Derisive/resentful term which refers to the perceived act of swindling someone out of money through the misuse/abuse of postage-fees as a sneaky way of making excessive profit or
otherwise "coming out further ahead" than is fair. Usually
accomplished in two "opposite" ways, either by:
(1) a money-hungry mail-order company's charging excessive postage-rates as compared to the company's actual cost to ship
merchandise (such as charging s&h merely based on the order's monetary total instead of the actual merchandise-weight, or claiming that the shipping-weight of a few rubber bands or a matchbook-sized pack of film-splicing-tabs has a shipping-weight of one pound, when any blockhead would know that they could just stuff the feather-light items into an ordinary letter-size paper envelope), especially with the bulk-rate/volume-discount postage deals that big
corporations typically get from their shipping-services, or
(2) a stingy/
disgruntled customer's purposely sending less funds for postage than the company specifies, with the smirky idea that the company will not want to risk offending the customer and causing him to cancel his entire order --- and then probably take his future business elsewhere --- by their whiningly contacting the customer or returning his order to ask for more funds.
The "gipping and handling" strategy can be a highly effective/successful countermeasure to use when ordering from companies that charge exorbitant postage-fees merely in an attempt to make additional "free 'n' clear profit" from unused postage-funds. What you do is draw up a fairly "large"
order --- i.e., one that involves maybe fifty bucks or more (either by ordering one or more expensive items or a bulk-purchase of cheaper items, so that it totals a sizable amount), and thus will be sufficiently "tempting" to
the company to make them reluctant to risk "losing" the order by upsetting you in any way. Then you just "
accidentally on-purpose" neglect to use the company's "official" printed order-form that came with their catalogue --- you instead just use ordinary lined paper of your own to write out the order, and so your order-sheet no longer contains the company's shipping-rates chart, allowing you to simply write in your **own postage amount** after the subtotal! Oh, sure ---
the company is probably gonna include a "debit memo" notation at the bottom of your invoice when they ship your order, but that's of no concern of yours at that point, since --- ha ha ha! --- you already have your
merchandise, and so you can simply ignore their blubbery request! Awwww.... you greedy fat-cat CEOs didn't get your extra profits from **me**, the way you do from all of your other "sucker" customers --- too bad, so sad!!
