JC Whitney offers "free shipping", but they value their shipping at crazy rates. My order of over $300 had a nominal standard shipping rate of $29.99. They were willing to waive this ridiculous shipping rate because my order was over $75, but in order to get the free shipping, I had to enter a discount code. The problem is that this prevents entering any other discount code. I had a $40 discount code from Mr. Rebates, but I could only use one discount code or the other. Online help confirmed that only one discount code could be used at a time.
On the face of it, this sounds somewhat reasonable, but let's think about it. Why do I need to enter a code to get the free shipping they offer themselves? The answer is that this specifically neutralizes all the other discount offers they float on different websites. Then they charge unreasonable shipping rates, so that these other discount codes essentially just barely cover the shipping. Result: either you get the artificially inflated shipping free, or you get a discount which is eaten up by the inflated shipping.
Either way, it's basically a con game, with no real significant reduction in total price
available.
I ended up buying the same items at another site for $40 less AND free shipping (on all orders over $75) Furthermore, this site's standard shipping for orders that didn't qualify for free shipping was $6.99!
I recommend avoiding JC Whitney and their fake free shipping.
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