Delivery charges - should companies charge them

missamoo

I've been thinking about delivery charges this evening and how they vary from website to website. To me it seems like they just pick a figure at random and hope you are stupid enough to pay it! There's enough discount codes going around so obviously it's not too much of a problem for them.

Also, the way some stores only give you a discount code if you spend over so much. I'm sorry but if i spend over £25 on an online store I expect free postage anyway!

I would buy more online if postage charges were lower or non existant. And since when did you have to pay for catalogue delivery?? When I had my first catalogue all delivery was free and done by a local self employed courier. Now they use the big couriers or royal mail it's quite expensive. Something starts out as a bargain but by the time you've paid p&p it's not!

Shouldn't postage be free if you buy online as the cost of postage is offset by the fact they haven't got a shop to run and all the overheads that go with that! When I go into a shop I don't get to the till and find i've got to pay an extra £4 to cover the sales assistant's wages!!!

Anybody have any opinions??

LemonGrove

Praise, Vent or Warning?

hoyles10

Of course you need to pay delivery charges if you buy something online. They don't have the overheads of having a shop but they have transport costs, warehouse costs, staff costs, insurance for damage to customers property etc. Plus the fact that quite a lot of the time items are cheaper online than in a shop.

If I am after something online which I can get from a shop easily enough I weigh up how much it would cost to get it delivered against the cost of getting off my bum and going getting it myself. If i'm after something and the delivery cost is to high I simply don't buy it.

kr15snw

After working in a mail order department I understand that smaller companies need to charge that little bit more.

We were a tiny mail order department and didnt make enough profit on the products for us to put the price of postage down.

So we charged the flat rate of £6 postage (next day courier service that cost us £5.45) for all orders (unless it was teeny and then we'd send it recorded for £2.50). Alot of people complained that this was a lot but unfortunately we couldnt afford to send it for any less.

Plus we used to use royal mail for everything but it wasnt reliable enough so a courier was needed

woohoo_postingid

I class the cost of the postage and the product as one price. If it's still cheaper than a shop then I'm onto a winner. If it's the same total price then the only benefit might be convenience.

Ivory_Tinkler

OP If companies starting sending everything for free then they would build the cost of the carriage into the product price. Catalogue prices are usually higher anyway so by shopping online you can usually find a product cheaper even when adding P&P. The online companies have to pay the courier/royal mail to transport their parcels or do you expect them to waive their charges too?

Nilrem

As a couple of people have said, postage as to be paid no matter what when it comes to online shopping.
So you either end up paying for it as a seperate fee on top of the price of the goods, or as part of the cost of the goods (often pushing them up).
Which the shop will go for is based on their business model, for example for low value large/heavy objects it's not cost effective for a shop to offer free postage (it could cost them more than the value of the goods), whilst it is for high cost items.
So most will try and find a balance (I suspect Amazon make a loss on anything they sell for under a fiver with free shipping, but make up for it on more expensive items).

Best bet is to look around for the cost + and postage and compare them, it's something I do and it's surprising how quite often if you're buying several things that are all available from multiple stores, the store with the paid postage might well work out cheaper than the one with free postage (when buying computer parts I've sometimes ended up paying £8-10 for delivery and still saved £20-40 overall)..

Becles

I don't order clothing that has a dispatch postage charge, then you have to pay postage to send it back. It works out expensive paying two lots of postage on items that don't fit.

Jo_F

I have to charge postage on my website, and I have cut it down as far as I can. The price I charge for my items covers the cost of materials and my time, I don't inflate the prices, but there is no way that I can do postage for free on top of that. and by the time the payment has gone through Paypal's system, the fees have eaten most of the postage I charge anyway.

Pound

Delivery charges can actually keep costs down. The company has to pass delivery costs onto the customer somehow. They can usually reduce their own costs when items are grouped together, e.g. by putting them all in one parcel or one consignment. If a company charges a flat delivery charge no matter how many items are ordered it encourages customers to group several items into one order, saving money for the company and the customers.

edgex

this is the way i see it:


if the item is only available by delivery, they shouldnt charge for delivery
if the item is readily available in store, & is available by delivery, they can charge for delivery