Question: "Why do I have to pay for postage?"

This is a question we get quite often. Or we’re asked why our postage is “so expensive”.

This morning someone messaged to say our postage prices were “a bit rich”.

As most small business owners will attest, the expectation that postage should cost nothing, or close to nothing, puts a lot of pressure on us.

Small business owners have two choices. We either incorporate postage costs into the product price, or we take the financial hit ourselves.

For larger businesses with economies of scale, free postage is far more feasible. But that reality has shaped expectations in a way that now flows directly onto small businesses.

Let’s break this down a bit.

Amazon has completely reshaped what it means to shop online. Free shipping has become the most effective bait there is. It’s transformed online shopping so much that free shipping now resembles a requirement rather than a bonus.

But shipping isn’t free for the people sending parcels.

There’s a lot of psychology behind this. Research consistently shows that people have a strong aversion to paying for separate fees at checkout, even when the total cost is the same. This is known as the “pain of paying”. Seeing a standalone charge triggers a sense of loss in the brain, which makes people hesitate or abandon purchases altogether.

A 2018 survey by Internet Retailer found that shipping charges were the most common reason shoppers abandoned their carts, topping the list for nearly a third of respondents.

Marketing professor Ron Berman from Wharton has observed that people will often buy more expensive items, or add extra things they don’t even want, just to reach a free-shipping threshold.

Yale professor Ravi Dhar explains that people irrationally hate paying for services, even ones they value highly, like fast and reliable delivery. This goes beyond cost-benefit thinking. A discount worth the same amount as shipping simply doesn’t land the same way. People are often willing to pay more overall if there isn’t a separate shipping charge staring back at them.

In other words, “free” hits differently. Zero isn’t processed logically. It’s processed emotionally.

This is a big part of why small businesses can’t keep up with these expectations. Economies of scale matter. Businesses shipping enormous volumes pay far less per parcel than we ever could.

At Soma, we charge what Australia Post charges us as a Band 5 business, plus the cost of packaging materials. We try to keep packaging simple and practical, without unnecessary frills, and this also aligns with our efforts to make environmentally responsible choices wherever possible.

For transparency, we don’t incorporate postage costs into our product pricing. We don’t want to disguise costs or use pricing manipulation. 

This expectation around postage often comes alongside another one: a one to two day turnaround on order processing. For small business owners, this can be intense. It often results in either unmet expectations or sleepless nights spent trying to keep everyone happy.

I see this as another example of things getting a bit skewed. And I genuinely hope that, for the sake of small product-based businesses, we start thinking more carefully about what we expect, and why.

And remember folks, there’s no such thing as a free lunch.

If there are any other small business owners reading this, hello. I’d really love to hear what your experience of this has been.