Online delivery charges

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Barleycorn

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I am a bit annoyed at the way that online chandlers hide their delivery costs. I have just got another boat, and have been buying a few pits and pieces to satisfy the insurance following the survey.
I am finding that they make no mention of delivery costs in your 'basket', and wait until you have entered all your details, delivery address etc, then finally the delivery is added. Presumably they think that once you have gone to all that trouble you will go ahead anyway. I have just finished up buying a gas detector from Amazon. It was slightly more expensive than the online chandlery, but at least the delivery cost was up front, free actually, not hidden.
 
Agreed. You can normally find out delivery charges by finding their delivery conditions page, but I never think about that until after I have found what I wanted and put it in the basket.
 
Barleycorn said:
I am a bit annoyed at the way that online chandlers hide their delivery costs.
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You can usually find them on the website before you even think of making an order. Quite often it'll be at the bottom of the home page under delivery, but sometimes you have to search a bit or even resort to the site map.

If you come under Mainland UK but not the Scottish Hilly Bits, consider yourself lucky.
 
It certainly pays to check as sometimes the costs can be outrageous. But not always: a few months ago I had a hob/grill/oven delivered from Marine Superstore (Portsmouth) to an 'outlying island' for £30. That island was Levkas, Greece. Bargain.
 
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I have had an automated email from one of the firms concerned asking why I had not completed the transaction. I have told them why, but I shouldn't think it will make any difference to their policy.

The ironic thing is that even with delivery they were the cheapest, so stupid that they don't tell you up front.
 
I have assumed that delivery charge is by weight, so the web site can't calculate that untill it knows the total weight of all you purchases together?

Still, delivery charges do annoy me. Living in aberdeen, one company changed their charge from £5 to £22 by email as they said i was in the highlands. It was furneax riddall electrical supply.
 
I know I'm lucky with my geographical position, but I get round delivery charges by phoning Force 4 and getting them to put things aside for me, which they are happy to do, efficiently too.

As their chandlery is on the way to my boat I simply swing by and pick the stuff up.

Most of the other stuff I order online is through Amazon or Abe Books, both of which are often free delivery or else very reasonable.
 
Barleycorn said:
I am a bit annoyed at the way that online chandlers hide their delivery costs. I have just got another boat, and have been buying a few pits and pieces to satisfy the insurance following the survey.
I am finding that they make no mention of delivery costs in your 'basket', and wait until you have entered all your details, delivery address etc, then finally the delivery is added. Presumably they think that once you have gone to all that trouble you will go ahead anyway. I have just finished up buying a gas detector from Amazon. It was slightly more expensive than the online chandlery, but at least the delivery cost was up front, free actually, not hidden.
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How do you work out the delivery charges when you don't know what the customer is buying?
Amazon are so big they build the price into the price - they use a different business model because they have the volume of sales to support it.
 
Don;t know which online chandlers your using but the ones I use regularly (Seamark Nunn and Force4) display the shipping cost in the shopping basket as soon as you start shopping and update it as and when necessary as you add items to the order. Can't see how they could improve on that
 
Camelia said:
How do you work out the delivery charges when you don't know what the customer is buying?
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As Barleycorn says in his post, the delivery charge should be at the basket stage not at the final 'are you sure you want it' stage when all the personal information has been given. This seems to be a marked change shopping on the web in recent months.
 
Pye_End said:
As Barleycorn says in his post, the delivery charge should be at the basket stage not at the final 'are you sure you want it' stage when all the personal information has been given. This seems to be a marked change shopping on the web in recent months.
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That must be the point where the software knows what the customer is buying, I can "faf" about with a basket all day, but how does the software cope with that. It's actually an important design decision - at what point in the transaction do I place the stock on reserved and apply a shipping charge. If the software does not get that right, because there are a whole lot of punters like me faffing about, the company cannot control their stock levels. If they can't control their stock levels then they are not competitive.

Having spend a very interesting meeting with marketing a few days ago they are also intested in all sorts of stuff that they can analyse, like where do our customers come from, what do they look at, what do they put in the basket, what do they buy, if they don't buy when do they stop the purchase etc. etc. collecting this type of data is important to them.
 
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Stock control and harvesting of marketing data are different issues from spelling out delivery charges.

Surely the delivery charge is computed from the basket, and I cannot see any difference between a computer working it out once on the final basket, or working it out as it goes along. The specific OP complaint is that the delivery charge is calculated after names, addresses and payment details have been entered. Why can't the delivery charge be obvious before harvesting marketing data - even if only done once? Charges are spelled out up front on the majority of sites, but an increasing amount are not.

Not being up front about delivery charges sometimes stops my purchase, so you can feed that back to your marketing meeting.
 
Pye_End said:
Stock control and harvesting of marketing data are different issues from spelling out delivery charges.

Surely the delivery charge is computed from the basket, and I cannot see any difference between a computer working it out once on the final basket, or working it out as it goes along. The specific OP complaint is that the delivery charge is calculated after names, addresses and payment details have been entered. Why can't the delivery charge be obvious before harvesting marketing data - even if only done once? Charges are spelled out up front on the majority of sites, but an increasing amount are not.

Not being up front about delivery charges sometimes stops my purchase, so you can feed that back to your marketing meeting.
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We must sit down some time over a pint or dram and discuss the, rather dry, subject of stock control and shipping costs.
 
Most of the sites I use have a standard delivery charge - very few seem to calculate it as you fill up the basket. And a lot have free delivery once you exceed a pre set amount, eg Axminster Tools.
The stupid ones charge extra for delivering to Highlands and Islands - they must lose loads of trade by not realising that Parcelforce and Royal Mail don't charge extra to deliver there.
 
srp said:
Most of the sites I use have a standard delivery charge - very few seem to calculate it as you fill up the basket. And a lot have free delivery once you exceed a pre set amount, eg Axminster Tools.
The stupid ones charge extra for delivering to Highlands and Islands - they must lose loads of trade by not realising that Parcelforce and Royal Mail don't charge extra to deliver there.
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There are lots of stupid company's, Living in the Highlands I use Amazon when ever possible simply because of there delivery charges
 
I have looked at stuff on Amazon which had excessive delivery charges.
Can anyone explain the mainland thing with carriage charges? They want more money to deliver to the Highlands as it apparently isn't on the mainland despite being on the same island. One winter day when the weather is bad and I am bored I might see what advertising standards think of it!
 
ASAP certainly charge delivery based on weight. (how boring accurately weighing everything you sell .... unless you are getting ready for self-service checkouts). I recently removed a £1.50 item from my basket to save £2.00 on the delivery charge.
 
Pye_End said:
Not being up front about delivery charges sometimes stops my purchase, so you can feed that back to your marketing meeting.
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+1

I'll do a limited amount of hunting, looking for a "delivery terms" page etc, but if I can't find out what the price will be before entering all my details, and there are alternative suppliers in my other browser tabs (as there usually are) then I will close your tab and pick another and you've lost the sale.

Pete
 
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