> >> Does anyone know of other places you can order a handful of
> >> components (i.e. no minimum order) and not pay a hefty shipping
> 
> Glitchbuster charged "$1.95 shipping on most orders."

Can I comment from my experience as a small online shop? 

If you run an online shop for a living you must get your profit, one way
or the other. Otherwise you can't pay the mortage, and/or your wife will
tell you to get a job, so either way you must close down the shop. You
can get your profit from margin on the products or from an order fee.
The choice is arbitray, but simple fact is that there is a cost
(timewise, administration, packaging, postage) associated with an order,
however small. So a small or zero order fee makes the big orders pay for
the small ones. So (all other things equal) an online shop with a small
or zero order fee will be more expensive for large orders than one with
a larger order fee (or a minumum order amount, that has the same
effect). 

My choice is to charge a fixed per-order fee to cover postage,
administration, packaging, handling time, etc. (but this fee does depend
on the destination: NL, Europe, World) Like all simple schems this
favours some at the expense of others, but a more fine-grained scheme
would cost me more to set up and maintain, and that time must be payed
for too...

Wouter van Ooijen

-- -------------------------------------------
Van Ooijen Technische Informatica: www.voti.nl
consultancy, development, PICmicro products
docent Hogeschool van Utrecht: www.voti.nl/hvu
 

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