TheMightySkunk

To follow up on Kaukau's remark:

Check this out:

http://ezinearticles.com/?Discount-L...Know!&id=55876

Article starts with:

Coloradans (Coloradoans?) don't call it Kama'aina, but it's most certainly there.

cln2day

Soon Ill be able to spend a lot less to get my car to another Island. I get to choose how I spend my money We don't get to 'vote with our wallet' very much here on the Islands with the anti-competitive business climate we have. We have lots of shameless rip-offs here that affect both our visitors and the residents of the State.

slippahs

Interesting. I wonder if they made that change recently? As close to two years ago, I knew someone who got an ID with just a Hawaii address. Good to know.
Only, with the surcharges, taking a car to another Island may be much more expensive than flying there and renting a car...

RLG

The high cost of everything is certainly frustrating. (I won't comment on the protectionism and tax components to avoid turning this into a political rant.)

The mail order shipping issue actually has a good explanation. The only carrier with reasonable "ground" rates to Hawaii is the US Postal Service. (I don't know if this is a money loser for them, or if they even have the cost accounting to know the answer.)

The merchants with apparently ridiculous shipping charges almost always have an exclusive arrangement with either Fedex or UPS. Their shipping department is closely integrated with one of those carriers, including linked computer systems. Unfortunately, the only service Fedex and UPS offer to Hawaii is 1 or 2 day overnight. So that's what you have to pay for to order from a merchant who doesn't use USPS.

The solution I and many others use is to do exactly what your friend does. Have the item shipped to a friend on the mainland who then reships it. If the merchant's price is still the best even after paying double shipping, then I order from them. If not, I order from someone who can ship by USPS.

cblaisd

You make a good point about the tie-ins between many companies and FedEx/UPS.

Some observations, though:

1. I've been told (but haven't had need to explore this myself, and most merchants won't even attempt to) that UPS actually does have a "ground" rate to Hawai`i that is cheaper than the 1 or 2 days.

2. I have also occasionally done the re-ship thing with a friend, but generally I simply try to avoid those companies that don't want my business and won't mail USPS Priority Mail (many of the things that I order could easily fit into the $8.00-ish flate rate box). (The worst I discovered was Overstock.com. The only choices were usurious 1 or 2 day FedEx or a shipping by freight forwarder with the caveat that it could take up to 3 months and could not be tracked! This was not for a refrigerator or a lawn tractor or some such, but for a GPS whose box would have easily fit in a Flat Rate Box)

3. I DO patronize businesses that don't extort on their shipping to Hawai`i: Three that I have found are Amazon, Walmart (ugh -- but for a 30" LCD television everyone else wanted $70 or so to ship; Walmart managed to do it USPS Priority in 4 days for $13), and Hewlett-Packard.

4. One of the things that makes utterly no sense is the number of sellers on eBay who say that they only ship USPS Priority Mail, but won't ship to Hawai`i. Please. It's exactly the same price -- those flat rate boxes are a good deal for shipper, buyer, and the post office.

TheMightySkunk

You're spot-on, Slippahs.

Before the HSF web site stopped taking reservations, just for grins I priced taking The Wife and my car over to O'ahu for the weekend. It was $670. With a little advance planning we could fly over and rent a car for about half that.

Then there's the also the ubiquity and ease of free air travel and free rental cars. Almost everyone's got a deal or a coupon or FF miles to get an even better deal on cars and flights.

JEFFKT

I wonder if acting local would qualify. Maybe the OP can start learning pidgin from reading some of kaukau's posts or start wearing slippahs (no pun intended to the one and only "slippahs") and maybe he would get away with it.

Remember the commercial with Augie T and Lanai. I believe it was the Aston Resorts kama'aina discount and they would bring in like slippahs and hawaiian bracelets to show they were true kama'aina. Crack me up.

