Well... so long, Well.ca!

This morning, after placing another order on one of my favourite websites, Well.ca, I received this disappointing message:

"Starting October 12th 2011, we have to implement a shipping charge on orders to remote locations. The charge is going to be $14.99 on orders above $300 and $29.99 on orders below $300.

Let me tell you that I really did not want to do this. I want to offer free shipping on all orders, especially for you in remote locations, but the math did not work. When we ship a $20 order, we were sometimes paying $50 in shipping and we can’t continue to operate our business that way. Our customers in remote locations are very important to us (you are some of our favourites!) but we are getting more and more orders for these areas. Unfortunately this is costing us a lot and as a small business we cannot continue losing money in this way."

The message was followed by a coupon code for one last order with free shipping before we're cut off. I suppose we're not actually "cut off"... but I am not interested in paying $29.99 to order my hygiene products, nail polish remover, shampoo and conditioner. I could buy a whole lot of overpriced items here or in Inuvik without going over that $30 shipping cost that Well has implemented!

I do understand where they're coming from... my order this morning was for six 1-litre bottles of hydrogen peroxide. And a bag of ginger candies. An explanation is probably required here- the peroxide is for soaking our polar bear skull to finish its cleaning regime. As you may know, peroxide is dirt cheap ($2.99/1-litre bottle), so my order came to about $30 including the candies. However, I'm sure the total weight of 6 litres of liquid was pretty heavy, and thus, my cheapskate order would have probably cost them more to send than the value of the products themselves (I know this from shipping hundreds of boxes back and forth since moving up here). So... I can't blame them, and I guess all good things must come to an end.

A similar situation happened with Costco.ca, wherein they used to ship virtually all of their products from their online store to the Arctic for free (there were a few exceptions, such as REALLY BIG TVs). During this period, we ordered a plethora of furniture, including our sectional couch which came in 4 individual pieces. We chose this specific one because no one else would fly a couch to Tuk. However, each piece of the couch retailed at about $299. When each piece arrived, a freight waybill was attached to them with the cost of shipping written on them. To get each piece from Yellowknife to Tuk was approximately $800. That doesn't include getting the pieces from the warehouse to Yellowknife by ground shipping. So our couch that retailed for approximately $1,200 had shipping fees of well over $3,200 associated with it, which Costco absorbed. Needless to say, soon after, Northerners could no longer order anything of significant size or weight from Costco!

Lets hope that we're not "cut off" by anyone else in the near future. All we've got left is Old Navy/GAP/Banana Republic, Amazon/Chapters/Indigo (all of the aforementioned have minimum order amounts to get free shipping), and some Costco products.