When you pay for the additional $35 for shipping you pay for the convenience of receiving the animal at your front door. Should it be included in the price of the animal?
I'm inclined to say Yes myself... from a buyers perspective anyway...
If you purchase something off Amazon or Stales.com or any of the websites that assorted retail organizations have put up, there's usually a shipping charge (although sometimes they hide it on purchases over a certain amount, by adding it to the cost of the item (s) to begin with, the markup covering the shipping and letting them use the word "free"), if the item cost a certain amount, the shipping cost a certain amount... The total price at the end of your transaction reflects the combined amounts, the last number the customer sees when deciding on the purchase is the total cost including shipping, handling, box charges and anything else that's being tacked on...
The same goes for most retail shops... The markup is included in the price. They had to get the animal from someplace before they could sell it, very few can breed ALL their own animals... That means they paid shipping someplace too... The convenience of being able to see the animal before purchase or obtain it close to your home in the space they rent/own is certainly charged for... which is why retail markup is higher... greater overhead.
The point is... the buyer is out a certain amount, it doesn't matter that they threw away the box the animal was shipped in, they paid, at someplace in the price, for that box. The same way they paid, someplace in the price, for the heat lamps that retailer is using. The only way this would fail to be the case is when an animal is being sold at way below production cost.
I think we tend to look at it seperately for a few reasons... First and foremost, because of the need for FAST shipping and better packaging with live animals, the cost is increased and becomes more noticeable. Take the example of the thirty dollar snake that requires $35 to ship that was given originally... it just doubled the apparant cost, which stands out. Since other package types can be shipped with a bit less attention to how they are handled and not suffer any damage, or can stay in the mail for 3-5 days and you don't need to worry about watering that new digital camera you just ordered, the shipping is a LOT cheaper. I also think that most everyone who really frequents Fauna has been a seller at one time or another, some far more frequently than others but even the individuals (me for example) who are way more of a customer than they are a dealer have probably sold something at least once... So it's easier for "us" to see the cost that ends up coming back into our pockets after a sale as being the number of focus...
Even though I said it the first time I responded, I want to add it again, simply to keep my thoughts complete...
This all changes when multiple animals are being shipped. It changes in two ways... first, the dealer SHOULD reduce the cost appropriately when multiple animals are purchased... It doesn't really matter if the animal is sold "Shipped" or if it's sold "Plus $X shipping" when there are additional animals all going the same place, in the same box, it should reduce those costs. It may cost $35 to ship that one juvenile kingsnake... but shipping two kingsnakes in the same box would only cost $37-40 or so because of the extra weight (This would obviously change for really heavy species, adult burms, 'condas, 'tics, gators, really big varanids... but they are the exception and wouldn't be boxed together anyway) and the seller's charge should reflect this... If you get a package that you just paid $70 to have shipped to you ($35 x 2) and the front says $37... you'll want your $33 back. This is compounded as the number of animals goes up. And... like I said above, since it becomes more of a pain than it's worth to calculate in the shipping cost as the number of animals goes up, the exact increase for each depends on the animal's weight... there's usually a sort of "flat fee" to purchase overnight delivery to start which would have to be divided evenly between the number of animals, as would the cost of packing materials, unless one or more of the animals involved was packaged differently, which would alter the cost, then after the base rate and materials are divided up, the weights of the animals must be found and represented as a ratio of the total weight of the package with the shipping materials again difided evenly when not of different weights and the cost of the individual animals found based off those ratios of the total cost left after the other costs are found and then added to the animals in question for complete accuracy... which would often leave you having paid thirds of a cent for individual animals and I'm pretty sure nobody is obsessive enough to go through the bother of finding the number, just so they can tell you the cornsnake they just bought was exactly Thirty one dollars, eighty four and four hundred sixteen thousanths cents.
So multiple animals shipped together represent a seperate matter just because it's more trouble than it's worth... but single animals, the service cost is part of the cost of the animal, you're paying for the snake, if obtaining the snake means shipping it, that's part of the total cost of the snake... otherwise you could pay for it and have it sit 2000 miles away in the care of the original owner, they could stick a sign on it saying it belonged to you until you go and pick it up.
