The Truth Behind Bean Bag Chair "FREE SHIPPING"

Watch out for Bean Bag Chair sites Offering
FREE SHIPPING

If you have ever shopped for a bean bag chair, then you would know that shipping charges on these types of products are all over the place from "Free" to as much as $50 per item. At first glance, one might think "If I can get free shipping, why would I ever want to pay anything more?"

Well, before answering that, one needs to know exactly what does it cost to send a bean bag chair - they are light, but the boxes they ship in are extremely big. When shipping with UPS and FedEX, they bill you the more expensive of 2 factors, box weight or box size, called "Dimensional Weight". Unfortunately, bean bag chairs all get billed using the dimensional weight scale, which is a formula they put the box through to determine a higher (size of box) billable weight.

For example, let's take the XL Adult Beanbag from Bean Bag City. This chair weighs about 18 lbs when packaged for shipping. However the box to ship it in measures 44" x 24" x 24". UPS then divides this number by 194 to get a dimensional weight of 134 pounds. Actual weight is about 18 lbs - but UPS or will use the dimensional billable weight of 134 lbs. Thus, the fee charged is based on this 134lbs and not 18lbs. Fed Ex and US Mail are just as high because they also use Dimensional Weight. Try it yourself, go to UPS.com or FedEx.com and as soon as you enter box dimensions, the price for shipping sky rockets.

Back to "FREE SHIPPING". You get what you pay for. Do you honestly think these companies are getting "Shipping Free" from UPS and FedEx? Of course not! They might be getting a discounted quantity price, but if you try it yourself by going to one of the sites and entering the dimensions, you will see, there is no inexpensive shipping choice. So what these companies are doing to give you free shipping is they are marking up the product to cover their shipping. "So What!", you ask. Well, if you are considering buying 2 different bean bag chairs both for say $100, one with 'free shipping", the other has shipping of $45.00... are you really comparing 2 equal products? NO - The one with free shipping is really a $100-$45 (cost to ship) = $55 base price beanbag you are comparing to a $100 base price chair.

Now if a manufacturer only has $55 to make something vs. $100 to make the same product, they are going
to need to make up the difference by cutting cost somewhere. Usually the "free shipping" $55 base price chair will use thinner vinyl, cheaper, metal zippers, less reinforcement, less dense beans, cat gut thread instead of nylon, and so on. If they lessen the quality, the chair will not last as lomg. This is the same on any product. Take a house. With these tough financial times, you may find a home builder starving for work who agrees to build you a house for $60,000 under asking price. Now he is not going to want to lose $60,000, so what will he do? He will build that house using thinner insulation, lesser quality windows, lower quality materials, less efficient appliances, and so on. On the outside, this house is going to look exactly like all the rest, but did you really get a good value?

So be Warned... Watch out for other bean bag web sites offering "FREE SHIPPING". You are just getting a lower quality product marked way up to include the shipping expense.

If you want a high quality bean bag chair and durability is imperative, go to Bean Bag City and get a bean bag chair that will last 10+ years. http://www.beanbagcity.com/