Orchids

I shipped a package fedex ground for around $40, happily declining faster service at $105. (reference to cblaisd's comment on shipping).

dhuey

Anyone who has taken microeconomics (and didn't sleep through it) will recognize kama'aina rates as an example of price discrimination. This makes a great deal of sense when you have a product with high fixed costs and very low incremental costs.

Hotel rooms are a classic example of this. The costs of a hotel when a particular room goes unsold versus the hotel's costs if it has guests in that room are almost the same. Indeed, net costs are probably negative in that any incremental costs of laundering bed sheets, cleaning the room, supplying soap & shampoo, etc., are probably offset by the profits from PPV movies, food purchases and other guest purchases. So, the hotel's mission is to fill the rooms in slow periods, even if that means low rates.

If the hotel offers that same low rate to everyone, the revenue losses are enormous. It just doesn't makes sense economically.

With that in mind, is such price discrimination fair? I have no problem with it. It's not like we're discriminating on the basis of race, religion, gay/straight, or another group that has been ostracized historically. It's just a recognition that a "Hawaiian vacation" isn't quite as valuable to the locals as it is to those in Topeka. They already live there. If you want to get them into the hotel rooms, you'll have to discount the rates.

RLG

That would certainly be news to me. The person who told you that may have been confused by the fact that UPS does ship by "ground" from Hawaii to the mainland. They are frequently cheaper than USPS in that direction.

I tried that but found that it eliminated too many good merchants.

Because Amazon sells both for itself and for others, their shipping costs are all over the lot. I've ordered heavy items from them with no shipping charge that came Fedex overnight. Usually, however, I've found the double shipping option cost less at Amazon than shipping directly to Hawaii.

I agree. That's extremely annoying. What's even worse, however, are the Ebay guys who have a flat rate for shipping within the US and then after the auction is over want extra for Hawaii. They get negative feedback in addition to their geography lesson.

RLG

Looks like I was incorrect. I just checked their websites and both Fedex and UPS now offer "ground" service to Hawaii. (When I moved here, neither offered that.)

Unfortunately, this doesn't change the substance of comment above that any merchant that ships by Fedex or UPS exclusively is not going to have reasonable shipping to Hawaii. Here are the website quoted prices for ground shipping a 10 pound package from 19962 to 96743:

USPS $25
Fedex $44
UPS $66

By contrast, the rate for shipping the same package in the other direction is $25 at the post office, but only $17 at Fedex and UPS.

cblaisd

Fascinating. Why the huge disparity for FedEx/UPS mainland-bound?

RLG

My assumption is that they have a huge amount of excess capacity going in that direction since Hawaii "imports" a lot of stuff from the mainland and exports very little.

kaukau

I'm of the opinion that for $15, a Social Security Card and a Passport or Birth Certificate, The Hawai'i Criminal Justice Data Center (HCJDC) will issue a Hawai'i State ID Card to anybody: it looks like they'll print one up for you with an out-of-state address! Even Foreign Nationals!!! http://hawaii.gov/ag/hcjdc/main/hawaii_id_cards/

I think it's all about the $15, and the ID card may or may not be worth the paper it's printed on.

Now, is it ethical to represent/misrepresent oneself as a Kama'aina in order to receive discounts?

slippahs

I just checked the enabling statute (HRS §§ 846-21 to -38) and it appears that the State IDs can only be issued to those who reside or are present in this state. Haw. Rev. Stat. § 846-27.

Now, being "present" in the state is subject to a lot of interpretation. Present is not explicitly defined by the statute. So, it may be subject to administrative rules. If indeed the HCJDC is interpreting being "present" in the state is having some form of residence for a fixed amount of time, then it would be no surprise to me that they would require some proof of residence for a fixed time to show one's "presence" in the State of Hawaii. If they don't require such documents, then presence in the state could include those who are transients.

Even with the proof requirement, that would not preclude the HCJDC from issuing a State ID with a non-Hawaii mailing address, however. The "present" or "residing" requirement seems to be simply the means by which to acheive the ID.

I'll leave it at that. One could probably get a straight answer by calling tomorrow morning.