Ok, to some people this is going to seem like me being bitchy, but I'm used to Amazon so bear with me. I finally scraped cash together to get the Arsenal PDF+Book combo, but I didn't know about BattleCorps apparently horrendous shipping rates. I've never been charged more than a couple of dollars for shipping a book and it is usually free if the book costs this much. Since when is shipping on a single book 12 dollars at the lowest rate? I live in Northern Alabama so, I was wondering if the community knows of any other stores with access to the book that might have a more reasonable rate or if I just need to buy the PDF and scout E-bay and such to try and find a better deal?

Chris

Well, the actually Arsenal hardcover hasn't been released as of yet (March sometime, AFAIK), so you might have a hard time finding a store with it in stock.

Make sure you're ordering from the US and not, say, Canada or the UK.

Where is BattleCorps- the one linked to on shadowrun4.com- based?

Also, I know, Fortune, I meant to say just buy the PDF and wait and scout e-bay and stuff when it comes out.

Chris

Ahhh.

Now you've discovered the exact same reason I've stopped buying physical copies from BattleCorps. Asking me for shipping in the double digits for a FUCKING BOOK is goddamn retarded. I'll still buy PDFs from them, but asking me to add about 50% to the cost of my order is bordering on extortion. For my copy of Corporate Enclaves, I shopped around online until I found a site that not only gave me a MUCH cheaper shipping cost, but they even gave me a discount on the price of the book which almost covered the shipping cost in itself. And I might add, the book was brand spanking new, mint condition.

When BattleCorps starts dropping their absurd shipping rates, I'll start using them again. Until then, may my capitalist, free market tendencies lead me to better and better deals.

are those rates listed anywhere, or do one have to go all the way to the checkout to find out?

I had to go to the checkout.

Chris

Wow battlecrops is scamming people hardcore. I'd expect a sexy prostitute to hand deliver my copy and have sex with me for that much lol.

At least it's good for the local stores!

And the PDF and Hardcopy combo is a little pricey.

I mean for just the PDF I can understand that there are issues. I also understand that when the volume is low (and compared to most publishing RPG has very low volumes), you have to pay more if you want to keep them in business.

But for the PDF and hardcopy combo, they are basically charging almost twice for the same info.

I mean it is not like they can actually print something without a PDF.

DTFarstar: Can you PM me the shipping address that you were using? That shipping number does seem rather high -- I just did a test order of the same product, shipped to my address in Canada, and it was less than that.

cndblank: The PDF that we send to the printer is far different than the one we sell.

I'm in the same boat. Normally I'd just wait for it to hit the local comic shop, but we find having the hard cover books handy.

FWIW, my wife is an Amazon used book seller and $12 is what it would cost her to ship all of the SR4 books I have.

Do bear in mind that since Catalyst uses street dates instead of release dates for their new releases, mail ordering from Catalyst is probably slower than getting your book from your local store -- if you let them know that you want a copy, they should have no problems getting you a copy on street date. That's by design, and one of the reasons that we use street dates instead of the more nebulous release date system.

I know I had $10.66 shipping to have the book sent up to Canada.

they don't have arsenal listed yet, but stiggybaby.com has $4.95 for low end shipping when i checked augmentation. I assume it would be similar shipping. There's a question is arsenal hard or softcover? I forget if I knew.

odd amazon story, the side vendors (some) can be very tricky. Some are trying to sell the SR4 core book used from $45 - $100. Am I alone in thinking that is insane? It's almost as bad as the false price inflation that goes on on ebay.

I forgot about adding the water mark .

And you have to keep the Friendly Local Game Shops and the distributors happy.

Still SR4 is looking sharp.

Keep up the good work.

It's out of print, I noticed that this xmas. I figure that when the next 1.5 version prints and ships that the prices will fall.

I collect RPG books in general, even ones that give you cancer. I have found that a rather good site for perusal is noble knight games.

