Oh the games marketers play. Over the past several days many a community member has excitedly emailed, commented or posted that Free Shipping is back on Anthropologie’s website. It’s not, but here’s why you might have Free Shipping anyway…
Anthropologie has clearly heard the complaints that shipping on its website is too expensive. The vocal crowd (majority? minority?) has said that free shipping should be around all the time with no minimum. Anthro doesn’t seem to agree with that take. So instead they’re testing a bunch of different shipping offers among a small group of customers to see which one converts the best.
This means that some people are seeing special shipping offers on Anthropologie’s website. But not everyone. Below are the offers that have been reported to me so far. (I can’t verify the accuracy of these so I’m just reporting them).
– Flat rate shipping of $8.95 on any order
– Free Shipping on orders of $125+
– Free Shipping on any order
– Free Shipping at $150, Flat rate shipping of $8.95 below that
– Free Shipping at $175, Flat rate shipping of $8.95 below that
These have no expiration date but are not likely to be permanent. My guess is Anthropologie will choose one of these options to launch full-time to everyone in July. Does this explain why June birthdays are not getting free shipping with their anthro birthday discount?
One thing to be aware of: in some cases people who see a special shipping offer have noticed that it disappears once you log into your anthropologie.com account. So if you see a special offer be sure to double-check your cart during checkout to ensure a shipping charge hasn’t suddenly appeared. Otherwise you may be in for a rude awakening when your order confirmation email has the regular shipping charge.
My vote for shipping offers? Free Shipping all the time on orders of $100+. Here in NYC clothing under $110 isn’t taxed. So it would really allure me to place more orders from the website if I knew I could avoid both taxes and shipping. I’d also really like a choice of shipping service. I’ve noticed more of my Anthropologie orders are coming via UPS Mail Innovations lately, which is akin to Pony Express. Or a snail. It’s crazy to me that I can get Shopbop orders in 36 hours from Wisconsin but Anthropologie orders from North Carolina take 10 days. (Nordstrom is equally bad for me, any orders from their West Coast warehouse take 7-10 business days which is an eternity!) I even had a few orders come via First Clas Mail, which is just insulting. Priority Mail is my preference, regular UPS is acceptable, UPS Mail Innovations and LaserShip need to be killed by firing squad.
Are you in one of the Free Shipping test groups? If so what is your offer? Are you seeing different offers on your computer, laptop, tablet and phone? Does the offer still appear once you’ve logged into your anthropologie.com account? What do you think Anthropologie’s shipping charge should be?
