the NAD M2 in the current issue.
What say you JA? When can we get our hands on it?
I get 75% discount on shipping
I like the idea that we should be able to buy these as high resolution downloads. Now, that would be really a step forward.