Disproportionate Delivery Cost Rant

[GB72]

Not sure whether this should be in this section or The Lounge as it applies to golf and non golf matters but I am fed up with disproportionate delivery costs.
I am not abject to delivery costs being charged, though free delivery will sell me on using one retailer over another, but it is ridiculous when the delivery cost of an item is up to 50% of the cost of the item itself.
I had an email from Fore24 this morning advertising shorts on offer. The weather is nice this week and so a pair of shorts for the weekend at £9.99 seemed like the very deal for me. Then I noticed that the delivery cost was another £4.99 on top of that unless I spend over £50.00. Surely someone should have picked up that people would be dissuaded by having to pay an additional 50% to have the item delivered. It is the same with all of their items, a flat delivery fee unless you spend over £50.00. That is all well and good but when you have a large range of items at impulse buy prices, that additional £5.00 is enough to cancel an order.
Don’t get me wrong, charging delivery costs is fine, no problem with that at all, what I have an issue with is when the cost of delivery is not priced in accordance with the amount that the item costs. I know the idea is to encourage people to spend over £50 and I have done that when the item I want is around the £40 mark but I am not going to spend 5 times what I was planning to spend to get free delivery and nor am I going to pay an additional 50% on the price of an impulse buy item in order to cover the disproportionate cost of delivery.

 

[pbrown7582]

the trouble being the actual cost to courier a pair of shorts is not far off £5. Royal mail post will be £2.50 but then they run the risk of undelivered claims.
Have a look at the retailer that despatch with free delivery such as golfbase you'll get some shorts for less than £15 im sure. I paid £12 for some ijp tech shorts

 

[Lord Tyrion]

Have you ever tried sending something by a carrier? Those are the costs. The company selling the product need a reliable delivery company that will take signatures for goods. If not how do they know they have arrived. Straight away that means a proper parcel network, not Royal Mail and shove it in a post box. At that point £5 is a good price. We use a parcel network for shipping goods and we get charged £5.75 for anything under 1kg and £8.50 for up to 20kgs. The likes of DPD and Hermes will be cheaper, often slower ie 2-3 day rather than next day, and pricing is very much dependent on the volume of product sent but there are still costs to be met.

I doubt any of the online golf companies, or any company, scores on freight costs. They will cover the costs but little else.

 

[patricks148]

Think yourself lucky you do not get charged extra for not not being on the Mainland!!!!

Geography is not a strong point for many mail order companies

 

[CliveW]

Think yourself lucky you do not get charged extra for not not being on the Mainland!!!!

Geography is not a strong point for many mail order companies

You don't have to be off the mainland to incur extra delivery charges, just north of the Central Belt. I don't understand why some carriers charge extra to send things from the Midlands to the Highlands, when there is no surcharge to send articles from the Highlands to the South of England????

 

[patricks148]

You don't have to be off the mainland to incur extra delivery charges, just north of the Central Belt. I don't understand why some carriers charge extra to send things from the Midlands to the Highlands, when there is no surcharge to send articles from the Highlands to the South of England????

This is one of the main reasons i don't buy things off the internet, every time..they try and charge you extra

 

[Brian_C]

Delivery charges.... you mean you've to pay for that.

 

[UlyssesSky]

Like the others mentioned, delivery costs are mostly independent from the value of the goods you buy.

That being said, you could check out their terms & conditions. If they have a free return policy, just add something else to bring your order above the GBP 50 threshold and return everything but the shorts.

 

[CheltenhamHacker]

Would you prefer that each pair of shorts was £15 with free delivery?

 

[Foxholer]

Not sure whether this should be in this section or The Lounge as it applies to golf and non golf matters but I am fed up with disproportionate delivery costs.
I am not abject to delivery costs being charged, though free delivery will sell me on using one retailer over another, but it is ridiculous when the delivery cost of an item is up to 50% of the cost of the item itself.
I had an email from Fore24 this morning advertising shorts on offer. The weather is nice this week and so a pair of shorts for the weekend at £9.99 seemed like the very deal for me. Then I noticed that the delivery cost was another £4.99 on top of that unless I spend over £50.00. Surely someone should have picked up that people would be dissuaded by having to pay an additional 50% to have the item delivered. It is the same with all of their items, a flat delivery fee unless you spend over £50.00. That is all well and good but when you have a large range of items at impulse buy prices, that additional £5.00 is enough to cancel an order.
Don’t get me wrong, charging delivery costs is fine, no problem with that at all, what I have an issue with is when the cost of delivery is not priced in accordance with the amount that the item costs. I know the idea is to encourage people to spend over £50 and I have done that when the item I want is around the £40 mark but I am not going to spend 5 times what I was planning to spend to get free delivery and nor am I going to pay an additional 50% on the price of an impulse buy item in order to cover the disproportionate cost of delivery.

Buy 2 pairs then! The 'cost of delivery per item' is halved, though still considerable wedge!

I do have sympathy; I have/had the same dilemma about those cheap high quality Dunlop balls from Sports Direct! And the same applied with base layers with another supplier - I eventually ordered 2.

 

[GB72]

Would you prefer that each pair of shorts was £15 with free delivery?

The strange thing is, probably yes. If they were advertised at £15 I would look at whether that seemed good value. It is not the price or paying delivery costs it is paying half the advertised price again in delivery