View Full Version : Free Delivery on Everything!
PPRuNe Pop
27th Jul 2009, 12:47
I get really fed-up with paying high prices for delivery - which is usually a scam!
I just ordered some keenly priced bits and pieces from www.Play.com (http://www.Play.com). with NO delivery charges.
Very rare these days.
green granite
27th Jul 2009, 13:10
It's a big problem on E-Bay, partly because E-Bay don't levy a percentage on the P&P costs. I've just brought a lens, the postage on the Canon E-Bay shop was £2.50, and from where I got it it was £9.99 but since it was £40 cheaper it was worth it.
Don't forget that South American river is free over £15 (for 'original A', not 'affiliated stores')
green granite
27th Jul 2009, 14:07
on't forget that South American river is free over £15
About £110 dearer on that site. :(
frostbite
27th Jul 2009, 14:22
It's a growing trend. 7dayshop.com have been giving free delivery for some weeks, and there have been a lot of similar on Amazon lately.
In contrast, Comet auctions, which used to be worth a visit, seem to be charging around £50 for anything sizeable.
Sprogget
27th Jul 2009, 14:23
Being in the delivery business, I can tell you what you already knew. It's a scam, more accurately, a profit centre.
Part of me says why not, after all, these aren't charities you're dealing with, then the other part rails at the fact that customers are heavily overcharged for a part of the sales process which has to be undertaken anyway & confers no product benefit to the end user.
My company deals in heavy distribution & 26 pallets at a time is our stock in trade. That level of carriage would be something in the order of 4000 retail boxed external hard drives, for the sake of argument, assuming around 160/pallet right? On a good day, we would charge in the region of £380 for London to Manchester. The carriage therefore works out around 9.5 pence per unit shipped.
All sorts of factors will drive that rate up or down, but whichever way you cut it, it is not expensive on an item that will retail in excess of £50.
Final delivery carriers I.e. parcel co's. have different economics however. The main contention they have to deal with is volume. To be successful in the parcel market, you absolutely must have a vast central, automated sorting hub that takes in deliveries through the 2nd half of the day, sorts them into geographical areas & sends them back out on lorries for transhipment onto vans & final delivery the following day.
That central hub is a financial beast that has to be fed constantly. The whole thing depends on that. Typically, a parcel company will look to make fractions of a penny on a parcel. Thus, someone like play/amazon/e-buyer etc. will be getting deals in the sub £3/parcel range in the UK.
Think on that next time £9.99 delivery is added to the shiny new box you just ordered.
GG - that post was for Pop! Incidentally, they can be the cheapest - I get (original) cartridges from them for my Epson multi delivered well below anything else on the internet.
Ancient Observer
27th Jul 2009, 15:08
I worked for DHL before the Germans took them over. Whilst we had the volume/scale that Sprogs rightly talks about, we hated domestic delivery of anything which had to be signed for - and signed-for deliveries is what we did!!. At most people wanted to pay £5 to £10 for a domestic delivery. Each and every one of those deliveries cost us over £15 back in 2002. If we could avoid domestics, we did.
I have no idea how anyone expects to make money on domestic delivery, other than the post office.
The customer doesn't want to pay and the selling company doesn't want to pay.
Sprogget
27th Jul 2009, 15:13
Yep. The trouble with home delivery is people are often not at home. Besty mate of mine works for DHL now the Germans have taken over. They still hate home delivery.
green granite
27th Jul 2009, 15:20
The trouble with home delivery is people are often not at home.
One advantage of being retired, I can be here when required. :ok:
frostbite
27th Jul 2009, 16:44
Can't recall who the carrier was, but I had a home delivery at 7.30pm a while back.
When I commented on overtime, the chap said no, they now make all their domestic deliveries in the evening because there's a much better chance of folk being at home.
PPRuNe Pop
27th Jul 2009, 20:58
As 'sprogget' says, delivery is a profit centre (very aptly described!) and is an imposition given the savings companies make on the internet.
I have been in the habit when asked for the reason for not carrying an order through, "your delivery charges are swingeing charges - so no thanks."
I recently had to send anm 8kg parcel of books from Sussex to London. I cannot remember exactly, but Parclefarce were over £20. Via an on-line site I had them picked up at my house and delivered the next day for under £7 by DHL.
Ancient Observer
28th Jul 2009, 14:12
BOAC - As part of Deutsche Post's attempt at world domination they have bought a number of Companies in the UK that are supposed to be in the home delivery market. I seem to remember some Securicor jv, and perhaps others.
They won't make any money at UKP7 for 8kgs of books!!!
Sprogget
28th Jul 2009, 14:38
The online parcel srvices work on the basis of incremental revenue. If you have set up a national distribution network of depots vans & trunking operations, then in logic it has a given capacity - say for the sake of argument, 3 million units/24 hours. If in July when the market is relatively dead you're running at 1.8 million units, then it makes sense to take on extra revenue where you can - after all, you have the fixed cost of the network to consider.
I doubt you would get the same rate in December.
