Yesterday my boss complained to me about another person complaining to her about the shipping costs on this big purchase the department is making. The person is stunned to find the cost to ship a container's worth of furniture from Wisconsin to San Francisco - including setup - couldn't and shouldn't possibly be $3,000 dollars.
What did she expect? Free?
I remarked to my boss that Amazon Prime and its free shipping (within two days, no less) have completely ruined people's expectations of what delivery should cost. Just because you can get laundry detergent shipped for free doesn't mean goods of a certain size (say, furniture) can costs equally nothing for UPS to get it to your home.
I'm paying 10 grand for the television: can't you throw in delivery for free?
Amazon Prime sets a bad precedent in other marketplaces as well. Anybody that have tried selling items secondhand (or even firsthand) knows that offering free shipping is huge incentive to entice customers to buy.
So they eat the cost.
I'm starting to think one of the reasons wages have been stagnant is because the poor and lower middle class simply refuse to pay for quality work. They want things done as quickly and cheaply as possible. The rich understands the adage 'you get what you pay for', and have the monetary means to do so. Everyone knows 'Made in U.S.A.' denotes supreme quality but that tool set made in China is half the cost so let's go with that one.
I guess I'm one of those people because man do I love Amazon Prime.
Percipitations in May.