Shipping Kona Coffee
22 April 2007
Living on a Kona coffee farm in the middle of the Pacific means we're
sensitive to the cost of shipping stuff through the mail. For
example, say we need something really important like a gargoyle shaped
bottle opener. If we can't find it at the local Walmart then we
have no choice but to order it off the Internet and wait for it to arrive
in the mail. That's not as easy as it sounds. After spending all
day tending to the coffee trees under the hot Hawaiian sun, Kona coffee
farmers can sometimes get a little cranky, especially when they're told
shipping to Hawaii takes two to three weeks when any self respecting
Kona coffee farmer knows it really only takes two to three days.
It's difficult to not yell when told shipping will be $35 for that
$19.95 item yet it would obviously fit nicely in a USPS priority mail
flat rate envelope for only $4.60. Stuff like that can make a Kona
coffee farmer wonder if a gargoyle bottle opener is really worth
the effort.
Here at Kona Earth, we hate companies that do a poor job of shipping their
merchandise. We really, really hate companies that charge a "low
low" price then turn around and stick it to you in the shipping and handling
costs. A little bit of padding for shipping and handling is reasonable,
after all, there are materials, time and labor involved. We admit that
we pad our prices a tad. It costs us $4.60 to ship a pound of coffee
and we bump the price up to $5. That 40 cents covers our "shipping
and handling" expenses which consists of printing and attaching the label to
the box then carrying it down to the mailbox. Even considering that
printer ink is more valuable than gold, and our
mailbox is really far away, there's no reason to charge $35 for shipping
and handling.
Most shipping costs are determined by weight yet it is common practice
to charge the customer a tiered shipping rate based on the total dollar
amount of the purchase. With this method, shipping a one ounce
gold necklace can be more expensive than shipping a fifty pounds box
of bolts. The problem is that most online shopping carts don't
understand that a necklace can fit in a tiny envelope while a heavy box
of bolts requires more robust wrapping. To solve this dilemma,
many merchants simply overcharge for shipping in order to cover any
possible scenario.
Thanks to the brilliance of our Kona Earth programming department, our
custom built online shopping cart is intelligent. Every item we
ship has been entered into our database. A complex top-secret
algorithm designed by gnomes then computes the exact cost of shipping
based on what items are being purchased. For example, the website
knows that two half pound bags of Kona coffee will fit in a U.S. priority
mail flat-rate envelope while three bags will not. Even better, it
knows that three bags of dark roast Kona coffee and eight bags of medium
roast (eleven bags total because of our totally awesome
Buy ten bags and get one free offer)
will fit in a single box while four bags of dark and seven bags of
medium will not. This is because coffee beans expand as they are
roasted so dark roast beans are slightly larger than medium roast beans
and hence fewer bags of dark roast will fit in a single box. Not
many websites are smart enough to know that but ours is. Go ahead
and try it, you'll see that if you buy a gift basket and two half pound
bags of Kona coffee, it will all fit in a single box ($8.50 shipping)
while a gift basket and three bags of Kona coffee requires two boxes ($17
shipping).
So think of us next time you're shopping online for important stuff like
replacement R/C helicopter parts or cool
swag for your latest geocache
(we know you'd never be shopping anywhere else for Kona coffee). When
you shop at Kona Earth, not only are you getting the best Kona coffee
possible, you're also getting the fairest shipping prices possible.
Note: Prices were accurate in 2007 but may have changed since then.
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