Saab Dastard
28th Jul 2009, 14:40
BOAC,
Standard Parcels for 8 Kg is £11.74 - that's the cheapest and most basic service.
£7 is astonishing for next day delivery.
SD
Coconutty
29th Jul 2009, 08:39
Parcel delivery services - baaah !
IMHO Parcel Farce are by far the worst - they treat "Fragile" labels as a challenge,
and must run some sort of in house competition to see who can break the contents into the most pieces, or take the longest to deliver them.
Then again there was the company - who shall remain nameless ( but consisting of 3 letters - first one "D" ) who sent a driver to collect an item for delivery a couple of hundred miles away.
He didn't know what he had come to collect, or where it was going to be delivered to. :ugh:
I had two parcels for collection that day - one worth about £750.00 and the other about £750,000 ! - He didn't get either of them !
When he returned that afternoon ( for the expensive one ) I had to help him lift the crate into the back of his rental van ( you know the sort - no tail lift but plenty of broken rear lights ) :ooh:
He didn't have any straps to tie the crate down, or to the side rails, but said he would pack the other parcels around the crate to stop it sliding !
My crate was going back to the Central hub, and the other parcels in the van ( some with "Challenge" labels on them ) were all to be delivered locally before he got there, so there would nothing left in the van to stop my crate sliding all over the place. :rolleyes:
Reluctantly I agreed to his suggestion that he would drive "carefully" and allowed him to take it - Somehow it managed to arrive at its destination in one piece - more I suspect due to the careful packaging of the crate than of the care taken by the courier(s).
http://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d129/coconut11/Coconutty.jpg
Sprogget
29th Jul 2009, 08:50
He didn't know what he had come to collect, or where it was going to be delivered to. :ugh:
He wouldn't do. The driver collects for return to local depot where the parcel is transhipped to an artic, sent to a hub, sorted back onto another artic, taken to a delivering depot, transhipped onto a van & delivered. The 1st driver is one link in a chain. It's for the customer to give the driver the correct parcel. The driver puts a barcode label on the parcel & the system tracks it the rest of the way.
Somehow it managed to arrive at its destination in one piece
The system works!
frostbite
29th Jul 2009, 11:48
There's another little caper going on round my way.
New companies have started advertising in the local free papers. They charge a minimum £10.50 for next day delivery and collect from you.
Only, as I discovered, "next day" can also mean the day after, and they are somehow allied to others, Businesspost in my case.
Coconutty
29th Jul 2009, 18:32
Quote: He didn't know what he had come to collect, or where it was going to be delivered to. :ugh:
He wouldn't do.
So how was I supposed to know which one to hand over ?
Both crates contained electronic equipment being sent away to their respective manufacturers for service / repair.
Each ( separate ) servicing company had arranged the collection of the goods.
The collection driver did not know who the customer was, so I could not hand over either crate in case it ended up at the wrong place.
When the driver returned he had found out the name of the customer and I was able to give him the correct crate.
( He still hadn't fixed his lights though :p )
http://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d129/coconut11/Coconutty.jpg
Ancient Observer
30th Jul 2009, 15:02
Would you call that SNAFU, or was it catch 22?
PS thanks for the Word template tip on another thread. Worked for me.
£7 is astonishing for next day delivery. - just looked it up - £6.90 in fact!
Coconutty
31st Jul 2009, 11:05
SNAFU, or :
Too many courier companies competing for business and trying to cut costs to the bone by employing staff with no brains, using cheap unreliable transport with the "service" being provided / purchased suffering as a result.
Couldn't find an acronym for that though ;)
http://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d129/coconut11/Coconutty.jpg
airborne_artist
31st Jul 2009, 14:12
Some of the best deals to be had are from the online parcels brokers - yesterday I received a 25kg, two box consignment from the other side of the country. I booked and paid for the delivery.
It came on TNT, booked through interparcel.com - cost was change out of £16 for a 24 hr service. Booked direct with TNT it would have cost £55, and with ParcelFarce, £50.
Another good online co. is parcel2go.com - £6.90 is their typical small parcel charge for a 24 hr service.
PPRuNe Pop
6th Aug 2009, 21:28
Yesterday I ordered from Play.com 1 SATA power cable that costs £4.99 in Maplin - I checked. I had it delivered today with no delivery charge at a cost of £1.19 - and I used a debit card. I bought a set of 6 ink cartidges for my Epson R300 at £4.36 again free delivery.
Now I just gotta stop being a shopaholic!
Sprogget
6th Aug 2009, 21:52
Networks are great things. provided they exist & are running reasonably to capacity, the magic of incremental revenue steps in to help people who really need a card or a cable tomorrow morning.:)
frostbite
7th Aug 2009, 11:49
Maplin do have some bargains but they are also horrendously expensive on some items!
I saw an interesting small carriage clock on Ebay. Price £50 - well worth that.
Then I saw the shipping charge - £250! That was from China, mind. It was a Tibetan clock: I was intrigued to know the history of it and whether it was legitimately acquired by the Chinese gentleman selling it.
I shall probably never know.