Extortionate delivery costs to NI addresses

Golden_Anemone

Looking online for a few special stocking filers for family I was amazed to discover that the Eden Project shop wanted £21 to deliver 4 pairs of socks and 4 hessian bags to my NI address - almost 4 times the regular UK mainland charge of £5.50 - so I queried it by e-mail.

The company assured me that this wasn't a mistake, that they did not make any profit on delivery charges and that delivery to NI did cost this amount as they use Fedex and not Royal Mail. :eek: I did ask why pay more than was necessary but they didn't respond.

Naturally I won't be spending my money there on those terms.

Can anyone else name and shame online retailers who treat NI customers unfairly with regard to deliver charges?

chunkychocky

I run a small business online and we have a cut-off of 1 kg for sending things through Royal Mail and at that point we use our courier. For deliveries to the Highlands and Islands and Northern Ireland it is often cheaper to continue to use Royal Mail rather than a courier, but it is still more expensive to use the Royal Mail for items over 1kg than it would be to use our courier for mainland UK. This means that our standard postage charges cannot apply for heavier items sent to the Highlands, Island and Northern Island. Do you suggest that we should have higher standard charges for all customers? This is not possible as we would quickly go out of business as our competitors do not charge more to mainland UK and we therefore could not compete with them. It does not seem fair, but this is the case with many things in life.

Golden_Anemone

Not at all chunkychocky - I cannot see where you could have got that from what I posted. I don't expect anyone to subsidise the cost of delivering my goods - if they charged every customer what it cost them to send goods then that would be absolutely fair.

My point is that it is extortionate to apply a blanket additional charge to customers in NI regardless of weight. Yes, if goods are too heavy to post by RM then of course the additional courier charges should be passed on but why on earth use an expensive courier for items that would cost a couple of pounds to post by RM? I don't actually accept either that FedEx would charge £20 for a parcel of that weight.

If it is true that they don't make a profit from delivery costs then it also follows that they must use the excess from small orders like that one to subsidise the cost of larger / heavier orders to other customers. That is no more fairer than the scenario you suggested where non-NI customers would subsidise the NI ones?

x12yhp

Golden_Anemone wrote: »

Not at all chunkychocky - I cannot see where you could have got that from what I posted. I don't expect anyone to subsidise the cost of delivering my goods - if they charged every customer what it cost them to send goods then that would be absolutely fair.

My point is that it is extortionate to apply a blanket additional charge to customers in NI regardless of weight. Yes, if goods are too heavy to post by RM then of course the additional courier charges should be passed on but why on earth use an expensive courier for items that would cost a couple of pounds to post by RM? I don't actually accept either that FedEx would charge £20 for a parcel of that weight.

If it is true that they don't make a profit from delivery costs then it also follows that they must use the excess from small orders like that one to subsidise the cost of larger / heavier orders to other customers. That is no more fairer than the scenario you suggested where non-NI customers would subsidise the NI ones?

As a business operating in NI I can tell you that the reverse is also true. For sending chemicals to the mainland it pretty much costs me £25, regardless of weight.

Could online retailers make it cheaper - often the answer is yes. However that could be subject to using an additional carriage option and given that NI is a small market, it may not be worth doing or may require other parts of the business to also use that company in order that pricing works out... which may impact the other business negatively.

Long story short - talk to the carriers, not the retailers.

RikM

Paying a reasonable amount extra doesn't offend me... Finding that a trumpeted "free UK delivery" is "not your bit of the UK" in the fine print, irritates me. Finding that it means "we don't deliver to your bit, at all", just takes the biscuit...
Sites which let you get all the way through ordering, and then tell you... Gah!

jtk174

Its always been the same. I have used all the main couriers over the last 35 years and getting any item shipped over here means double handling, plus the sea or air journey. i.e. the courier picks up the goods, takes it back to the depot, its removed from the van and usually placed in a holding area, then placed in another van and taken to sea or air transport, removed from said transport and taken to local depot and either shipped to you, or possibly to a more local ( to you ) depot and then delivered to you.

It might vary, but one of the white van delivery guys told me that they get paid £5 to deliver a parcel, no matter how many attempts it takes them to deliver it. Which is probably why a lot of them will leave the parcel for you, or get a neighbour to sign for it.

Many of the larger retailers have contracts with couriers or indeed the Royal Mail which lets them send parcels at a fixed rate. Smaller retailers may not have the volume of traffic to get a good deal.

