A business practice within our industry that gets on my nerves is our competitors offering blind with Free Shipping, but then once you get to the cart, they charging a handling charge. What the heck is this ‘charge’? When you go to the website of the biggest online window treatments retailer and are about to purchase you blinds you will see there is an Order Processing Charge of $4.95. In effect this allows them to pass on an additional charge to the customer for no good reason - and by the time the customer sees it, she has already made up her mind on the purchase, and likely just “accepts it”. But just because a customer accepts it does not make this practice acceptable.
May I suggest that rather than handling charge it should be called a “we-would-like-you to-pay-more, but-did-not-want-to-disclose-this-until-now-charge”.
Don’t misunderstand me, I am all for companies charging whatever they want. Profits enable growth, new jobs and
