Delivery Charges

[RogerP]

To the OP, did you not consider buying your new rule from a local shop. No postage charge at all then.
We should not forget the local high street and need to support them where we can, if I wanted a new rule I wouldn't even think of mail order.
Remember the old Post Office slogan - 'Use it or lose it'.
What makes you think I work in a shop
regards
Brian

The reason I rarely use the High Street is, petrol used about £2 car parking at least another £2 and at least an hour of my time. Which would be wasted anyway as there's no tool shop there, never has been. In fact there's no really decent tool shop anywhere near me. Just one that looks okay until you find they have poor stock and high prices. Of course that's the cost of living in the middle on nowhere - The City of Gloucester. :shock:

 

[Peter Sefton]

To the OP, did you not consider buying your new rule from a local shop. No postage charge at all then.
We should not forget the local high street and need to support them where we can, if I wanted a new rule I wouldn't even think of mail order.
Remember the old Post Office slogan - 'Use it or lose it'.
What makes you think I work in a shop
regards
Brian

The reason I rarely use the High Street is, petrol used about £2 car parking at least another £2 and at least an hour of my time. Which would be wasted anyway as there's no tool shop there, never has been. In fact there's no really decent tool shop anywhere near me. Just one that looks okay until you find they have poor stock and high prices. Of course that's the cost of living in the middle on nowhere - The City of Gloucester. :shock:

We are only up the road been over to the Docks today.
As a customer I always try and get free delivery who wouldn't, but as a retailer both from the shop and online, delivery is our biggest headache and costly for us. We have opted for free delivery delivery over £50 or £5.95 on orders below that point we have made our free delivery at the £50 mark to try to compete with the big boys. They do have much better buying power both for sourcing tools and better postage rates than us but I am sure that they went through the same growth and pricing issues. To sell on the internet you need to be competitive even if sometimes working at a loss, but we hope with good service and sound advice customers will return. Some you win and some you lose. Building a good customer relationship is paramount.
Cheers Peter

 

[RogerP]

We are only up the road ..........

... well a 40 mile round trip actually

 

[Benchwayze]

same in a petrol stn for me....I went thirsty!

Its got to the stage where a can of coke is ludicrously expensive anywhere but the supermarket.

Oh well, look on the bright side Bob. It's so much less sugar :mrgreen:

 

[Spindle]

Hi

I do not regard delivery charges as a separate entity, they are unavoidable and always present, if disguised, in the total purchase price. A quick few minutes searching the web will usually throw up several suppliers offering the same product for varying cost, from there it's a quick decision as to who to buy from.

What does annoy me is the seemingly random application of excess delivery charges made to certain post codes - living, as I do in rural Aberdeenshire, I find it ludicrous that a weighting would be applied for delivery to my address but not to post codes on the Orkney Islands - go figure :evil: :evil:

Regards Mick

 

[MMUK]

I wanted a new rule. £3.99 on one of our favourite suppliers sites. Found what I want then when the pay page comes up I find a £5 carriage charge for orders under £50?
So, off I go to Amazon, who will deliver free for orders of £10. So I top up with another couple of items to make the £10 total.
I fire off an e mail asking customer service if maybe they should be re looking at this £50 minimum purchase for free delivery, after all if it was say £20 you'd top up with another couple of bits and bobs, only to be told they would pass the request on.....and that was the end of that...........
Maybe it's not feasible to reduce the deliver charges on smaller items and compete with Amazon...but they could say offer incentives, five orders and the next delivered free, or incorporate a delivered price in the printed product price with a % reduction in the overall total cost if you have a bigger spend........
Something to make you want to spend some dosh with them instead of googling Amazon.

I don't see why you're complaining. If the favourite suppliers site is one you use surely you must have known there was a minimum order for free delivery?

You went to Amazon and bought it from there. Good for you. Why not just do that in the first place? :roll:

 

[JustBen]

I recently bought 4 things from Hong Kong via The Bay............a wifi dongle was £2.06, a branded Sd card was 1.98 and so on...ALL were post free....delivery was about 10 days. What !!

The packing would be more than that in the UK.

Al

That's because the Chinese (and possibly the HK) government have subsidised postage costs to boost their exports and help local businesses.

The Universal Postal Union states that the sending country keeps the funds for postage.

So basically they pay very little(subsidised by their government) to post it here and we(Royal Mail) deliver it for free.