Noble Knight Games

If you are just interested on electronic format try rpgnow. They have alot of...stuff.

RPG Now

And for other stuff there is always amazon.

Actually, we don't watermark our PDFs on the BattleShop -- and please, trust me, the file we sell is far different from the file we send to the printer ... usually by a factor of at least 10x, filesize-wise.

Well, I went to Battlecorps and tried to order Arsenal, and also got $12.05 for shipping to Texas. This is rather upsetting, so I wrote a little letter complaining about the shipping price and how they lost my business until it goes down. (I hope I'm not the only one to send a complaint). Still this dashes my hopes of getting the book on the street date and being the first kid on the block to have one

I find it very frustrating... today I shipped a used copy of DND 3's PHB... about the same size as the BBB... total ship cost was $2.45. Granted that was USPS priority mail, but I just don't see this $12 markup.

Here's Amazon's prices for shipping:
Domestic Standard (4 to 14 business days) Domestic Expedited (2 to 6 business days) International Standard (3 to 6 weeks)
Books $3.99 $6.99 $12.49
CDs, Cassettes, Vinyl $2.98 $5.19 $6.89
VHS Videotapes $2.98 $5.19 $12.29
DVDs $2.98 $5.19 $12.29
Video Games $3.99 $6.99 Not available
Software & Computer Games $3.99 $6.99 Not available


Now I know it costs less than that because Amazon takes 20% of that from my wife when they give her a shipping credit to ship a used book. I highly doubt that I'm an international destination for Battlecorps to ship to.

@Xane
Actually, Adam said above that you have a better chance of getting the book on the street date by finding it at your FLGS. If you have an FLGS, go to them and ask them to order a copy for you. Then you just have to pick it up.

Unfortunately I have to drive like 3 hours for a gaming store.

xane what part of tejas do you live in? Im in Houston, specifically the Clear Lake area, more specifically down the stret from NASA
lol

Hey all,

Let me start off by saying that our goal is not to be the first stop for people looking to buy Shadowrun product.

Surprised?

Honestly, we feel that its better to buy the books from a local game store, and to support the local gaming community--your community--than it is to simply profiteer off of sales. That's not to say we don't want to sell you a book. There's plenty of people who don't have a local game store, or have had a bad experience with a store. But suffice it to say, we don't sell thousands of copies direct.

To that end, to make sure we're not competing against our partners in the retail segment of the market, we do not discount, and we charge full shipping plus a small handling charge since we don't have a full time shipping department.

So the meat of the post... I just did some calculations on the USPS website and wanted to share with you how our shipping works.

For these calculations I'm using Lake Steven's Washington as the origination (98258) and Fitchburg Massachusetts as the destination (01420). This equates to just about any address on the east coast for pricing, but feel free to use your own zip code to test the system.

A core book weighs approx. 2.2lbs after being boxed up. We use our own packaging because we ship multiple methods (UPS, Priority, International) and we can keep the overall costs down by ordering boxes bulk vs just a few at a time for each service. Our system actually tells the USPS servers how much the total package weighs (only weight though) and then reports back the total shipping cost to which we add the handling too.

You can see exactly what the USPS charges for a 2.2lbs box at the following link:
http://postcalc.usps.gov/MailServices.aspx...58&DZ=01420

Now, you may say "well, why not use Media Mail!". The problem there is we sell many items that are not legal to ship via media mail. T-Shirts, Patches, Badges, Minis, and more all cannot be shipped via media mail. The system has no way to tell with that level of granularity what is in each package to split out wether it can ship media or not. Eventually we may be able to get to a point where we can set aside the investment it'd take to customize the site, but right now any money going into the server is spent on developing Holostreets.

In the end we're always looking to refine how we ship, and always trying to get those associated costs down. But unlike companies like Amazon.com, we cannot subsidize the shipping, nor are we large enough to negotiate special rates with shippers.

Hopefully this helps explain things.