Delivery charges - should companies charge them

pitkin2020

pompeii wrote: »

just ordered £29 worth of goods from Lakeland with p&p of £4.95, received an email last week to say that they were awaiting stock of some of the items, received £13 worth of the order today with a note on the invoice saying other items are no longer available, still charged £4.95 p&p, not happy. I would have cancelled order if i had been told 2/3rds of the order was unavailable.

they should have warned you if the stock was unavailable so you could cancel before they dispatched, but the posage they charged is obviously just a standard postage cost regardless of number of items sent

Tea3

edgex wrote: »

if the shop offers a delivery service, its an optional extra, so no issue with charging for that extra

if the item is only available online, so you cant go into the shop to buy it, then why should they charge extra for what isnt an optional extra?

Many shops wont offer free home delivery for smaller orders and will only offer this for orders over a certain value e.g. Argos many deliver a washing machine free no problem but wont offer the same free service for a £3 item, same with supermarkets etc. This is the same as many online retailers who can only offer free delivery over x amount.

I sell online and cannot have delivery prices included in product price as I ship to various countries and postage rates vary for uk, europe and usa etc. Also if one product costs me £2 to post for example and I add £2 to each product cost then if a customer buys 4 items then customer is paying 4 x £2 postage whereas if delivery costs are seperate they will pay what I pay which is just over £4 so its much fairier to price like this. I offer free delivery promotions from time to time but to do so all the time would put me out of business.

I agree with others that as long as postage costs are clear and easy to see before you start shopping then theres no problem (also as long as the postage costs are realistic to what it is costing the company to post).

If you feel so strongly against online shipping costs (which are either added extra or included in the purchase price) then you may be best sticking to buying from actual shops instead where you pay for your travel to and from them instead (often more than postage costs anyway).

Tea3

pitkin2020 wrote: »

they should have warned you if the stock was unavailable so you could cancel before they dispatched, but the posage they charged is obviously just a standard postage cost regardless of number of items sent

I would contact them regarding this as under the Distance Selling regulations you can return the items for a full refund anyway so the company may decide to part refund the delivery charge or give you a credit on your account instead as a goodwill gesture. As a business I would always refund part of the delivery cost if a chunk of the order could not be sent.

Added, sorry copied the wrong quoted section but you get the gist of what I meant (i hope)