If you don't want to pay carriage on a purchase, see if Amazon has it or try to get it sent by Royal Mail for the least expensive option, but some small retailers don't want to be bothered with going to the Post Office.

Actually, what I have found to be the most annoying, is that having paid a courier for next day delivery and it doesn't turn up, they still charge you!
Back a few years ago, I had a large consignment of computer spares shipped to me on a next day delivery. When I phoned the courier the next day they said the consignment had been collected and were waiting on it being scanned at their end. To cut a long story short, the following day, I rang to complain ( as usual ) and asked when I was going to get my delivery. The courier said, "it could be a week or more, they are on their way to the Shetland Islands by sea"

They still sent me a bill, but I didn't pay it!

Sir_Knight

<START RANT> I need to occasionally order up Health and Safety items, which is easy as there are plenty of suitable online suppliers to choose from.

One however I now refuse to use, as their postage policy is - free to GB, but 10% of the value to NI. This infuriates me, as it doesn't pay any heed to the size or weight of my order, nor how many boxes it has to go in to. In otherwords, the actual cost of sending it to me. Instead it's just an arbitrary 10% (+VAT of course) of the price. The last order I placed with them came to over £750, mostly for packets of plasters, eye washes, dressings etc which had comparatively little weight, but they demanded over £75 to get it here.

Complaints to their management got me nowhere, and I have stopped using them.

<END RANT>

x12yhp

Sir_Knight wrote: »

<START RANT> I need to occasionally order up Health and Safety items, which is easy as there are plenty of suitable online suppliers to choose from.

One however I now refuse to use, as their postage policy is - free to GB, but 10% of the value to NI. This infuriates me, as it doesn't pay any heed to the size or weight of my order, nor how many boxes it has to go in to. In otherwords, the actual cost of sending it to me. Instead it's just an arbitrary 10% (+VAT of course) of the price. The last order I placed with them came to over £750, mostly for packets of plasters, eye washes, dressings etc which had comparatively little weight, but they demanded over £75 to get it here.

Complaints to their management got me nowhere, and I have stopped using them.

<END RANT>

With orders like that you should talk to the guys at JBS group... you might find that there is some a store local to you and they are Ireland based so it is a fixed €7.50 anywhere on the island.

http://jbsgroup.ie/catalog/

mansars

Having spent manay years in Scotland the same is true regarding "Highlands & Islands"...although it depends on what comany you are dealing with on weather you are in the highlands and islands....I was once told by a someone from a major gas company that they could not send an emegency plummer to my 90 year old aunt, after her pipes had burst, as she lived on an island.....she lives in Burntisland in Fife!!

I dont find it very annoying with the free uk delivery....ahh but not your bit, especially from the big retailers (one that has just gone bust was a prime one) and places like groupon or even auction sites.


Sir Knight,

being in a similar position toyourself, I have now found myself buying from companies south of the border as they are generally cheaper with the exchange rate and tend to use all ireland couriers so again cheaper.

hth

Sir_Knight wrote: »

<START RANT> I need to occasionally order up Health and Safety items, which is easy as there are plenty of suitable online suppliers to choose from.

One however I now refuse to use, as their postage policy is - free to GB, but 10% of the value to NI. This infuriates me, as it doesn't pay any heed to the size or weight of my order, nor how many boxes it has to go in to. In otherwords, the actual cost of sending it to me. Instead it's just an arbitrary 10% (+VAT of course) of the price. The last order I placed with them came to over £750, mostly for packets of plasters, eye washes, dressings etc which had comparatively little weight, but they demanded over £75 to get it here.

Complaints to their management got me nowhere, and I have stopped using them.

<END RANT>

motorguy

ebay bugs me, because it doesnt allow any sort of search that gives you price including postage to NI, so you then have to trawl through each listing to see what the cost 'might' be.

I'd one recently whereby i was buying a set of wheel trims - 'free uk delivery'. Cost to Northern Ireland an EXTRA £30!!! It would have been cheaper to book them on an EasyJet flight!!

Ended up getting a set delivered from Italy - same price for the trims - £11 delivery.

guiriman

mansars wrote: »

I dont find it very annoying with the free uk delivery....ahh but not your bit, especially from the big retailers (one that has just gone bust was a prime one) and places like groupon or even auction sites.

Comet perchance? One time I placed an order online with them for a laptop, all went through ok and they took the money from my credit card. Three weeks later and still no laptop so contacted them and was told that they didn't deliver to NI and would refund my card. You'd think they would program there system not to take the order then! Not a bit of wonder they went under.