Editor’s Summary: You can now combine orders from Backcountry.com, Chainlove.com and Bonktown.com and have them ship all at once to save freight.
PRESS RELEASE: After years of incessant clamoring, fans of the Backcountry.com brotherhood of ODAT (one deal at a time) sites are finally getting what they want: combined shipping.
As of Tuesday, customers of Chainlove.com and Bonktown.com can stockpile their multiple one-at-a-time orders for up to seven days before the goods are packaged into a tidy box and shipped off together. Shoppers are charged shipping for the first deal, and then can add an unlimited number of items to the same order for a small additional shipping charge of $2.99 per item. And while they can’t share one cart between sites (yet), they can have a number of carts open on multiple sites at a time.
This is good all around  good for the wallet and good for the globe. By opting in, customers can reduce their (and the stores’) carbon footprint, and can save themselves some coin too. Just in time for the holidays.
We’ll go ahead and state the obvious here: shipping is kind of a big deal for online shoppers. If it’s too expensive, people skip out. Think about it. When was the last time you went into the grocery store, filled your cart, and then bolted? When was the last time you did that online?
A July 2009 PayPal survey of online shoppers sheds some light: 46 percent of responders said shipping charges were the primary reason for abandoning their carts. (Only 21 percent listed concern about security of credit card data. How awkward for PayPal.)
Third party surveys are cool and all but…
“Combined shipping has been the number one most requested feature for ODAT pretty much since day one of Steep and Cheap in 2005, and the cry has been louder in the past year through forums and Facebook,†said Sam Bruni, General Manager of ODAT for Backcountry.com. “We came up with ODAT. We even coined the term. But it’s taken us forever to offer combined shipping to our customers. Granted, the guy that invented the Internets (Al Gore?) didn’t dream up Google too, but this was embarrassing.â€Â
So, the people were heard. In the midst of a sucky economy (when people don’t just want to save, they need to), and right in time for the holiday season (when people don’t just want to buy, they feel obligated to) Backcountry.com’s ODAT sites finally figured out another way for the gear-addicted to defend their dollars.
