Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by base 1917 days ago
In small business stores most users checkout as guests, so the website only has enough info to provide a shipping estimate after they have your address.
1 comments

At least let me pick a country or something and give me a ballpark.

With a lot of US-only retailers the only way to find out they won’t ship outside the US is to try and checkout and look for a country drop down.

And the ones that will ship, shipping for a small parcel can range from inconsequential (free/$10) through punishing ($80) to absurd ($300).

I don’t need an exact amount, but there can be a couple order of magnitude difference between stores when trying to ship to Canada and often no way to determine they even will at all without going through the checkout flow.

Exactly - and in the USA I just need a “zip code = estimate” so I know if I’m looking at $10 or $50.