Shipping news
After many months, we have finally updated our shipping rates on this site and on our Bandcamp page. This was prompted in part by a massive increase (on average 49%) in the cost of sending mail to the United States, which took effect from 1 July 2020. Also, we’ve had an increasing number of orders from Australia, prompting us to add World Zone 2 postage rates. For the last few months we have been heavily subsidising the cost of sending records to people over lockdown, but this is not sustainable.
Our postage charges are now the most accurate they have ever been for single items. And for some items, postage and packaging has reduced in cost. If you want to order multiple items and feel the postage fees are too high (or too low), you can contact us directly at antigenrecords (at) googlemail (dot) com and we will be happy to weigh up an order and post it to you anywhere in the world at cost price.
Our postage calculators are a lot more accurate than the ones used by Amazon. And we’ve stopped shipping internationally via Amazon UK for this reason. Here’s how it works at Amazon: We sell a Sealionwoman 12″ for £15 (£3 more than on the antigen site, because Amazon’s fixed domestic postage charges do not cover UK postage). Amazon fixes a postage and packaging fee to the USA at £3.08. It then costs us £15.18 to post the album to the USA, plus 40p for a card mailer. Amazon then takes a £4.02 seller fee. The £18.08 we receive from you for the 12″ is then reduced by £19.60 in postage, packaging and fees to Amazon. Selling the record to you has cost us £1.52.
You’ll remember that former Royal Mail CEO Rico Back walked away with up to £1 million in shares and salary as part of his exit package (according to the Evening Standard), after finishing gardening leave in August 2020. He quit after facing shareholder rebellions over pay and press criticism over working from his £2 million luxury penthouse in Zurich while posties faced COVID-19 in the UK. And Jeff Bezos is apparently building a Death Star.