Vent: Postage and packaging prices

OneYorkshireLass

I'm hunting around for Mother's Day pressie ideas at the moment and cannot believe the amount of P&P businesses charge. These are small businesses I'm looking at and I know times are tough but, as an example:

For a 0.75p card one business wants £2.95 P&P!

For a £3.00 bar of soap another business wants the same again in postage .. yet I can add another 4 soaps to the basket and the postage stays the same.

But just found another site that does a £3.00 soap with £1.50 P&P!

What does everyone else think about P&P pricing? Are we getting ripped off sometimes?

Azari

OneYorkshireLass wrote: »

I'm hunting around for Mother's Day pressie ideas at the moment and cannot believe the amount of P&P businesses charge. These are small businesses I'm looking at and I know times are tough but, as an example:

For a 0.75p card one business wants £2.95 P&P!

For a £3.00 bar of soap another business wants the same again in postage .. yet I can add another 4 soaps to the basket and the postage stays the same.

But just found another site that does a £3.00 soap with £1.50 P&P!

What does everyone else think about P&P pricing? Are we getting ripped off sometimes?

Yes.

The problem seems to arise with lazy suppliers who decide that they can't be bothered matching the delivery method to the size and price of the items purchased and, instead, levy 'standard' p&p. (Although they usually seem to manage a non standard price if they would lose out.)

They probably reason that the type of small orders where people will baulk at £4-6 'standard' post are too small to be particularly profitable anyway and so they don't care about scaring such customers away.

grayme-m

OneYorkshireLass wrote: »

I'm hunting around for Mother's Day pressie ideas at the moment and cannot believe the amount of P&P businesses charge. These are small businesses I'm looking at and I know times are tough but, as an example:

For a 0.75p card one business wants £2.95 P&P!

For a £3.00 bar of soap another business wants the same again in postage .. yet I can add another 4 soaps to the basket and the postage stays the same.

But just found another site that does a £3.00 soap with £1.50 P&P!

What does everyone else think about P&P pricing? Are we getting ripped off sometimes?

Only ever noticed it on TV channels, otherwise I pay more than £30 with a well known high street store and get free postage.

DD265

Not every company has a system capable of pricing according to weight/dimensions. It might be that they use one service with one courier and they have a flat rate, or maybe the cheaper postage you saw is for a slower service.

I think that there are definitely times where companies rip us off on postage, but I think that the majority of companies know that they need to keep their postage as low as possible to attract customers.

RadoJo

I think it helps to bear in mind that they have to pay someone to pick the goods, pack them up and either take them to a post office or pay to have them collected. This probably explains why a larger order costs the same as a smaller one as it's the time involved that costs, not just the cost of the stamps.

ladylouise62

RadoJo wrote: »

I think it helps to bear in mind that they have to pay someone to pick the goods, pack them up and either take them to a post office or pay to have them collected. This probably explains why a larger order costs the same as a smaller one as it's the time involved that costs, not just the cost of the stamps.

I understand the logic, but I suspect that it could ba a bit short-sighted, on some types of sites at least. Quite a few times I have fancied trying a product but don't want loads in case I don't like it, and object to paying a high postage for a small/lowish-priced item. I have therefore gone elsewhere.

Delivery_Driver

It depends.For example I bought 2 identical items from ebay last week and the postage was £2 for one, £4 for them both.When they came, the packaging was just a bag and one item was slotted inside the other(nothing capable of getting damaged).The royal mail sticker on it said £1.95 postage paid.The items were very light so it would have been thesame for 1 or 2 items so in this case I thought they were taking the mickey.
I understand that someone has to paid to pack and post it and the packaging itself isn't free but in this case there wa sno extra effort or cost involved.

Usually its justified though, its an expensive process and if anything underpriced which can lead to porrer levels of service.