This isn't actually Amazon's shipping - it's Electronics Expo's shipping (small Sold By at the bottom of the screenshot). Amazon lets their third party sellers set their own shipping rates. Had this been actually sold by Amazon instead of AT Amazon, the two-day shipping would have been a lot less.

@Avi Oslick: My guess as to why it's here is so that we all can learn (or be reminded) to read the really, really fine print.

@chucklebuck: Agreed. In fact if the speakers had been sold by Amazon it would have free super saver shipping because it costs more than $25. I have been extremely satisfied with Amazon pricing, shipping, and customer service.

@Avi Oslick: So, you think this is an acceptable amount to pay for 2-day shipping on $50 speakers? It's a consumer issue, this is a consumer-issues website. Welcome.

Expedited shipping on anything that weighs more than a pound or two jumps exorbitantly.

Some office supplies I buy usually cost $20-ish to ship. If I didn't plan ahead, I could get them super fast for $123 in shipping charges. Non-story. Plan ahead.

This is a third party who sells through Amazon. Their shipping rates and policies are clearly stated if you click on their name. It states clearly "Sold by Electronic Expo". This is a non-story.

@takes_so_little: You're intentionally oversimplifying Avi's post. Why? Consumerist doesn't need you whiteknighting it. The story should've been more clear that it was a third-party vendor charging that much shipping through Amazon Marketplace.

@kateblack: That's more or less the gist of what's going on, especially so with larger items that have to be shipped.

If the OP had read Electronics Expo's shipping rates, they would have seen that their rate per pound for Two-Day shipping jumps to 8.99 per pound(!) from the standard fee of $1.95 per pound. Shocking I know, but that's why it pays to look at the rates before crying fowl.

Welcome to the free market. IF you don't like the price of one vendor, feel free to try another.

Enjoy your stay.

@zigziggityzoo: Pretty much this. Also, if you don't like the prices of any vendors, feel their margins are too high, and believe that they're running a business poorly- feel free to open your own retail store.

@William Brinkman: People who post "why is this on consumerist?" comments annoy me, and I'm not shy about that.

And why are you posting corrections? Consumerist doesn't need you executive-editing them! (See what I did there? I took that thing you said about ME, and I said the same thing about YOU!)

@zigziggityzoo: Um... isn't that what the consumer did, kindof? Thought the 2-day charge was too high, so didn't pay for it?

@Avi Oslick: Probably because Consumerist has a long history of making posts about inexplicable, and perhaps accidental, pricing? That would be my guess.

@William Brinkman: Aren't you whiteknighting Avi while simultaneously telling takes-so-little that Consumerist doesn't need him whiteknighting it? Which I guess means I'm whiteknighting takes. Whoops, I hope I haven't unintentionally entered a never-ending vortex of people whiteknighting each other...

Not Amazon, and Amazon Marketplace merchants can charge anything they want.... it's part of the contract... shipping may only cost $80 to 2nd air (2nd day air is NOT cheep), plus any handling charge the merchant is tacking on.

@nybiker: The fine print says that it's being sold by Electronics Expo, not Amazon.com, LLC. So I don't see why certain fine print is more relevant than others.

@takes_so_little: u mad bro? For a website that (re)prints news articles that are critical of businesses, you're sure getting mad when someone is being justly critical of a story and offering advice on how to improve it.

@takes_so_little: Thats fine, if the consumerist had said "Electronic Expo" may want to reconsider their two-day shipping charges. This is not the first time that the consumerist has blamed Amazon for a third party seller.

Yeah, this story shouldn't be about Amazon. Their 2-day shipping charges are based on a flat rate per item IIRC. This is about the seller.

@kidjesus: I'm addressing the issue at hand, and in that I accused this random person of oversimplification, which I feel is a fair accusation. This random dude doesn't know how to respond to the fact that the title reads "Amazon May Want to Reconsider Its 2-Day Shipping Charges," yet it isn't Amazon charging that amount. So, he dodges that point and asks a question that has nothing to do with the issue. I could care less about Avi. I just want people to honestly address the point brought up about the misleading title.

@pmcpa4: Actually, no. Amazon usually sets the price for different types of items.

