[mickrick]

I've been looking for a 1Gb mp3 player for my daughter's birthday. She was 10 yesterday and decided she wanted to buy an mp3 player with the money she got.

So I started looking around the various online retailers for something reasonably priced. I found plenty of those, but I got a real shock when I pressed the checkout button on almost everyone, because they are levvying delivery surcharges to what they term as "outlying areas". These are denoted by postcodes and are either price structured according to different areas, or are a set price no matter where you live.

Postcodes affected tend to be:

IM, IV, KW, KA27-KA29, PA20-PA78, PH, TR21-TR25, BT, GY, JE

Now, the last 2 I can sort of agree with, but all the others would be covered by Royal Mail delivery and as far as I know, they charge the same delivery rate regardless of where you are in the UK. I sold a laptop recently on ebay and I shipped it insured for the full value for £9.00 with Royal Mail. And if these companies are using courier services like, for example, Initial CityLink, then they're obviously getting a better deal than with Royal Mail.

And the surcharges vary enormously, from around £5 + vat to a whopping £15 + vat (ebuyer - scandalous!).

The most laughable of all, however, is Dabs, who charge £10 + vat surcharge for addresses in UK "outlying areas" but their surcharge to the Republic of Ireland is only £5 + vat.

All these charges are doing is subsidising cheap delivery to non-"outlying areas". If they set a price a bit higher and applyed it to everyone then it would be a much fairer system.

[Mep]

try play.com they do free delivery and have a wide range of mp3 players

[mh123]

Yeah - We get this a lot on the Isle of Wight. People hear "Isle of..." and automatically slap a tenner onto the price.

A common trick that works for us when buying online (which accounts for >90% of the stuff we buy) is simply omitting the county name, just putting the town name and the postcode POxx (which is common to Portsmouth area) and 9 times out of 10 everything goes through without a problem.

Whenever a supplier calls back wanting to charge more, we simply tell them where to go stick their order. Its surprising how many back down, whinge about low margins etc., then agree to supply at the original price.

[lmccauley]

Originally Posted by mickrick

All these charges are doing is subsidising cheap delivery to non-"outlying areas". If they set a price a bit higher and applyed it to everyone then it would be a much fairer system.

I agree, and believe the same principle should be applied to car insurance. All these high insurance group ratings are doing is subsidising cheap insurance to non-"performance cars". If they set a price a bit higher and applyed it to everyone then it would be a much fairer system.

Cheers,
Liam