Comments 6

1. Jayne Osborne 07 Sep 2012

   There has been many occasions when I wanted to buy a small Left-handed product but have always been put off by the crazy high postage.
   I do not accept your excuse of the cost of proccessing, as other mail-order companys do not have this problem of having to charge such a high cost p&p.
   Why don't you raise the product prices then to make it more realistic ?? and also people will be able to see more clearly what they will be paying roughly instead of having a shock at checkout!!!!!
   Such a shame.
   Jayne Osborne. (Glouster).

   Reply

   1. Keith 11 Sep 2012

      Hi Jayne and thanks for your comments.
      
      This is something that we think about a lot and try to do in a way that works for the majority of our customers and we know it is impossible to please all the people all the time. We do not want to overcharge for delivery but we do want to stay in business so we can contiinue to provide our services and products. We do look at what other companies do and try to be competitive and reasonable in the way we make our charges. The way companies charge varies a lot depending on their average order value, profit margins, location of them and their customers and whether they make profits from customers other than just on their orders.
      
      We have considered increasing product prices to cover the postage cost but that would not be fair on customers buying a number of products as they would be paying the single order delivery charge multiple times.
      
      Most of our customers think the charge is reasonable as they are ordering a number of items. I can see that it looks a lot if you are only ordering a single small item but unfortunately that is becausae our costs are pretty similar the same whether you spend £1.00 or £50.00 - we still have to pay for our warehouse company to process, pick and pack the order and it would not be right for us to subsidise small orders from the charges made to people spending more or fior us to make a loss on these orders ourselves.
      
      We make our delivery charges very clear - it is the top item on our menu in the shop pages - and also explain why they are the amount they are so I hope people are not getting a shock in the checkout. We cannot actually display the delivery charge until a customer enters the checkout as it is dependent on their location and the value of their order.
      
      As always, I am open to reasonable suggestions so please add any thoughts as a comment to this page.
2. Holly 25 Feb 2012

   I was looking at your left handed notebook, for 50p- you cannot be suggesting that an item of that amount of money has a value of £4.95 p&p. It just doesn't make any sense that an item that can be placed in an A4 sized envelope and posted very cheaply could cost that much on p&p.
   If its possible could you send me back a reply, stating how much it is. I don't know whether i read it wrong or anything but still.
   I have only been on this website because i am left handed and i would love to have a few left handed items around my house to help with everyday life, but at the prices of postage and packing, i am not even tempted.
   I am so very sorry if this has gone against my statatory rights, or if it sounds 'aggressive' in any way shape or form.
   But thankyou for reading and i hope to hear back from you very soon. :)

   Reply
3. Keith 01 Dec 2010

   Thank you for the comment and I will leave these here as I think it is a useful debate. As I wrote in the note above, we send things out first class or airmail or we get complaints about slow delivery and we do have to pay for our warehouse and staff to run the business and pick and pack orders. The amount of gross profit in a £3.25 fish knife is about £1.00 and that is not enough to cover the cost of processing the order so we would be losing money and not be around for long if we just charged the actual cost of a postage stamp to send it.
   
   The postage charge we offer is not dissimilar to many other websites with the exception of those with large value orders that contain enough profit to subsidise lower or free postage. We would love to be able to send out small items free of charge but it would just make no business sense - sorry!
   
   In practice, the vast majority of people make orders for a few items at a time and the £4.95 charge is acceptable on an order of £30.00 or £40.00.

   Reply
4. Mrs Smithson 08 Sep 2010

   I was going to order some pen/pencil grips for my granddaughter, at a cost of £3.85 for 3 PLUS £4.95 p&p this is beyond my means.
   
   I understand the reasoning behind your p&p costs but for 3 small ittems it is extortinate.
   
   I have found that I can purchase a pack of 2 of these grips from another retailer for 14p more than buying from you a pack of 3, and theres includes the p&p
   
   Maybe the framework of your p&p charges needs restructuring

   Reply

   1. Keith 01 Dec 2010

      We understand that our costs can seem high for a single small item but the problem is that we have to incur the costs of processing the order anyway and it does not seem fair that we should have to subsidise people who are only spending very small amounts of money either from our own pockets or by charging customers with higher value orders more for delivery.
      
      We have looked at lots of ways of charging for delivery and we think the way we have it now is the fairest overall.