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GaryE
The issues is simple, When we buy fish which have to be shipped to us, we are not paying to ship the fish we are mostly paying to ship the water they must be in. In 2002-03 I got fish sent to me or sent fish out for $30-$50 for shipping. I used to send out bristlenose plecos using Priority mail and they did fine. And then the time for that extended and even the USPS could not guarantee overnight arrival with their Express mail service. So the options became UPS and FedEx for the most part and their prices have been rising ever since. The trick to being a quality shipper is being able to use the least amount of water possible without it resulting in fish dying. Less water = a lower cost to ship.
Now buying a dozen tetras which might cost between $3.50 and $5.00 each meant you spent $42- $60. shipping at $30-$50 was a samllish issue, but prices these days for an small overnight box of fish starts at $100+. In order to make sense, an order needs to worth a few $100 in fish to justify the cost of shipping. For a shipper when a box is late or mishandled and the fish die, the buyer is entitled to either a refund or a replacement. Both a buyer and a seller prefer to have the least shipping cost possible to make the deal worthwhile for both sides.
My policy was you could have a full refund which included shipping or a replacement where you only paid for the shipping. Either way I had to eat most of the loss. While I am an excellent shipper, it means I take my time to do it right. I also worked with pretty expensive fish. In time I worked out a way to lower my prices and make buyers happy. If I was charging $150/fish and would only ship at least 5 or more, this was costing a buyer $750 plus another $100 to ship. So, I developed a policy of discounting the fish price by 20% if a buyer would pick them up. They would save $300 on the price of the fish and another $100 for the shipping so $400 in total. This led many to come and get them even if it cost them $200 to make the round trip.
Plus, when you came to get them you could see them before taking them. Sometimes, I would let buyers pick their exact fish. Most of my buyers got more than 5 fish. I am about an hour drive NNE of NYC. I have had buyers fly here from Colorado, St. Louis and Chicago to pick up fish. The plane fare was much less than what they saved on the fish.
For me it was worth it. Once we bagged up their purchase to their satisfaction the fish were theirs when they left, the odds of their being DOAs when they got home was no longer my responsibility. Plus, we could do what I call over bagging which meant using more water than I might have had they been shipped. Losing a shipment of just 5 fish cost me the full $850. Removing that risk only cost me only $150. And it saved me all the time involved in my having to bag and pack fish for shipping instead of working with a buyer to catch bag and pack them. So I saved an hour or more of my time as well. Everybody was happy with that 20% discount. It also helped that I had gained a reputation of breeding healthy fish which were always the exact species as what they were sold. It is easy to sell a cheaper B&W species as a more pricey one to a lot of new buyers, There a number of misinformed or dishonest sellers out there. I am not one.
In the end, I had people flying or driving a few hours here to buy 20 or more fish. There was one more advantage to buyers coming here. They got to see all of my tanks and how I set them up for breeding. I did fairly well in this respect and people wanted to see how I did this. I had a couple of buyers who flew in from Colorado who said they had never seen so many Hypancistrus plecos in one place.
I really loved what I did for almost 20 years now and have hated to have old age force me to be giving most of it up. I now have only one species of plecos which I am having breed in my tank. This will not last all that much longer. That one breeding tanks needs two more tanks for growing out new offspring.
