About Free Shipping
Nothing is every truly free, including shipping. In today's world of Amazon and their free shipping offers, it's important to remember that Amazon absorbs the cost of 'free shipping' with their local warehouses, Prime subscriptions, and massive volume. They are still paying trucks and carriers to deliver, but they absorb the cost in subscriptions and memberships.
In contrast, Posterprintshop is printing custom materials for you that are not stored in a local warehouse near your location. That means your custom printed materials must be shipped to you from our location, typically across the country, via UPS or USPS. UPS and USPS do not deliver packages for free, we have to pay postage or shipping for the various shipping methods they offer. The lowest price available for a small poster tube from USPS is $10 - $11, and that doesn't include the cost of the tube or packaging materials. If we were to offer Free Shipping across our portfolio, we'd have to mark up the price of printing and materials to absorb the shipping costs, so you'd actually still be paying for the shipping, it would just be hidden in higher poster prices. We prefer to offer you our best possible prices on printing, and then charge the actual price that USPS or UPS quotes for delivery to your address. When you see a price for shipping for these shipping methods, that is the exact price the carrier will charge us to deliver your package to your address, with no markup.
Occasionally, our system will present "Free Shipping" as an offer to new customers as an incentive with our hopes you'll try out our services and be so happy with the product you'll order again in the future. In these cases, we are paying for the shipping for you as our gift to you, it still wasn't "free". On small orders, we typically take a loss on the order just to pay for your shipping. We hope this investment earns your business for a future order!
Free Shipping Arrival Dates
First, it's important you check and are ok with the quoted "arrives by approximately" date shown on your order confirmation. This is the date shown to you as the approximate date this order will arrive during checkout. If for any reason this date is not acceptable to you or you must have your prints by a certain date, it's important you upgrade your shipping to a different shipping method ASAP (within the next several hours), before your order ships, as we cannot upgrade shipping after your order has shipped. We offer a variety of economical shipping methods ranging from overnight to 2nd Day Air and UPS Ground, and we only charge the exact amount the carrier charges for shipping to your address. You can use this link if you decide you need your prints earlier, to choose a faster shipping method: UPGRADE SHIPPING Here you can choose a new shipping method with an exact delivery date if needed.
As noted during checkout, USPS Free shipping is a great economical shipping method when you have a bit of time to receive your order and are not going to rely on accurate tracking.
Please remember the following so that you can avoid any frustration between now and when your order arrives to you:
The shipping of poster tubes and triangles are not like regular flat mail. They can take longer than normal to arrive because they must be sorted manually throughout the journey to you. Please avoid trying to think "it should only take 'x' amount of days to arrive to me". We already know approximately how long the package is going to take to get to you and that is the quoted 'arrives by date' shown on your order. Please do not start expecting the order before the date quoted
While 90% of packages shipped USPS do arrive by that approximate date, depending on your location, route, and the season, as well as USPS idiosyncrasies, it can take up to a week past that date to arrive to you. This was disclosed before checkout, and in our Terms and Conditions, but this email helps in case you missed it.
Your package is not considered late or lost until one full week past the quoted "arrives by" date on your order confirmation, and we are unable to answer questions or concerns about your order arrival until 1 week after that date. If you haven't received the order by your approximate date, keep watching the tracking, you should see it is 'moving' and typically arrives to you within several days.
USPS online tracking will not be accurate: because of the nature of the package, USPS often misses scanning of it at various stops, including pickup. The USPS system also does not know this is a tube or triangle, so their estimated arrival dates or notes about "arriving late" are not accurate. The only thing that is accurate is the arrival date we quoted you, shown on your order confirmation.
Keeping these points in mind will help you avoid frustration and monitoring the tracking of your package. It will get to you close to the date quoted.
If any of this is unacceptable or you must have your prints by a certain date for any reason, please upgrade your shipping ASAP.