Delivery costs

[Jawloms]

What's people's stance on paying postage on things you order? I get there is a cost, and someone has to pay it, but it always annoys me when I'm ordering £12K worth of new kit and at the bottom is "Delivery - £20" or something. I've just asked for a quote for 30 refurb PCs and that has "Delivery - £100 for two pallets" on it.

 

Do you pay it without question? Do you have your own cut-off where you get grumpy about it? My usual supplier knows me very well and actually emailed me the other day to say there was quite a postage cost on something I've just ordered, and would I mind going halves with her!

 

Stuart

[localzuk]

I always dislike it - when you put an order in for £15k and they put £7.99 delivery on. Ridiculous.

 

However, on one hand they should roll these costs into their pricing, but on the other the market is super-cut-throat, so increasing prices may lose them the order. So, I can see it from both sides.

 

Most of my orders don't have delivery on though now to be honest. The only one that catches me out sometimes really is ordering large format displays and they sometimes charge £100 delivery, as it comes by a specialist courier.

[Norphy]

It costs money to deliver things. Margins on computer equipment are tight at the best of times, paying the delivery cost or at least contributing towards it isn't entirely unreasonable. We've been spoiled for too long with the likes of Amazon absorbing delivery costs imo.

[AlanD]

I don't have a problem with whatever the genuine "delivery" cost is. But I do complain when there is a "P & P" cost well above what I could send the same in the post office for a tracked delivery....or when you get charged P & P twice for ordering two items from Amazon or Ebay (from the same supplier)...because essentially they are "hiding" the cost of the item inside an inflated "p & P" charge.

[Fazza]

£7.99 delivery on a £15K order is just daft but £7.99 delivery for 1 PC is fair. They either add the £7.99 delivery charge to each PC and say 'free' delivery or keep the cost per PC down and then charge you £7.99 per order and they absorb the extra cost.

 

For me, it's when they spring it on you at the last minute that annoys me as the margins are so tight on ordering like-for-like PCs that you can be comparing what you think are two orders that include delivery when only one does and if it's £100 for two pallets then that could suddenly make the cheapest quote the dearest quote.

[Jawloms]

£7.99 delivery on a £15K order is just daft but £7.99 delivery for 1 PC is fair.

 

This....

[PotNoodleTech]

This....

 

....doesn't make any sense at all.

 

So you are happy to pay £7.99 for delivery of 1 PC but you are not happy to pay £7.99 for delivery of 36PCs?

 

Let me just get that straight in my head, you abhor paying delivery on a pallet but are happy to pay much more to have one individual PC delivered by DPD or the like?

 

Huh?!

[Jawloms]

....doesn't make any sense at all.

 

So you are happy to pay £7.99 for delivery of 1 PC but you are not happy to pay £7.99 for delivery of 36PCs?

 

Let me just get that straight in my head, you abhor paying delivery on a pallet but are happy to pay much more to have one individual PC delivered by DPD or the like?

 

Huh?!

 

I fail to see why if I'm spending £12k they can't waive the £7.99 as a gesture. They're making quite enough money off me already. 1 PC they aren't making loads of money off me, so there's a delivery charge. Makes sense to me.

Edited July 18, 2018 by Jawloms

[aleach2]

I just look for suppliers who don't charge delivery. I have used Insight in the past and they never charged me for delivery. I am not against being charged delivery but I hate having to build up orders just to justify the £10 cost for delivery. Again don't mind paying for huge deliveries of IT equipment but again never been charged by my suppliers in the past. They have just absorbed the cost into their profits.

[Fazza]

....doesn't make any sense at all.

 

It makes mathematical sense!

 

If a PC costs £200 and delivery by DPD costs £7.99 then the total comes to £207.99.

 

If they incorporate the cost in to the price of the PC it would be £207.99 per PC.

 

20 x 207.99 = £4,159.80

 

If they sold it for £200 per PC plus £7.99 delivery then that would be £200*20 = £4,000 + £7.99 = £4007.99

 

£4,159 for 'free' delivery or £4,007.99 for delivery you pay for! and when ordering in bulk, a £7.99 discount for genuine free delivery is not a big ask. Even £100 for a pallet delivery is still £59 cheaper than the 'free' delivery option.

Edited July 18, 2018 by Fazza

[Cache]

Most of my suppliers don't charge delivery, if they need to for some reason they are always upfront about it. In general though I look at the total cost, if me paying for an item + delivery is cheaper then free delivery I'll either go with that or go back to the other supplier and ask them to sharpen their pencil a bit more (which nearly always works), depends on the situation all being told.

[speckytecky]

I have stuck almost exclusively with Higate ever since Mike Hinchliffe my account manager from former Misco moved to them just prior to the latter going under. Mike always goes far beyond the extra mile on quality, accuracy and fair pricing, and has given me ‘free’ usually next day delivery as well.

[christhetech]

It depends on what it is I'm ordering to be honest. If it's something that is going to be palletised or is high value with a fair bit of weight, then I accept that there is a cost and somebody has to bear it. If the DHLs and UPS's of this world delivered stuff for free, they wouldn't be in business for very long. Likewise, if your supplier is absorbing all of the delivery costs without adding it to the price of your items, they are not going to be around for the long term.

