From time to time, we get this question, so I want to address it here:
No one offers free shipping.
Not Amazon, not the sunglasses shop, no one.
As long as shipping costs money, someone is paying for shipping. Some vendors build shipping into the cost of their products and claim to offer "free" shipping, but this means that their prices are artificially elevated to pay for shipping or they're eating the cost and hoping you'll buy more.
We ran some tests a few years ago, and it turns out that people just buy smaller stuff more often when we offer free shipping for all orders. Offering free shipping for bigger orders (over $50) actually decreased the number of orders we got overall. Why? I don't know. I just know that it was a lose-lose.
If we raise our prices artificially to cover the cost of "free" shipping, we'd have to raise our prices across-the-board (including on Amazon and for our brick and mortar retail partners). Our retail partners are already feeling the squeeze from Amazon and online business, so I'm not quite ready to do that. We could raise our prices just on Amazon and on our website, but people already complain vocally about our prices on social media, so I don't think that we'd be able to do that without some backlash.
So... what do we do? We charge for shipping. We show you where your money is allocated.
Shipping is a pass-through expense and is largely dictated by the price of gas. If you want better shipping prices, support gas efficiency and businesses who use renewable sources of energy in their fleet vehicles.
Or better yet, go visit one of our brick and mortar retailers! 💖
