I wanted to be the one to update you all on one of the biggest areas of feedback that we’ve received at Particle, our shipping prices. In 2017, our average domestic shipping cost was $12, with our new flat-rate shipping options, we’ve cut that by about 60%!
Starting tomorrow (Thursday, January 25th), all domestic (lower 48 states) will have flat-rate shipping based simply on the weight and how quickly you want your order.
Here’s a quick break-down of what it will look like:
Please note that for PO Boxes, there’s only 2 options for shipping, Economy (for less than 1lb) and Economy Plus (for over 1lb). If you need it quicker, you’ll have to choose a different, non-PO Box, address since we only have 1 option with our logistic partner to ship to PO boxes.
But Kevin, I live in Alaska, Hawaii, or one of the many great countries that aren’t the USA…
Don’t fret! We definitely have not forgotten about you.
Since international orders a bit more complicated, we’re still working diligently for you! Our amazing ops team is working their Excel voodoo, crunching numbers, and actively negotiating with our logistics company and numerous fulfillment companies to ensure we get the best options for you all! We’re anticipating having new/comparable options for you by the end of February 2018!
I’m happy to answer any questions you have about this, just post below!
I bought my last photon from your store on amazon, and it was covered with prime shipping. Was I buying from you and Amazon covered the shipping? I just want to make sure my money is going where it should
Essentially, Amazon is a distributor of ours. They purchase the devices from us and then re-sell them on their store. With all distributors, there’s margins involved and I honestly don’t know what ours is with them, but Amazon wouldn’t be as big as they are if they didn’t get a cut. Since they’re fulfilling the item, they can offer whatever shipping options that they would like, we have no say in that.
Overall, I’m happy that you’ve gotten a Photon from anywhere, but lots of people go directly through our store so we wanted to do our best to lower those costs.
Completely restructuring something like this was not a quick and easy process. Im aware of how many people were unhappy with how expensive shipping was (trust me, I’ve been doing support with Particle for 3.5 years) and I’m glad that we’ve gotten this improved. In the last year, our ops team has grown 500%, so we were finally able to take on this large of a project!
We’re going to keep working hard to get updated rates for our international and wholesale customers. I hope that you reconsider and give us another chance to earn your business though! We’d love to have you back.
I have the same issue as you @tdphan. I only have the Spark Core, and Particles that I had purchased on Kickstarter, as the postage to Australia is $55USD!! C’mon, seriously?
I totally understand your frustration. Like I mentioned, we’re aware of the high shipping costs, especially for international customers and we’re working hard to bring those rates down as low as we can. We’re expecting to have new rates for our international customers by the end of February, so keep an eye out for those! I’ll make another announcement here in the community and we’ll also send out an email.
It’s been a couple of years, but last time I ordered four photons back in 2015 it was USD$12 for shipping to Australia (just dug out the order in my inbox). Not sure if a special was on.
Otherwise I use a freight forwarder, but starting price is usually around US$20+.
I hope particle doesn’t end up with i-parcel though. I’ve yet to have a single trouble free delivery with that service.
I wanted to update everyone here and perhaps anyone new who’s reading this for the first time! We’re a couple days late, but we’ve updated the international shipping prices in the retail store!
We looked at doing flat-rate shipping for all international orders but found that it wouldn’t really save the majority of customers money (since we’d need to average all international rates). Instead, our awesome Ops’ team has renegotiated terms and international orders see on average of 30% reduction in shipping costs starting today!
As always, if you have any questions, please don’t hesistate to let me know! Make sure you refresh your browser or maybe clear cookies if you’re seeing the same prices as before!
Yeah so 30% reduction is great. I’m sure you spent lot of time fighting for that.
But the shipping to France is still twice the price of the photon. I don’t get why I would pay $36 to ship a $19 item.
I understand that it is a very quick FedEX delivery with all the fancy tracking etc. But I would prefer an option for a week delivery (even 2 weeks it’s fine) at a normal price.
Everything is based on weight, so ordering anything less than 2.9lbs will be the same rate. As you know, our products are quite small, so quite a bit of our products can fit in that < 2.9lb range and you’ll still see the same shipping price.
It’s interesting to note that BHphotoVideo quote a minimum charge of A$12 for small packages to Australia using DHL compared to $35 minimum for small Packages from Particle using Fedex.
Not sure if this is a volume issue but I suspect not. There is a huge difference between cost of shipping the same package using DHL or Fedex.
Interestingly enough the service provided to Australia by DHL has in my experience been significantly better than that provided by Fedex.
