Village Craftsmen

170 Howard Street 

Shipping Charges

We are sometimes asked how our shipping charges are calculated.  We ship almost exclusively by UPS.  This is how it works:

• The basic fees are determined by automatic connection to the official UPS web site.  The fees are calculated by shipping weight of the item and zip code of destination.  
  
• Because Ocracoke Island is considered an "Extended and/or Remote Area" UPS automatically adds an additional surcharge to every order shipped  by us.  UPS also adds a small "fuel surcharge" to every shipment.
  
• Village Craftsmen adds a modest fee of $1.50 to every order to help cover the additional costs for packing materials, processing of sales receipts, UPS documentation, and other paperwork, telephone calls, correspondence, etc.

We recognize that our shipping costs may sometimes be higher than expected.  This is typically due to the UPS "extended and/or remote area" surcharge.  

Also, shipping charges for smaller, lighter orders generally appear highest.  This is  because UPS assesses a minimum charge regardless of the shipping weight, and because our modest handling fee of $1.50 is added to every order regardless of the size of the order.  Read more about this here.

Orders for a large number of identical items will sometimes return an unrealistic shipping charge.  Read more about this here.

A special note about books and other media items:  Although the US Postal Service offers somewhat reduced rates for these items, USPS does not offer home delivery or pickup in Ocracoke village so we ship almost exclusively by UPS.

We also never raise prices on our web site in order to artificially lower shipping fees.  You can be assured that the prices you pay on-line are the same as the prices in our retail store on Ocracoke Island.

We hope this answers your questions about our shipping & handling fees.  Feel free to contact us if you have any additional questions.