It does irk me when a supplier tries charging me £10 shipping for an item worth a couple of quid that could realistically go in a small Jiffy envelope. A Cisco reseller that I used to use many years ago would ship me a single transceiver in a hulking great envelope, padded out to the max, via a premium UPS service and I always thought that it was such a waste. Yes, a Cisco transceiver is not a low value item, but surely Royal Mail Signed for in a small Jiffy Envelope would have been sufficient, and much, much cheaper. I've had single Li-Ion batteries shipped to me in a massive box, filled with polychips and airbags. How is that efficient and cost-effective?

[Katy]

Think I pay delivery on most of my suppliers (except maybe CPC which is free over a certain order value). Usually it is a fixed £10 or whatever.

If I do huge orders from Scan I usually get a large delivery charge but they still beat everyone else even with that added on (e.g. think it cost me £60 delivery when I ordered a pallet of PC components and a pallet of monitors)

 

I have been quoted for licensing which had a delivery charge - for an emailed licence key - made sure that didn't make it onto the invoice (it's probably a template with the delivery pre-filled out that they forgot to take off)

[mikeprice]

I'm OK about delivery if they are open about it at the start

 

where I get annoyed is when I ask for a quote from someone and they come in lowest for what is effectively a box off a shelf

 

so I order it from them

 

and THEN they add on delivery

 

so I have placed an order via the school system - gof it signed of etc etc

 

then when the Office Manager gets the invoice it doesn't match the amount on the order form that I submitted

so then I have to explain why etc etc

 

and often when I look at the quotes from other people then the lowest quote was not the REAL lowest quote 'cos there is an extra £20 delivery when they were only £10 cheaper in the first place

 

delivery is fine

but be honest about it - basically if I order a bunch of bits the delivery is the same for a few or quite a bit more

but some will include delivery - some will add on £x per bit - which adds up and caused me problems later on

 

so in future I will order from the honest people

[christhetech]

I'm OK about delivery if they are open about it at the start

 

where I get annoyed is when I ask for a quote from someone and they come in lowest for what is effectively a box off a shelf

 

so I order it from them

 

and THEN they add on delivery

 

so I have placed an order via the school system - gof it signed of etc etc

 

then when the Office Manager gets the invoice it doesn't match the amount on the order form that I submitted

so then I have to explain why etc etc

 

and often when I look at the quotes from other people then the lowest quote was not the REAL lowest quote 'cos there is an extra £20 delivery when they were only £10 cheaper in the first place

 

delivery is fine

but be honest about it - basically if I order a bunch of bits the delivery is the same for a few or quite a bit more

but some will include delivery - some will add on £x per bit - which adds up and caused me problems later on

 

so in future I will order from the honest people

 

Any quotes that you get from suppliers should include any applicable delivery charges. If they don't, I would challenge them on it before placing my order with them. My stance is always the same, I want a quote for the supply, or supply & installation of the following goods at the address stated. If there is no line on the quotation for delivery, even if delivery is shown as FOC, I will contact the supplier and question it, then there are no hidden surprises.

I often ask for budgetary quotes before pursuing any major pieces of work. As with the final BAFO quote, I will normally ask them to include indicative costs for any applicable shipping costs. I will normally also request that the budgetary quote is based on standard pricing, with a view to requesting supported pricing from them at a later date. The theory is that if I can get the budgetary pricing approved, I will have no worries in getting the order through when it comes to placing it, and there will normally be a little bit of money left in the kitty for anything that has been missed during the initial scoping, so I don't have to go begging for additional funding if we've missed a little bit of cabling work or we need some additional peripherals etc. Getting a budgetary quote first will normally give you a couple of hundred quid to play with, just in case...

[ICTDirect_Dave]

I've never been a fan of charging delivery for items.

 

It was common when I started here, but after a while we moved to DPD and made a pretty sizable saving off of our previous courier rates.

At this point I had a chat with a couple of the managers and we agreed that we would only charge delivery on orders under £75 as we don't often make enough on such small orders to cover it. Everything else went to free delivery, no matter how many pallets it may be.

[Wubbalubbadub]

I have specified to all my suppliers that I don't ever want to see a delivery charge on any of my quotes, and I expect them to build it into there prices of the goods.

It's just one of them things I hate.

That being said.. when it comes to personal stuff, I have got to the checkout of a £1500 computer build and then seen a delivery charge, so I have exited the website and gone elsewhere.. cough...overclockers

[Arthur]

That being said.. when it comes to personal stuff, I have got to the checkout of a £1500 computer build and then seen a delivery charge, so I have exited the website and gone elsewhere.. cough... overclockers

Both OcUK and Scan have free delivery if you have a sufficient number of posts on their forums.

 

https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/threads/free-shipping-for-loyal-forum-members.17943556/

 

https://forums.hexus.net/scan-care-hexus/138836-scan2hexus-free-shipping-setup-guide.html

 

I have saved hundreds in shipping costs over the years.

[Wubbalubbadub]

Both OcUK and Scan have free delivery if you have a sufficient number of posts on their forums.

 

https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/threads/free-shipping-for-loyal-forum-members.17943556/

 

https://forums.hexus.net/scan-care-hexus/138836-scan2hexus-free-shipping-setup-guide.html

 

I have saved hundreds in shipping costs over the years.

Don't see why I should be forced to be a forum poster to get free delivery.. good marketing, but not for me. I just go elsewhere.