Increasing the Margin

 This is just a quick follow-up to my recent bashing of RSD's shady marketing techniques (and another one will come soon).

As a quick recap: Real Social Dynamics has released a book with the title "Physical Game Book", and uses this as a Trojan Horse to get people hooked via forced continuity. I thought I had pointed out every facet of their scammy techniques in this case, or at least as much as you can figure out without actually ordering the product, but it turned out that I didn't.

An anonymous commenter pointed out to me that RSD charges ridiculously high shipping fees to Europe. He rightly remarked:

Seriously, RSD? It costs you $56 to ship a book to Europe in any sort of decent time frame?

Here is the proof he supplied:

Just as a reminder: Amazon.com and many other retailers charge a few bucks for overseas shipping, and if you RSD shills now want to play the "Amazon is a multibillion corporation and can afford to subsidize shipping" --- no, they don't. Shipping overseas from the US really isn't that expensive. I've occasionally ordered some stuff off ebay from private sellers, and they seemed to be able to get a book or T shirt to me for a similar amount of money as Amazon does.

However, Real Social Dynamics isn't just trying to rip of European customers. I went to the official site again to check how much they charge US customers, and I shook my head in disbelief:

Honestly, almost $20 for shipping, you gotta be sh*tting me!

For some strange reason, though, they charge less for people living in Hawaii, Alaska or Puerto Rico:

I guess that's just another reason to move to Puerto Rico. The other is that you then save travel cost for pickup workshops that guarantee to get laid. You just pay a grand or two and the workshop host gives a tenner to a hooker while he gets the difference as a compensation for his efforts. It's a clear win-win for all parties involved. I might write about this absurdity of at least one company in this business some other day, but that's enough for today.