Post by EXO on Dec 11, 2021 8:47:04 GMT 8
Life's not meant to be easy when you're trying to operate a website.
BLURB.COM - WHY IS ORDINARY SHIPPING SUDDENLY UNAVAILABLE?
Blurb.com is the San Francisco-based publisher of our range of self-published books. Corregidor Historic Society has about twenty titles self-published through them, directly and indirectly.
Lately, I have released two hardcover books with them because they publish an economy line which allows a softcover version to be brought to market at a selling price under twenty bucks.
These books are actually printed in Australia for the Australian market, and printed in the US for the American market. For the Australian market, they ship through Australia Post. Well, until lately.
Recently, well in time for Christmas, I ordered four of these book versions, and they were shipped via ORDINARY POST to me at $8.99 each. That's fair. Actually Australia Post did a creditable job delivering them. No complaint there.
I was about to order some more when Blurb removed ORDINARY POST from the Shipping Choice Page, and the only options became URGENT SHIPPING at $47.99 and EXPEDITED COURIER at $31.99. You heard me right. From $8.99 to $31.99 and $47.99 to get delivery of a book that sells at $20.00.
With those shipping prices, you'd think they could have afforded a better excuse than the cringeworthy lameness that Blurb Customer Support gave me - "With the pandemic in some areas some of the shipping options, we used to have available have been temporarily suspended and will be added back in when we are informed that it is reliable once again. Once these shipping options are available we will offer them again."
How smegging lame is that! They expect us to believe that Covid in Australia causes them to be unable to post their products by ordinary post! For that they get my Smegger of the Week Award.