 

[AndyT]

To the OP, did you not consider buying your new rule from a local shop. No postage charge at all then.
We should not forget the local high street and need to support them where we can, if I wanted a new rule I wouldn't even think of mail order.
Remember the old Post Office slogan - 'Use it or lose it'.
What makes you think I work in a shop
regards
Brian

The reason I rarely use the High Street is, petrol used about £2 car parking at least another £2 and at least an hour of my time. Which would be wasted anyway as there's no tool shop there, never has been. In fact there's no really decent tool shop anywhere near me. Just one that looks okay until you find they have poor stock and high prices. Of course that's the cost of living in the middle on nowhere - The City of Gloucester. :shock:

Just in case this isn't the one you were too polite to name ... you do have Bell Tools at Eastern Avenue, near Howdens and Screwfix. They used to be on Bristol Road, I think - you would get free parking where they are now. I've not used them in Gloucester but they have two shops in Bristol which look like proper tool shops to me.

 

[Benchwayze]

I tend to patronise whatever site suits for whatever I am buying. If I can't get a smaller item at a good price, without forking too deep for postage, then I go to the shops. Mind you, living in Brum, there are still a few good tool shops available.

 

[RogerP]

Just in case this isn't the one you were too polite to name ... you do have Bell Tools at Eastern Avenue, near Howdens and Screwfix. They used to be on Bristol Road, I think - you would get free parking where they are now. I've not used them in Gloucester but they have two shops in Bristol which look like proper tool shops to me.

Well I must admit I've not visited them for a long while and certainly not since they've moved - I will. Oh and there's Machine Mart ......................

 

[Peter Sefton]

Just in case this isn't the one you were too polite to name ... you do have Bell Tools at Eastern Avenue, near Howdens and Screwfix. They used to be on Bristol Road, I think - you would get free parking where they are now. I've not used them in Gloucester but they have two shops in Bristol which look like proper tool shops to me.

Well I must admit I've not visited them for a long while and certainly not since they've moved - I will. Oh and there's Machine Mart ......................

I only found out that they had moved yesterday :!:

 

[skronk]

Hi

I do not regard delivery charges as a separate entity, they are unavoidable and always present, if disguised, in the total purchase price. A quick few minutes searching the web will usually throw up several suppliers offering the same product for varying cost, from there it's a quick decision as to who to buy from.

What does annoy me is the seemingly random application of excess delivery charges made to certain post codes - living, as I do in rural Aberdeenshire, I find it ludicrous that a weighting would be applied for delivery to my address but not to post codes on the Orkney Islands - go figure :evil: :evil:

Regards Mick

Mick,

I get severely welded for delivery costs here on the Isle of Skye with free bridge. Work that one out.

 

[SammyQ]

To add insult to injury, how many times on Ebay do you see:

"No posting to Northern Ireland"

or

"£15 extra surcharge to N.I."

Royal Mail serves us, just the same as the depths of Cornwall or western Wales, or most rural Norfolk. In fact better, for we have two major airports, and two major deep water ports, so no Norn Iron postcode is more than one hour by road from a hub.......SO WHY DISCRIMINATE AGAINST US??....... I have asked it before: "Why in the name of The Wee Man, do we let these people breed?"

Sam

 

[RogerP]

Royal Mail charges are the same all over the UK but carriers charges aren't. There's absolutely no reason for a sellers to charge extra to UK offshore and remote highland addresses but it's different when using private carriers.

Are you sure these sellers who charge extra are using Royal Mail delivery?

 

[tool-me-up]

Royal Mail charges are the same all over the UK but carriers charges aren't. There's absolutely no reason for a sellers to charge extra to UK offshore and remote highland addresses but it's different when using private carriers.

Are you sure these sellers who charge extra are using Royal Mail delivery?

Royal mail delivery is an absolute nightmare for sellers who have more than a few products, not least because they change the rules every other month. Its mainly because they go by size and weight instead of one or the other where as couriers tend to go by weight and only have two or three tiers for sizes making predicting the postage on an item or multiple items a bit simpler.

Personally I just charge by weight and if I get stung a couple quid for an over-sized parcel so be it.

If I was using royal fail I would imagine EVERY order would have to sorted picked and packed before I could quote postage as there is no guarantee product x,y,z will fit in a certain size box with reasonable packaging etc.

