The Real Price of FREE Gun Safe Delivery

Is it Really Free?

This is one of the best mar­ket­ing gim­micks that many of the top gun safe man­u­fac­tur­ers have devel­oped in the twen­ti­eth cen­tury of safe sales. If you have ever watched the older com­mer­cials for the dia­mond ring sales or engage­ment rings, then you will rec­og­nize good mar­ket­ing that has influ­enced the prices of a prod­uct.

De beers dia­monds came up with the phrases “dia­monds are for­ever” and “dia­monds are a girls best friend”. It was the mar­ket­ing depart­ment that pushed into our daily real­ity that a man should pay three times his monthly salary for an engage­ment ring, prefer­ably a dia­mond. A sim­i­lar thing was done in the gun safe indus­try.

FREE ship­ping was a great tag line to be used in mar­ket­ing a prod­uct that is very heavy, and very large. Very heavy and very large are great aspects when you are try­ing to sell a tank to the gov­ern­ment or a bull­dozer, but when you are try­ing to sell and ship a prod­uct across the United States, that is bad and becomes costly for freight. Basi­cally the safe com­pa­nies that offer FREE ship­ping are build­ing the ship­ping costs into the price of the safe. Try com­par­ing a safe of equal size and options given to one that does not give free ship­ping. In most cases the free ship­ping included safe is higher priced by about $200.

We have spo­ken with many of the freight ship­ping com­pa­nies in the USA and they have all told us that if we were a safe com­pany look­ing to ship across the nation, that we could do it for $200 bucks and the areas marked spe­cial by them would cost us about $225 and that we would lose some money on those areas.

They also informed us that there would be at least half of the areas that would only actu­ally costs us $100 and that the price increase on our safes to those cus­tomers would yield us a profit and bal­ance out the loss on the other safes. Some of the freight com­pa­nies also sug­gested to us to build in a list of restric­tions and allow up to 8 weeks for deliv­ery and thus the costs for ship­ping would stay low and the cus­tomer would be pay­ing the extra to cover our losses.

When we started get­ting into this FREE ship­ping sub­ject more and more, there was no longer free ship­ping in all real­ity. Some com­pa­nies are very up front and hon­est about these ship­ping costs, and they offer you to find options.

Are there Options?

There are always options, in my opin­ion. We would sug­gest that you look into the safe com­pany you choose and ask about a price with­out ship­ping. Another thing you should be able to do is to ask for any dis­counts addi­tional.

Almost every safe com­pany exec­u­tive we have spo­ken with has told us that there is some mar­gin to move on price but that most cus­tomers never even con­sider ask­ing. Call some of the mov­ing com­pa­nies in your town also see if there is a lower ship­ping price to a busi­ness or a truck ter­mi­nal and you pick it up.

There is usu­ally a price to a busi­ness with a dock or fork­lift, which is in many cases any­where from $50 to $100 less for these types of deliv­er­ies.

You can then go and pick up the safe. You can also go to craigslist and look up handy­men or fur­ni­ture movers to pick it up and even place the safe for you. That brings us to another impor­tant sub­ject; what about plac­ing the safe.

Ideas for Plac­ing a Heavy Safe:

If you are look­ing to pur­chase a safe that is under 500lbs, then a stan­dard refrig­er­a­tor dolly usu­ally will be fine to move it with­out stairs.

If you are mov­ing a safe that is 500-1000lbs, then we sug­gest either hav­ing many large friends come help you or a mov­ing com­pany. Hav­ing pro­fes­sion­als move an extra large or heavy safe is not fool­ish, but good insur­ance. If you have the safe deliv­ered and they bring into your garage and drop it there, as most freight com­pa­nies will do, then there are some ideas for mov­ing it and plac­ing into your home if that is what you need.

We have seen some peo­ple move the larger safes using PVC pipe like the Egyp­tians used to move stones. We have also seen that some have even used old spare golf balls under them and they were able to move them 360 degrees. We do sug­gest you ask mov­ing or piano com­pa­nies for their ideas, as we are not movers here.