Cycling UK Forum

I needed to buy outer cable housing (Jagwire) for a hub gear. Starcyclespares had what I needed (4metres) - postal charge for the UK 2nd class delivery @£1.85. no options to France, where I live only, International Priority @ £11.04 and even if I had wanted only 1 metre the charge would have been £8.05 . I had to get the item sent to family in the UK who then posted it onto me for £3.70.

Why is it that so many UK companies appear not to want to do business with the rest of the world and this applies across the board. How many times have I seen free P&P in the UK only to hammer anyone living elsewhere, with no attempt to subtract their UK postal costs from overseas rates.

Is it any wonder that when I can I buy from the USA/Taiwan or Germany and I never get hammered on postal charges.

southerly wrote:Why is it that so many UK companies appear not to want to do business with the rest of the world and this applies across the board. How many times have I seen free P&P in the UK only to hammer anyone living elsewhere, with no attempt to subtract their UK postal costs from overseas rates.

Is it any wonder that when I can I buy from the USA/Taiwan or Germany and I never get hammered on postal charges.

UK seems to be withdrawing into itself these days. Probably the politicians (pressured to stop at least a few of their voters switching to UKIP). Apparently all the UK's problems stem from immigration (nothing to do with irresponsible banks going bust, etc.). UK society seems to need a scapegoat for everything and rather than e.g. politicians accept they completely failed to regulate the banks, immigration seems to be taking the brunt of the blame (which is convenient as "immigration" cannot really defend itself).

So everything is the fault of all that nasty "abroad" stuff. Horrible "overseas" from where everybody wants to come and live in the UK (or rather just come to the UK and claim social benefits).

It's all quite childish really and the UK will suffer in the long term as there are plenty of European/US/elsewhere companies sitting ready to take the customer base that was hard won by UK companies.

Ian

There's another phenomenon..

How often does one see "Will post to UK only" on Ebay..

This has the ring of a virtue about it.

Anytime I've messages them to send it to Ireland there's no problem.

The wider the pool, the more likely you are to get a good price! I've sold (mostly camera stuff) to Ireland, Britain, France, Germany and even the US.

If you are in France why not order stuff from a France based company? Perhaps you'll get free postage from them.

I think it is entirely reasonable for a company to take the commercial decision to keep costs as low as possible for the vast bulk of their customers and to charge the remainder extra to cover extra costs.

We can either have a free market that has as it's aim to return short term profits to shareholders, or we can have 'subsidised' public services, through taxation. (Trains/post/water/refuse/Health)
Or a mix of both where corporations can masquerade in the interests of the public and take taxation subsidies while still bleating on about competitiveness (eg. bank bailouts, Virgin rail, and sell off of Royal Mail assets at knock down prices)

I don't get too surprised when a free market doesn't work.

Too many scams over the years with international orders (not France or Ireland) so if I was sending anything of value I would always want to send the item by a tracked or recorded international service. I'm afraid that is at least £8.70 for a small parcel to Europe. I guess if it was something cheap I might send it economy post.
If I want to buy a cable outer from Rose (Ger) the shipping is £7.60
xxcycle (Fr) £11.68
bikecomponents.de (Ger) £11.86 or
Starbike (Ger) £11.87
so UK sellers aren't the only ones

You think this is bad - you try getting stuff posted to the Scottish Highlands. Half the people you talk to imagine that anywhere north of Perth is on a different island, or possibly planet. But Rosebikes will deliver here for the same price as SE England. Go on, make sense of that.

oldstrath wrote:You think this is bad - you try getting stuff posted to the Scottish Highlands. Half the people you talk to imagine that anywhere north of Perth is on a different island, or possibly planet. But Rosebikes will deliver here for the same price as SE England. Go on, make sense of that.

As will plain old Royal Mail. Let's hope it stays that way. What you see is a vision of the future if RM loses its Universal Service Obligation.

Problem is some couriers charge extra and if you were planning on using those couriers then you either have to charge the Highlands customers extra, charge everyone extra or take the hit yourself.

It's just the option you have if you choose to live where you er... choose to live. Though I understand a lot of people are born where they still live and haven't had the opportunity (or desire) to relocate.
I always think twice when I consider a postal cost to be high, and come to the conclusion 'would I carry it all the way there for that little money'

I appreciate that, as others have said, postal charges are expensive. But why. When I can order a 2nd hand book on Amazon from the US, book cost 1p postage £2.80 and they make their money on the postage at £2.80 from US to UK. So I can't appreciate quite why postage has to be so expensive.