 

[SammyQ]

I can't tell which seller uses which postal service. What I do know, is, as the parent of three busy children/teenagers and then young adults, plus running the A.V. services of a busy school, I was handling parcels of all shapes, sizes and weights on a near-daily basis for the better part of two decades. This included fencing gear, musical instruments, computers, tools for me, machines for me, satelite equipment, you name it. I came to the unshakeable conclusion that Royal Mail was maligned regularly and perhaps unfairly, given that it delivered the vast majority of its items, maybe not exactly on time, but pretty close.

I also concluded that there were only two types of courier: the professional ones who said what they meant on the tin, who had been around delivery services for a while, or were experienced in the trade before they ventured into it as an independent entity, and did it properly. Then there were the other come-lately shysters, buoyed up by venture capital, who spouted business acronyms and slogans, who were not interested in customers; when they hit a problem, charged extra for something they should have foreseen in the first place, had grandiose 'tracking' systems that frequently were 24-36 hours out of date and showed items "still at hub" when I had unpacked them.

C.P.C. (Farnell), Screwfix and Axminster etc etc have free delivery country-wide above a certain limit and deliver on time. So, by-and-large, does Royal Mail. There are 16 flights a day into our two airports. There are several million tons of shipping into our ports and at eight-twelve freight/passenger ferries per day on top of that. Don't give me that guff that we can't be delivered to, or that a £7 tin of paint requires a £15 'surcharge' because I live across twenty three miles of water....or, put another way, less than the distance to the Isle of Man......SO, WHY DO I NEVER SEE: "Cannot deliver to the Isle of Man"???

Utterly lacking in gruntle, off the piste, fed up, Sam

 

[SammyQ]

Double post. Sorry.

 

[Random Orbital Bob]

Utterly lacking in gruntle, off the piste, fed up, Sam

Don't beat around the bush Sam....say what you feel

I like your description of Johhny come lately shysters spouting slogans and buoyed up by VC's. I've met a few of those in my time and your description is spot on. As Sting said about politicians "they're all like game show hosts to me"

Another thing I like about this forum...no danger of not remaining grounded is there

 

[SammyQ]

Rock on Bob!

Sam

 

[tool-me-up]

I can't tell which seller uses which postal service. What I do know, is, as the parent of three busy children/teenagers and then young adults, plus running the A.V. services of a busy school, I was handling parcels of all shapes, sizes and weights on a near-daily basis for the better part of two decades. This included fencing gear, musical instruments, computers, tools for me, machines for me, satelite equipment, you name it. I came to the unshakeable conclusion that Royal Mail was maligned regularly and perhaps unfairly, given that it delivered the vast majority of its items, maybe not exactly on time, but pretty close.

I also concluded that there were only two types of courier: the professional ones who said what they meant on the tin, who had been around delivery services for a while, or were experienced in the trade before they ventured into it as an independent entity, and did it properly. Then there were the other come-lately shysters, buoyed up by venture capital, who spouted business acronyms and slogans, who were not interested in customers; when they hit a problem, charged extra for something they should have foreseen in the first place, had grandiose 'tracking' systems that frequently were 24-36 hours out of date and showed items "still at hub" when I had unpacked them.

C.P.C. (Farnell), Screwfix and Axminster etc etc have free delivery country-wide above a certain limit and deliver on time. So, by-and-large, does Royal Mail. There are 16 flights a day into our two airports. There are several million tons of shipping into our ports and at eight-twelve freight/passenger ferries per day on top of that. Don't give me that guff that we can't be delivered to, or that a £7 tin of paint requires a £15 'surcharge' because I live across twenty three miles of water....or, put another way, less than the distance to the Isle of Man......SO, WHY DO I NEVER SEE: "Cannot deliver to the Isle of Man"???

Utterly lacking in gruntle, off the piste, fed up, Sam

I agree with that - I thought myhermes would be a good way to be competitive on postal rates - as they are cheap. And by cheap I mean dont collect the parcel, then come for it 3 days late and loose it, or the ones they collect on time must go through some form of automated crash testing where parcels are fired at each other at a tremendous speed.

As for the "rural" surcharge I cant comment on why or how they decide who is rural and who isnt - because its not my decision all I can do ( and what other sellers should be doing) is charging no more than it actually costs to send.
Sellers who charge extra because they can are just taking advantage of the fact people in these postcodes are used to paying a premium for deliveries in there area.

There is a full list of rural postcodes for DHL here http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rc...=mvkgmqXtnV96cz0Sj8Jo6g&bvm=bv.62578216,d.ZG4 but dont ask how they decided on them!