Zappos Drops Free Overnight Shipping

Henderson, Nev. Zappos has dropped its free guaranteed overnight shipping and price-matching initiatives.

“We decided to remove our price protection policy from Zappos because we didn’t feel it was consistent with our goal of making Zappos customer service-focused as opposed to price-focused,” CEO Tony Hsieh wrote on his blog this week.

Hsieh said most customers who took advantage of the pricing guarantee would have saved more by purchasing more deeply discounted shoes on 6pm.com, the discount shoe site Zappos acquired last year from eBags.com.

“Regarding our decision to stop advertising and promoting free overnight shipping on Zappos, it’s actually simply just that: a decision to stop advertising and promoting it, not a decision to actually stop doing it,” Hsieh wrote. “This means that the vast majority of our customers will still get their orders as quickly as they used to (usually overnight). The only difference is that we made the decision to not advertise or promise it, because we found that our customers were happier when they were surprised by the fast shipping.”