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<\/p>\nThe thing about online shopping is sometimes the listed price doesn\u2019t match what you actually end up spending–and this is not just true for subscription boxes, by the way. As long as something needs to be shipped to you, you\u2019re probably going to have to deal with some sort of added fee or tax.<\/p>\n
With subscription boxes, you have a little bit of leeway to feel okay about hidden or additional micropayments, because often a subscription box is guaranteed to contain a collection of items with a combined total retail value that\u2019s double or triple what you spent on the monthly fee to get it. How do you know when you\u2019re getting shafted, though? At what point do you cross the line between just accepting that this is how things work and demanding to know what all those extra charges mean and where all that extra money goes?<\/p>\n
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We here at Comparakeet believe in the old adage: forewarned is forearmed. If you know what you should be paying for when it comes to online purchases, it\u2019s easier to spot when something doesn\u2019t quite fit. Research and find out what you actually need to shell out money for beyond the actual price tag. This will\u00a0also make it easier for you to decide if you really do want to subscribe to monthly\u00a0box service!\u00a0Below is a short primer on the usual suspects.<\/p>\n
This is the most common fee that gets added to the price of subscription boxes. Shipping fees are easy to understand: Whenever you send a letter via mail, the post office charges you a shipping fee to cover the cost of transporting it from the post office to the address of the recipient. Subscription boxes cost more to transport because of their size, which bumps up the shipping fee that companies need to cover before it arrives at your doorstep.<\/p>\n
Handling fees require a little bit more context; but basically, it reflects what the company thinks of as the cost to prepare each box for shipping. For example: if an employee can prepare six boxes in one hour and they get paid an hourly rate of $12, the handling cost is more or less $2, or $12 divided by six. Other factors do add to it, but generally this is how it\u2019s calculated. Note that it shouldn\u2019t include the production cost–that should instead be part of the retail price.<\/p>\n
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It\u2019s important to note that shipping and handling fees will be naturally be higher for items that need extra care. This is because of precautions needed–from extra padding for fragile products to cold shipping for perishable goods–to ensure that the packages get to you undamaged. Whether or not subscription box services bundle this in with the monthly fee they collect from you or not is entirely up to them, but usually\u00a0this is the case, likely\u00a0for\u00a0convenience.<\/p>\n
As an aside, when choosing a subscription box service that involves these special conditions, it\u2019s a good idea to make sure that you know what their return and refund policy is just in case a subscription box does not survive transport with all items intact.<\/p>\n
Sometimes–often when a company ships only to local addresses–you\u2019ll find phrases like \u201cfree shipping and handling\u201d prominently displayed along with the price. Bespoke Post<\/a>, for example, offers this to potential subscribers living in the lower 48 states of the US. Often this added bonus to subscription\u00a0means that the company has calculated and set a box price that covers handling and shipping costs on top of production cost and a margin of profit.<\/p>\n Sales tax is easy to understand in theory but hard to understand in practice. Put simply, it\u2019s a fee paid to a local governing body for the sale of a certain item or service. The troublesome thing about this is that sales tax has many forms and ways of being enforced across different areas. It\u2019s actually more common internationally to have broadly applied value-added taxes–we’ll touched on that later, too.<\/p>\n In the US, conventional sales taxes vary from state to state–and sometimes even from county to county and city to city. And because\u00a0the location of the company matters to the application of the sales tax, subscription box services may require people from one or more locations\u00a0to pay sales tax; while other locations remain exempt. For example:\u00a0When you subscribe to Gentleman’s Box<\/a>, you don’t need to pay sales tax unless your boxes ship to a Michigan address. In contrast,\u00a0Birchbox<\/a>\u00a0subscribers from multiple states–California, Massachusetts, New Jersey,\u00a0New York, Tennessee, Virginia, Washington–are bound by law to\u00a0pay sales tax.<\/p>\nSales Tax<\/h2>\n
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