For a book, it's $3.99 shipping, regardless of the weight of the book. I collect the same shipping fee whether I sell a 60 page booklet or a 500 page, 15"x15" coffee table book. So I have to be careful to either not sell books that cost more to ship than I can collect in shipping, or bump up the price to cover shipping losses.

Amazon also sets the expedited prices for Marketplace sellers.

It's the carrier who sets the real shipping costs.

These shipping charges are not that unreasonable. Shipping heavy object by air is expensive.

No story.

The point of the story is that a little patience is good on the wallet. I like it. No need to get all fire and brimstone on Carey and Brent for having spent <100 words and a screenshot on it.

This is a relevent story and it belongs on Consumerist.com, EXCEPT it should be about Amazon.com. Ive got Amazon Prime so I always make sure its sold by amazon. As far as the shipping prices on this article, shouldnt Amazon also limit shipping fees on all selling partners?

EVEN if this was Amazon, is it wrong to charge more for shipping than the actual product? Let's say I order 50lbs of brick and have it shipped 2nd day to me. Should I not expect to pay more for shipping than the actual costs of the brick?

I looked up the weight on this item and it appears the Boston Acoustics Horizon MM226 Multimedia 2.1 Speaker System is 18lbs. To ship this across country in 2 days according to UPS is $82.50. Still alot cheaper than what the buyer was quoted, but proves the point that 2nd day shipping isn't cheap and in this case IS more expensive than the actual item.

@takes_so_little: "Consumer Offered High Shipping Rate, Declines" wouldn't have been nearly as interesting a headline.

@zarex42:

Shipping 2nd Day Air is not that expensive. I lived in Hawaii for 6 years and ordered things online all the time because, let's face it, the only things on Maui that aren't shipped in, one way or another, are pineapples & coconuts.

Yes, it's more than regular Ground shipping, which by the way, as odd as it seems, is an option for shipping to Hawaii. The heavier the object, the more spendy the shipping. But $186 to ship computer speakers is ridiculous by any standard.

@William Brinkman: @y2julio: Isn't Amazon ultimately responsible for what happens in the Marketplace?

My guess its because they are speakers with magnets in them. If they magnets are strong enough they are not allowed to fly on planes, and must be shipped via truck.

@Posthaus: What do chickens have to do with this?

I went on to Amazon, found the Electronics Expo vendor, and loked up the shipping charges for each option:

Standard: Free

Two-day: $186.81 (still)

Expedited: $81.05

One-day: $209.81

I had to look up on the white set, not the black set, but all else was the same. Odd that the expedited shipping is cheaper.

@Coles_Law: *looked, not loked. Nothing like foiling good research with bad typos.

Evidently, that vendor *really* didn't want to have to go the post office that day.

@takes_so_little:

Why do you think the price of the item is relevant to how much it costs to ship? The item in question is 18 pounds and measures 19.9 x 16 x 13 inches. Most shipping companies price by a combination of distance, dimensions, and weight. A low-value, large, heavy item is going to cost more to ship than a high-value, small, light item. If he was being charged a ton for shipping a flash drive, I could see the outrage, but this is actually something that is expensive to ship.

And while it's not relevant, it looks like he got a pretty good deal - the one vendor that has the speakers in stock on Amazon now wants $150 for them.

@ReverendBrown: I agree that "patience is a virtue and cheaper" is a good point, but the article is titled in such a way that it makes Amazon look bad, when it should really name Electronics Expo as the party responsible for the massive shipping.

I was wondering why OP didn't ship the speakers to his new address. He wouldn't have had to load and move those too, the price would have been less, and he wasn't going to use them until he got there.

Regarding different pricing for different shipping options, a third-party seller may not have the same shipping systems in place that a large warehouse/shipping facility does. To do anything out of the usual flow of work would require someone to stop what they are doing, take care of this special request (pull the product, label the product, prepare paperwork for product, etc.), maybe drive to UPS or FedEx, and resume what they were doing. It may also reflect an expedited cost to deliver the product to them from their supplier so they can deliver it in 2 days.

