🚀 go-pugleaf

 Raised Eyebrow <donotreply@here.com> wrote:
> (I never knew you had to pay tax on shipping and handling, but hey, you 
> learn something new everyday.)

Actually, that comes about in part from companies who send you stuff for 
"free + $3.95 S/H". A lot of those products really only cost about $.40 
to $.50, and fulfillment was only about $.30 with postage being about 
$.50 or so--leaving about $2.60 in profit for the "free" product.

(Those little battery powered "stick-on" lights you see on television 
advertised as a "$60 value for 6 lights" really costs about $.30 per 
light to manufacture and ship in bulk to the United States, so getting 
them for "free" plus $3.95 shipping and handling plus filling out a 
'survey' translates to about a $1.80 profit. This doesn't count the 
$2-$5 marketing firms will pay per completed survey.)

It doesn't sound like a lot of money. But one company I did some work 
for was making *millions*, in part by selling products  (like the lights 
above) for "free." (I'm not saying Metrowerks is making a 
profit--chances are, as they probably don't have the infrastructure to 
handle bulk fulfillment cheap, the $9.95 probably is close to 
representing their real fulfillment costs.)

Because so many people were hiding the cost of goods and a small profit 
in the "shipping and handling", many states started asking for sales tax 
on products which are "free" if you pay "shipping and handling," in 
order to close a potential loophole for avoiding sales tax. Otherwise, a 
company such as Amazon could potentially give away all of it's music CDs 
for free--just include $19.95 S/H per CD...

-- 
- William Woody                woody@alumni.caltech.edu
  The PandaWave                http://www.pandawave.com
  In Phase Consulting          http://www.pandawave.com/inphase