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2:50 pm
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Sun 17-Jan-10
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This won't affect most of you who live in England, but for those of us in Norn Iron, and the Scottish Highlands additional delivery charges can be a real bugbear.
I ran into them last week when I was looking to buy replacement handles for the drawers in the spare room. 3 seperate companies were looking to charge an additional £10 to £20 on my order, purely because it was being delivered to NI. This was in spite of all 3 companies having "£3.99 UK delivery" or similar splashed all over their websites, and in spite of the fact that my order came to less than £5.
Toolsmartshop.com charged a flat UK rate, so I bought from them. And they offered such an efficient and speedy service on well priced goods, that I placed a second order to get handles enough to replace all the drawer handles.
I'm now currently waiting a reply from Thompson & Morgan to find out which courier they use for NI deliveries. I was halfway through buying a dwarf cherry tree from them (via the clickthrough link at the top right of CSH pages) when the additional £9.99 came to light. If they use Royal Mail I'll gladly order from them, but any other courier company and I'll have to think carefully. We've had so many bad experiences with DHL, Famac and City Link that it makes me wary about ordering, even when the price is better than anything we can get locally.
Is it just me?
4:35 pm
Supreme Being
Thu 24-Sep-09
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No Shereen, it affects me too. I have lost count of the times I have either complained to a company or just given up. I try to explain that I do not live on an island, but it makes no odds to them. They look at your post code and decide from that. I think that is why I like to get things from Amazon. I have not had problems with T&M though.
I once wanted to order spices from a company and they wanted to charge me £20 delivery for something like a £15 order. It is just not worth it. It does make you check all the delivery charges before you think of ordering. Also a lot of firms just will not deliver here at all. 
Old teachers never die, they just lose their class
5:45 pm
Councillor
Tue 22-Sep-09
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I know what you mean about the unreliability of delivery by companies other than Royal Mail.
Anyone other than the Royal Mail and our parcels are left anyoldwhere....one evening - I had been in ALL DAY waiting for a parcel as I had checked the online tracking- a teenager who lives in the next street came to the door with my parcel, which had been opened."This was delivered ",he said, "we had a look at it to check it wasn't for us."
And walked off.
That's what I call service.Tracking all the way, estimated time of delivery, oodles on the website about customer service, then the parcel is just left at any address in the area to be 'checked' and delivered by a random teen.Quality.I called the company I had bought the goods from to tell them that they really were not getting a decent service ( it wasn't the first time something like this had happened).They had used the Post Office in the past, the parcels took longer but they always arrived and I was always asked for a signature. Not any more....and the other parcel company didn't have a number/address for complaints,how surprising is that?...sigh....
Kateuk makes things at http://www.etsy.com/shop/finkstuff and sometimes she does this too http://www54paintings.blogspot.com/ and also this http://finkstuff.weebly.com/
7:24 pm
Supreme Being
Mon 21-Sep-09
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We have had great delivery from delivery companies here in Latvia. They have never left a delivery outside the door and yet I think really it would be quite safe here, there is always a delivery note with the number of the driver for re-delivery the next day and it is usually within the hour they quote. Funny thing is that it doesn't really matter which delivery company is used to post something here, they are usually delivered by the same guy anyway. One day we had two parcels coming via different courier companies and both came together.
A company that you maybe interested in is Book Depository, they have free delivery worldwide so the little extra they sometimes charge on a book may work out cheaper by the time delivery is factored in.
10:22 am
Sat 12-Aug-06
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Shereen said:
buying a dwarf cherry tree from them (via the clickthrough link at the top right of CSH pages)
Thank you very much, Shereen. We really, really appreciate that. 
For anybody who buys from Amazon more than 6 or 7 times a year, it is well worth considering their flat rate premium delivery service. It costs about £50 and means there is no delivery charge on anything you buy from them for one year. Not sure about Norn Iron or them lot north of Hadrian's Wall 
She bought a Kindle at her mum's request to show her how to use it when she visits here over Easter. Ordered from Amazon at about 4 pm and delivered at 11:00 next morning. Fantastic service.
On an aside, her mum "rings" the blog every so often on her mobile phone but it must be almost illegible on such a small screen. She hopes the Kindle will give her better readability and access to all manner of online stuff, like the Times newspaper £2/week online version.
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