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But like I said there are costs to doing business in person too; eg. dealing with cash, having a guy standing around on minimum wage to help customers and prevent shoplifting, having a neat, clean, well-lit shop floor that isn't putting you at risk of a lawsuit, etc. If they sold everything online they wouldn't have to pay any of those costs, and if you're factoring in jiffy bag costs to P&P you arguably need to factor in shop floor costs into shop floor sales. Or, just shove all those costs straight into the margin and charge less for postage.
Anyway it's all moot because like I said it's next day signed for delivery which probably costs them £6 already without handling (it's >£7 with Royal Mail according to the guy) and I don't mind paying it because it's still the cheapest option.
frankenbike-
there are costs to doing business in person...If they sold everything online they wouldn't have to pay any of those costs
We're talking about a business model based on a shop which does mail order on the side. Maybe there's a small saving on mail order because the goods don't have to go from the storage area to the display area on the way to the customer, although for small parts the journey is more likely storage to counter so there's no difference. Clearly the economics are different if you're a warehouse operation with no shop floor, although the actual cost of p&p is still going to be £3-£4 on top of just throwing unwrapped bike parts onto the loading dock, and that money has to come from somewhere.
gbj_tester
Which is exactly what I said, and I still don't think it can be done for £6 in a small way
The £6 includes postage, and VAT on the p&p charge. Out of £6, £1 goes to HMRC immediately, £3.85 goes on a Signed for 2nd class small parcel, a Jiffy bag big enough for small bike parts is about 18p as long as you buy by the thousand, label about 3p plus 1p for printer consumables. That leaves about 94p to pay your mail boy to print the label, attach it to the envelope, put the stuff in it and take it to the post office. That's 5-10 minutes depending on the age and working hours of the mail boy assuming he is on minimum wage. Plenty of time if he has hundreds of packages to send every day and the Post Office collects them, not so much if it's only 10 per day and the shop isn't right next door to a Post Office branch.