-
•
user69121
-
My guess is that a huge amount of their business in small obscure parts is by post, so it's just quite sensible to have flat rate postage that covers everything from a single washer up to a set of brake levers without making a loss on most orders.
It's difficult to judge the actual cost of postage and labour involved in picking and packing small orders. I can accept that it's not negligible, but I can't believe that it's the same for the two items I mentioned. With their current system it just feels like someone buying a single bolt is subsidising other larger orders. If that's what it takes for them to keep going then I'm not going to quibble; they provide a very valuable service, but they're not a charity.
I still think it's a reasonable idea to club together to get small items posted together though.
ffm-
Assuming you value someone's time at London minimum wage, and they can do all the deliveries in a single hour, you'd need at least 5 orders combined to cover the cost in saved postage, and being realistic you're not going to be able to sort/deliver them in under an hour.
Its similar to the idea about driving to get cheaper petrol. By the time you factor in the value of your time going to wherever it is you are better off just sucking up and paying for the difference
-
It's difficult to judge the actual cost of postage and labour involved in picking and packing small orders
It's not that hard, and it's the kind of thing the big outfits go into down to the last penny to find efficiencies.
I can't believe that it's the same for the two items I mentioned
It's not the same, but it's close enough that it's not worth adding multiple tiers of p&p (or s&h) prices. I mean, I could charge 6p extra postage for orders which go in boxes rather than envelopes and another 3p for orders containing caps rather than just covers, because I have to pick and wrap a screw, but it's easier to just make it £2.50 for everything and hope the extra picking and packing is covered by bigger things being more expensive so the margin on the item goes towards the extra cost of getting it to the customer.
branwen
gbj_tester