Pampers Gifts to Grow Shipping Costs: Are they a rip-off?

Anonymous left a comment on an old post about the shipping costs of the Pampers Gifts to Grow program and asked:

Okay- is it just me, or is the S&H quite a ripoff?

This is a good question, because in some respects the answer is "YES!" Pampers is definitely over-charging for the handling portion of S&H, since it doesn't cost more than $2 to mail a DVD, yet they charge over $4 (the recently listed Bob the Builder: Top Team DVD ships for $4.76). But less than $5 for a new Bob the Builder DVD is a reasonable price, considering I would have bought the diapers anyway, and we'll get good use out of the DVD (which has a list price of $14.98).

You can generally get a pretty good discount on the items, but some aren't much of a deal. For example, the newly listed Lego Block-o-dile ships for $11.22, yet is only $14.88 at Wal-Mart. So you'd be saving some money, but not much. You'd probably be better off using your points on something with a bigger discount. I've personally used points to buy inexpensive gifts to fill my gift box. A good example is the Sesame Street 3-DVD set, which shipped for less than $10, yet each DVD retailed for $10 apiece. This works for me because I would have spent money on gifts anyway, so I was able to spend less overall.

As I wrote in one of my first posts about Gifts to Grow, the bottom line is that the program isn't a reason to go out and buy Pampers. But if you buy Pampers anyway, collecting the points and redeeming them can help save a little money (those Shutterfly items can be useful for gifts!). Just don't buy something you wouldn't have bought anyway.