8 Shopping Days ‘Til Christmas — and Free Shipping

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 13, 4:00PM EST · Published Dec 17, 6:54AM EST

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8 Shopping Days ‘Til Christmas — and Free Shipping — © courtesy of Wal-Mart Stores Inc.

Free shipping, which is not really free, for speedy delivery of items sent to reach an address in a day or so has become an essential tool for retailers as people run out of time — with only eight shopping days until Christmas. Some customers may even pay large fees to move their purchases along. Free shipping, for many shoppers, is a myth.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT) allows customers to shop online and in many cases pick up the item at a Wal-Mart store. It is “free shipping.” with the cost of driving and fetching a gift as well. It is actually just “free ordering.”

The most promoted version of free shipping is on items people want to get to friends or family soon. If an order has a total cost of over $50, Wal-Mart will ship it for free. The delivery time is four to six days. Not much cushion for late shoppers. Wal-Mart offers Standard, Expedited and Rush shipping. Rush shipping can cost hundreds of dollars, based on the size of the order and what it weighs.

As Christmas approaches, retailers slash prices, particularly on items they have not been able to clear from inventory. This year, many of these are items that are meant for cold weather. In much of the country, that weather never came.
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And some retailers offer what the customer usually does not know is a loss leader. Get the customer in the door, or online, and perhaps he or she will buy other items on which the retailer has larger margins.

Consumers may buy as many articles as retailers sell. For Wal-Mart, that numbers in the hundreds of thousands. These customers won’t get free shipping in many cases, but the “free shipping” promotion is a means to make consumers believe they can get something for nothing.

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.