village idiot wrote:£0.99 plus £1.00 delivery
unless you live in the highlands when there is a surcharge
get them from elsewhere where there was no additional charge for delivery,
just found I need a suspension arm which I can get for £30.99 with free delivery
unless you live in the highlands when you incur a £16.99 delivery charge
I'm based in Southampton Hampshire and I send out over 300 parcels a week - I do a lot of business with Scotland and carriage is not an issue because I understand the problem. Allow me to explain.
1) Royal Mail - that is
'post', a national(ised) entity - is one price (dependent on size/weight) for the whole of the UK & Northern Ireland, including Highlands AND ISLANDS. (Only the Channel Islands are slightly different). But heavy items are now prohibitively expensive.
2) Parcel couriers are independent operators. Granted, most of them see Highlands as a problem and Islands even more so - understandably, for us southerners. EXCEPT
City Link only charge extra for Islands, not Highlands. I can therefore ship to those Highland postcodes at the same price, and if you're on Shetland or Orkney you understand it can't be done.
The average man in the street does not know, it doesn't occur to him to think about it, but all these firms are horses for courses. Night Freight specialise in odd shaped, bulky articles. Yodel specialise in deliveries to private addresses. Hermes do internet ebay stuff, not very quickly but cheap. UPS & DHL can get to the south of France in less than 24 hours and show you live tracking every step of the way - and it costs. Fedex are brilliant for small lightweights everywhere but extra for Highlands.
So I use 70% Fedex for England/Wales lightweights & 30% City Link heavyweight E/W and everything Scotland. So I can charge one price.
Now where the above posters are confusing things is the difference between 'post' and 'courier'. And, you're looking at stuff online where the website defaults to 'this is probably going to cost us extra to courier it to Highlands'.
An ABS ring will fit in a padded envelope and be Royal Mail for 99p - but the website doesn't know that for your postcode. You should enquire of the supplier.
A suspension arm sent by a supplier that doesn't use City Link - it will cost them extra, so they charge you the extra. I wouldn't.
To send stuff from Scotland to the south by Royal Mail - that's the same either way. You're confusing two different systems.
Idiot's website doesn't know he only ordering an ABS ring, it only knows he's in the back of beyond.
There's an opportunity for someone to make a few bob if they do a Glasgow/Highlands run once a week by filling the back of a van with 'cheap' deliveries.....