Labor and added costs in a workplace are not free, so there are bound to be seemingly odd price structure differences for exceptions to the standard rules.

@Coles_Law: Huh. I was about to post and ask if they/anyone had seen the prices on the faster two. Thanks for the info!

@kateblack: Yes, large or heavy items shipped by ground are inexpensive. Large or heavy items shipped overnight or 2-day air are extremely expensive. There is a huge difference in shipping costs for air vs. ground.

Use the UPS ground shipment calculator/map to see how fast they get to you by truck. If they are within a certain area (no more than a few states away, depending on your area) cheap ground shipment often gets there just as fast as two-day or even overnight shipping.

@SalenaBabblerash: Depending on where said item is going, it could very much well cost that much in shipping.

Frankly, my brother tried to ship a video card as RMA once, the 2 Day Air price was quoted to be like $80 compared to like $15 for 5 day ground and a video card is nowhere near as heavy as speakers.

Even assuming the vendor has a discount with their shipping company, it costs some pretty obscene prices to get what amounts to almost overnight air service from courier companies compared to "standard" ground service.

@limiter: ... except free super saver shipping has absolutely nothing to do with two-day shipping. However incredibly stupid I think Consumerist and the OP are in this case (and I do: Consumerist for posting a misleading title and the consumer for knowing nothing about how shipping works), I only have more scorn for commenters like you who don't even give a cursory glance to the point of the article.

@krunk4ever: Yes, and a bulky item can often cost more to ship than the item itself. Vermiculite is one example. Weighs nothing, is pretty cheap, but because it takes up a huge amount of space, it costs a fortune to ship.

@chucklebuck: But that exemplifies exactly what I see as having gone wrong with amazon. I don't shop there anymore because everything I see is sold by a different vendor with separate shipping rates. I miss the old days when I could pick up some electronics, some random gift items, a couple of books, and a CD and actually have EVERYTHING sold by amazon and shipped for free via their super saver shipping (not the 2-day option, though it usually arrived within 2 days!).

This is one of the oldest scams in the book... A lot of computer stores dont proportionally charge for 2day.. They use it as a way to *make back* their discounted product costs.. theres a few mail order companies iv done buisness with who nail you to the wall in inflated shipping costs, this is no exception... There should be some premium for expidited shipping but it should be proportional to the actual shipping costs... Note this is not amazon itself, but a third party vendor on behalf of amazon...

Who wants to bet that the item mysteriously vanishes in transit if you opt for the "standard" shipping? ;)

@takes_so_little:
Um. I think that if you want something 2-day shipping either buy it from a vendor that has good 2 day shipping rates and pay more for the item(if you need to) or pay less for the item and wait a few days..

This is not amazon.com doing anything. Personally I only buy items sold by amazon not a 2nd party

@Chris Stone: I just noticed you replied to me. The facebook avatars are still blocking the addressee so I didn't my user id.

To your point: I really wasn't trying to say that there are different fine prints. Just that we all need to examine whatever fine print there might be.

And I see that the title has been changed to reflect "amazon merchant."

@kateblack: This is only true for books/media. They realize that other items vary greatly in size/weight so they let vendors set prices for shipping.

I started my boycott of Amazon during the holidays when they were letting their 3rd party sales fronts "price gauge" and sell $39 toys for $200. I can go to e-bay if I want to get price gauged and charged $186 for shipping.

Now I just use Amazon to see what books are coming out so that I can pre-order them from somewhere else...

@SalenaBabblerash: Ironically, Amazon Prime doesn't apply to speakers sold by Amazon! I ordered a set of computer speakers and it defaulted to 2-day, since I had Prime.... wound up with a $35 shipping charge!

That policy makes no sense to me, since we've ordered a Microwave and a Lawn Mower with overnight shipping for only $3.99 extra, and both of those weigh quite a bit more!

either most of the commenters failed reading comprehension, or the story has been edited... it says "two-day shipping from Amazon merchant Electronics Expo"... so for those of you that have no clue what Amazon is.. that line right there tells MOST EVERYBODY that the seller is Electronics Expo.

Auntie Edna says: how about NOT selecting 2day shipping and issue has miraculously resolved itself.