uBid: Savings Shredded by Shipping Costs
Written: Dec 28 '01
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Pity the long-suffering Hawaii resident. He/she has to pay more for the convenience of online shopping than most. But at least other merchants are up front about it. Not uBid.
Here's the situation: Microsoft (by releasing Windows XP) and Visioneer (by not making new XP drivers) rendered my trusty USB scanner of three years obsolete. I decided to spring for a new scanner, but nor did I want to pay a king's ransom for it either.
I decided in November to get a Visioneer 4400 USB scanner. After doing the math and comparing total cost (including shipping, of course), I found that uBid would give me the scanner for about $3 less than I would find elsewhere. So I placed the bid, waited a few days, and found out I'd gotten it.
In all fairness, the process of placing the bid was convenient...you place the bid, give uBid your shipping information and credit card number, and you're good to go. Finding the item was comparable to other auction sites...you have to wade through a big list, but eBay is like that too.
But when I got the final notification from uBid, I got an unpleasant surprise. What I thought was $74 all-inclusive would turn out to be $84 with a $10 surcharge for Alaska and Hawaii deliveries.
There went my savings. I could have gotten it $7 cheaper someplace else. In the end, I (unintentionally) paid more for shipping ($43) than for the scanner itself ($41). Can we say, "ARRRRGHHH"?
It's bad enough that uBid requires that all items sent to Alaska and Hawaii be sent via FedEx Next Day. But that's not the issue; in fact I'm used to it. It's just the cost of living in an outlying state and I factor it into my cost. My issue is not even that uBid is trying to soak those of us who live in Alaska and Hawaii by trying to tack on that $10 shipping surcharge.
My issue is that uBid fails to give clear notice of this charge anywhere on their site, before you place your bid. It's definitely not on the page on which you place your bid, which is where it should appear. It doesn't even appear in the documentation on shipping rates. Nor was I warned about it when I placed my bid. You would think that the uBid program would notice I put "HI" in the state field and come up with some kind of red flag. Nothing.
As long as it's somewhere easily accessible, I wouldn't say a word. My bad. I should have caught it. But it's nowhere. Result: Poor Johnny Eskimo in Anchorage or Keoni Kanaka in Honolulu gets surprised by this surcharge and sees their savings vanish into thin air.
To be fair, you can get a good price with uBid. But outrageous shipping prices coupled with truly hidden costs cause me to question their credibility. I won't rule out buying something from them in the future, but they need to be more up-front about their shipping prices to get any more business from me.
Recommended:
No
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About the Author
Member: Keith Higa
Location: Kailua, HI
Reviews written: 94
Trusted by: 20 members
About Me: Computer instructor, choir director, marathon runner, and all-around crazy person, living in Paradise.
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