Ian

Psamathe wrote:I appreciate that, as others have said, postal charges are expensive. But why. When I can order a 2nd hand book on Amazon from the US, book cost 1p postage £2.80 and they make their money on the postage at £2.80 from US to UK. So I can't appreciate quite why postage has to be so expensive.

Ian

I wouldn't assume that they make their money. These sellers use pricing software which automatically undercuts competitors. Generally only the cheapest seller gets a look in. The down side of not setting your own prices is presumably that you occasionally sell some stock at cost or less. Bear in mind Amazon is taking a 17% cut as well and I find it highly unlikely they are not losing money on the transaction. That said I have heard complaints of books taking weeks to arrive so maybe they are using good old seamail. In any case I struggle to see how it would be less than the money they receive.

I was in the US a couple of years back and the cheapest I found for a smallish book in a big envelope was about $10

Bicycler wrote:

Psamathe wrote:I appreciate that, as others have said, postal charges are expensive. But why. When I can order a 2nd hand book on Amazon from the US, book cost 1p postage £2.80 and they make their money on the postage at £2.80 from US to UK. So I can't appreciate quite why postage has to be so expensive.

Ian

I wouldn't assume that they make their money. These sellers use pricing software which automatically undercuts competitors. Generally only the cheapest seller gets a look in. The down side of not setting your own prices is presumably that you occasionally sell some stock at cost or less. Bear in mind Amazon is taking a 17% cut as well and I find it highly unlikely they are not losing money on the transaction. That said I have heard complaints of books taking weeks to arrive so maybe they are using good old seamail. In any case I struggle to see how it would be less than the money they receive.

I was in the US a couple of years back and the cheapest I found for a smallish book in a big envelope was about $10

I had always assumed that Amazon took their cut of the product price (1p) NOT the total transaction price (at least in Amazon US the referral fee (15%) is only charged on the item+gift wrap price not in the postage charges). Also, suppliers can chose which countries they are prepared to sell to and the £2.80 is a pretty universal p&p charge (1p is also a pretty common product price). So if they were making a loss on such sales then they would just decide not to sell to e.g. UK. So I assume they must be making a profit.

Ian

Psamathe wrote:I had always assumed that Amazon took their cut of the product price (1p) NOT the total transaction price (at least in Amazon US the referral fee (15%) is only charged on the item+gift wrap price not in the postage charges).

Yes, you are right, I've been on eBay too long (where fees are payable on the full price)
I've checked Amazon UK for business sellers and the referral fee for books is 15% (another mistake I made - I said 17% - I wonder if that has changed recently?) of the item price. I did however forget the variable closing fee which is £0.43. So we can say with confidence that the seller is receiving £2.38 of their £2.81.

Bicycler wrote:

Psamathe wrote:I had always assumed that Amazon took their cut of the product price (1p) NOT the total transaction price (at least in Amazon US the referral fee (15%) is only charged on the item+gift wrap price not in the postage charges).

Yes, you are right, I've been on eBay too long (where fees are payable on the full price) :oops:
I've checked Amazon UK for business sellers and the referral fee for books is 15% (another mistake I made - I said 17% - I wonder if that has changed recently?) of the item price. I did however forget the variable closing fee which is £0.43. So we can say with confidence that the seller is receiving £2.38 of their £2.81.

A bit off-topic but I have a friend who runs a small business selling specialist items previously through eBay but now through Amazon. He quit eBay because apparently if an item is listed for more than some threshold time, eBay remove it and he had to then go and put it back on. When selling more specialist things (that are more popular at certain times of year) he was finding it massive amounts of work, yet eBay would not alter their policy for e.g. businesses or specialists. So he switched to Amazon which he said was a bit more expensive (he was paying a subscription I think) but was apparently a lot less work.

Ian

Yes, off topic
Yeah, it depends entirely on what you are selling. I'm not a trader but I've been gradually selling off a couple of lifetimes worth of clutter.

Amazon is more expensive but they don't charge for listing so you can leave stuff on there that is very specialist (or at an overly optimistic price ) hoping someone will bite. It's instant payment so you don't have the problem of non-paying buyers and some people report fewer buyer problems in general. IME it was worth it when I had a subscription but the extra charges for just selling a few made selling small items uneconomical. I also encountered problems with those pricing programmes I mentioned which automatically undercut whatever price I set for books and CDs (this is how things end up at a penny).

Ebay charge per listing so they can't leave listings on there indefinitely. Your friend would be glad to know that they now allow you to set these to automatically renew or it's easy and quick enough to relist multiple items manually, they don't have to be done one by one. IMO it isn't as good as Amazon for things like books because I think customers automatically search sites like Amazon first. I do however find it good for most of the stuff I want to sell.

I'd have thought it would make sense for a business to use both