Every so often, you as a consumer will see an item advertised as "Free Shipping". As any first year Business Student knows "There is no such thing as free lunch", you as a consumer should be aware that there is no such thing as "Free Shipping".  Regardless of the business model a seller operates under, there is always a cost to ship an item. Just as you cannot walk into Wendy's and get a free Single with Cheese without paying, Sellers cannot walk into the Post Office or a UPS facility and have them ship our packages without a fee being paid.

Now you can get fancy with cost accounting and all of that and expand on this formula but in simple terms the cost to ship an item is the sum of Material Fees (Labels bubblewrap, peanuts, boxes, tape etc) plus Labor fees (The cost a firm expends to pay a person to perform this task - charges include base hourly rate, Insurance, etc) plus the actual cost paid to the carrier performing the actual transportation of the goods to your door. There are also overhead and other costs, but for the sake of this guide, the above formula is simple enough.  

Quod erat demonstrandum - "free shipping" simply does not exist.

Now one can argue "The item was advertised as "free shipping", I did not pay a separate shipping charge, and I did receive the item. Therefore "free shipping" does exist. WRONG!

You may not have paid a separate shipping charge, but rest assured, the cost to ship that item was included in the final sales price.

If the item is fixed price type (buy it now) or auction with reserve, the shipping and handling costs were already figured into the price or in the case of an auction, the reserve was simply set higher to compensate for shipping costs.

The only way I would believe in "free shipping" would be to see it on a 99C opening bid, no reserve auction. Think about it, how many of those have you seen on eBay lately?

So the next time you see "free shipping" before you assume that it is the best overall deal, remember to do some comparison shopping first. You may well find that the exact same item can be had for less money even with shipping and handling charged separately.