Awful mail order company

Sea Devil

Sea Devil

Well-Known Member
Joined
19 Aug 2004
Messages
3,906
Location
Boulogne sur mer & Marbella Spain, Guadeloupe
www.youtube.com
I emailed Mailspeed for a delivery quote on a set of blocks and webbing for a life-raft on deck - small lightweight items that could go in a jiffy bag... UK postal costs about £4.00 - jiffy bag £1.00 tops... Value of Item ordered £24,, The reply:-

[ QUOTE ]
Our minimum European postage is £15 for a parcel weighing less than 2KG.
Regards
Kevin Mortimer


[/ QUOTE ]

So the cost of labour is £10!!! I really hate people who try to make an unfair profit out of postal charges. It makes me sick to think they think I am so stupid... Where the hell do they think France is? Do they know the world is round...???

OK rant over.. awful people - was going to order a life-raft as well - clearly they do not want international business... how very very silly as they can outdo on price lots of items on their web site but if they 'cheat' on the postage charges then few will do business with them...
 
Last year I ordered a length of rope with an eye splice from the same company. The rope arrived with a note to say the splice would follow when in stock!...DOH!

When I spoke to nice lady in the office she offered to put a splice in the post and I would I be able to fit it myselff...DOUBLE DOH!
 
I'm sorry that you believe that you have had bad service from Mailspeed, I have always found them to be one of the better mail order companies. You assume that they use PO for their deliveries, from memory they use a carrier, so you might be comparing apples with oranges. You might like to find out what other mail order companies charge for UK -> France delivery.
 
I am having an entire life-raft delivered to France for £50.

If they advertise as mail order the implication is that they use 'royal mail' - actually it is up to them to decide what 'extra' charges they want to add to the price of an item - it is up to them to decide they cannot be bothered to use normal mail service (Mailspeed!!!) which is cheaper and frequently faster than couriers - it is up to them to not bother with small orders and treat 'Europe' as the other side of the moon...

and it is up to me to shout loud and clear that I hate being ripped off on P&P - and I think what they offer is --- not good enough and not people I would want to do business with.
 
Well happy birthday, Michael.

Provided that they were clear as to their charges then to claim rip-off is a bit rich, you can't make a company operate in a way that suits you.

On this subject we'll have to agree to disagree.
 
I'm a little suprised too... they've always been excellent when i've used them...

I suspect that the challenge is them having a system clever enough to decide what p&P to charge by product... instead, they'll use a single dimension such as weight, or size... some products will win, some will lose....
 
exactly.

They've picked an average fee for small parcels, rather than try to decipher the costs of each parcel which could take one person quite a long time (an hence cost) or provide an automated system to do it which would cost a fortune to implement. Either would raise the price of the object.

As they probably sell most of their produce to UK, I'd guess they've gone for the easier and lest costly option
 
I ordered a 40kg package two weeks before xmas and was charged £6.95 for next day delivery so don't think their charges are out of line at all, cheaper and faster than many.

Would doubt they trust standard Royal Mail for anything these days as carrier charges would be less than standard postage. We used to send everything signed for courier delivery for less than Royal Mail charges and with more delivery flexibility as well. Other problem is that Royal Mail are useless at tracking any delivery that has left the country whereas couriers can do this properly.
 
"it is up to them to decide they cannot be bothered to use normal mail service (Mailspeed!!!) which is cheaper and frequently faster than couriers"

I would certainly take issue with that statement ..... I have waited over a week .... actually 10 days for a chart card to be delivered by Royal Mail to me ..... I sent my car docs to buyer on the monday midday - he rec'd tuesday midday in UK via Courier ....... both are Latvia - UK transits ...

I regularly have to send docs all over Europe etc. - I would never ever use any postal service that has to extend outside its own country .... I would only use courier - that includes small parcels as well.
 
yes its true I am having a bad hair day - for some good reasons but:-

When I go into a shop - supermarket - my local chandler I see a price of a product and pick up the product and take it to the counter - at that counter a human being (sometimes heavily disguised) looks at the bar code and zaps it or taps the price in a till - puts the item into a bag (or possibly not in the case of a supermarket) and takes from me the money marked on the object.. I h&Pave paid to get to the s-market, park the car, drive the thing home paying for the fuel - running costs// My share of the P&P

A mail order company has not got overheads in terms of high street rental, rates lighting heating etc... So what is the problem with providing a little individual service and using 'mail' rather than a courier when appropriate... If it were a matter of a couple of quid I would go fair enough - on a £25 quid item the p&p mark up possibly equates and double the profit... Their right - their business - their bat and ball etc etc

My right to say - I do not want to do business with companies that do not price honestly.... And to say it out loud - or am i very wrong - again?
 
[ QUOTE ]
"it is up to them to decide they cannot be bothered to use normal mail service (Mailspeed!!!) which is cheaper and frequently faster than couriers"

I would certainly take issue with that statement ..... I have waited over a week .... actually 10 days for a chart card to be delivered by Royal Mail to me ..... I sent my car docs to buyer on the Monday midday - he rec'd Tuesday midday in UK via Courier ....... both are Latvia - UK transits ...

I regularly have to send docs all over Europe etc. - I would never ever use any postal service that has to extend outside its own country .... I would only use courier - that includes small parcels as well.

[/ QUOTE ]

British Post and French post take 3-4 working days with small packages for a fraction of the cost of a courier. I use both on a daily basis. A courier frequently takes in excess of 48 hours, calls at no set or previewed time and if you are not in may not deliver again for another 48 hours and frequently has premium rate telephone lines... Postal services allow you to pick up the item from the PO during working hours from the next day... Far better and more user friendly in my experience...
 
it has all those overheads. They need office and warehouses and staff, and all the associated bills.

To provide a service to ship small products overseas would cost huge overhead to find the mmost cost effective means. So they take a middle road, and if people don't like that overhead, they simply don't use it.

They will be trying to make money as cost effectively as possible just like everyone else. Providing the most cost effective solution to shipping for every single overseas customer to every country they are asked to ship to is not entirely reasonable. They will negotiate with one or two suppliers of shipping, then take a reasonable stance on small items to average the costs
 
I've used mailspeed on several occasions and found them to have reasonable charges.

What upsets me is that some companies - Force 4 for one - try to charge "Highlands and Islands" delivery charges, hence I will never use them. Their loss, but I'm sure that in the grand scheme of things, they are not bothered.

Aberdeen is not in the Shetlands!
 
the blame is with the delivery companies that impose those extra charges. Some companies will bear the added cost if they have enough turnover and profit, but the cost will be added somewhere and others will bear the burden
 
I thought I'd been clever when I wanted an anode awhile back £7.50 + £10.00 p+p no I thought I'll go to the local swindery in a nearby town so thirty or so miles later I discover they want £17.50 /forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif

In the end anode costs me £17.50 plus 2.5 gallons of petrol /forums/images/graemlins/mad.gif

Mail order would have been cheaper /forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif
 
[ QUOTE ]
They will negotiate with one or two suppliers of shipping, then take a reasonable stance on small items to average the costs

[/ QUOTE ] Got to take Michael's side on this one. Most companies seem to NOT take the average and expect to win some lose some, they charge a set amount which ensures they do not lose on anything.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Share this page

Top