An Update on Shipping Prices

We’ve recently updated our options for shipping. In this blog, we’re going over what changed, why, and what we’re doing to keep costs low for you. 

TLDR; flat rate prices are going up, but we’re doing what we can to keep your costs low when possible, including defaulting to lower cost carrier rates when possible. 

Flat Rate Changes 

We’ve made a few changes to our standard flat rate shipping options: 

The standard flat rate covers all items that ship out of Pangea Reptile’s Zeeland warehouse excluding live animals and items covered under the “Fragile and Bulky” flat rate. Our “Fragile and Bulky” flat rate includes items including but not limited to: T5 Light Bulbs and Fixtures, Large Wood Decor Products and Bulk Cork, reptile enclosures, and kits that include enclosures.  

Please note that because they are not covered under our standard flat rate, free shipping at $125 does not apply to items in the “Fragile and Bulky” rate, live animals, or any items fulfilled by a third party partner. 

The “Why” 

All of this begs the question: “why are you changing your shipping prices?” The short answer is that shipping costs have increased significantly while our flat rate has remained steady. With the rising cost of fuel in recent months, our shipping costs have skyrocketed, and while we’d love to keep costs low for our customers, it was simply not sustainable for the continued operations of our business. This was especially true for our large and bulky items, which is why we added a separate pricing tier for them.  

How We’re Keeping Costs Low 

We still want to keep shipping costs as low and fair as possible for our loyal customers. So, we implemented a few things to keep them down where we can. 

We mentioned it earlier, but we have implemented free flat rate shipping for standard items on orders $125 or greater. We know it hurts when you’re building a big order and have to pay shipping on top of it, so we wanted to give a break where we can. For these orders, it is sustainable for us to give this break, so we’re choosing to give back here.   

We also split Fragile and Bulky shipping flat rates from the standard ones to give a break to customers with smaller shipments. If we had not split these rates, we likely would have had to increase our base flat rate further to compensate. By splitting these out, we were able to keep the base flat rate as low as possible. 

In a similar vein, as our team discussed how to make shipping costs sustainable, we considered multiple options including offering free shipping but increasing item prices across the board. This is a fairly common technique, but we felt it went against our company DNA, and decided to go with a more transparent shipping fee. We’ll need to update prices on individual products from time to time as other costs increase, but we want to avoid storewide price bumps whenever possible.  

Finally, we’ve added the ability to select more carrier rates at checkout. This way you can comparison shop the rates based on the weight of your order to see what Pangea is getting charged for your shipping at various rates and even better, if any carrier rates are cheaper than our flat rates, they will be automatically selected at checkout to save you money. So, if your package happens to be able to ship cheaper than the flat rate for your items, you can get an extra deal. And if it is more expensive than the flat rate, that simply means we’re taking care of that extra cost for you!