Do you find P&P charges excessive?

glendaking

I intended buying the gardenias advertised in December’s magazine, as they’d love my acid soil, but the postage was £6.99 plus an additional surcharge of £6.00 for living in Northern Ireland! I often buy seeds and plants through mail order, for the better choice.  However, whilst £4.99 postage is annoying but affordable, I think £6.99 is excessive, and £12.99 is truly ridiculous. Royal Mail deliver parcels throughout the UK for exactly the same price, but the surcharges charged by nurseries and/or the couriers they use have put most of their products out of my reach.  I keep my eyes open for occasional offers of free postage and packing (thank you, Farmer Gracy!) but they are not always available.  I’m not sure that there is a solution, I just needed to vent a bit.  Sadly the gardenias will have to remain at the nursery.

Fairygirl

Postage and 'packing'. I know only too well how hard it is to pack stuff, and how long it takes, and plants aren't easy things to pack. A small plant is around 4 quid by Royal Mail to send in the UK - if it's properly packed. I know - I've done it several times. 
Surcharges further north here are huge too. That's how it is. It's costs a lot of money to transport stuff. 

I wouldn't have thought gardenias would be hardy in NI anyway. 

Obelixx

Try an Irish nursey such as this one - https://www.leamorenursery.com/

edhelka

I run a small e-commerce business and I can tell you no one wants to charge excessive postage or make money on postage. We all know how painfully sensitive to the cost of postage customers actually are. So the most common technique is to hide part of the cost in the price of the items. But this can be hard/impossible for businesses that sell the same goods for the same prices physically and online or for businesses with many different sizes (weights) and price points of their items. It can also harm people buying multiple items (more than an average order).
Although there are certainly businesses that aren't good at logistics, don't use the best courier, don't know how to pack their items well or don't have a system that allows them to charge postage based on the weight of the order, I think most of them just do their best.

edhelka

BTW Royal Mail deliver parcels throughout the UK for exactly the same price because they legally have to. Basically, someone else is paying your surcharge.

glendaking

All points taken.  To be fair, if the products were well packed I wouldn’t mind so much - but often they are not.  I’ve learned over the years which companies to avoid, and which not, but to be charged £5.00 for an envelope containing 4 packets of seeds (as I have been before now) is truly taking the ... !  I lived in France for 10 years, and the postage from the UK to France was often considerably less than the postage I’m charged from mainland UK to here (even though we are very definitely in the UK, and not the Republic of Ireland).

Gardenias do well in my garden, FairyGirl - we rarely get frost in our garden here, just an AWFUL lot of rain!!!

I’ll look at Leamore Nursery, Obelixx, although they seem to be peony specialists so might not have what I’m after.  Thanks for the tip though.

Fairygirl

' we rarely get frost in our garden here, just an AWFUL lot of rain!!! '

We get both 

glendaking

Fairygirl said:

' we rarely get frost in our garden here, just an AWFUL lot of rain!!! '

We get both 

lol - you’re much further north than me.  I live on the southern edge of Northern Ireland, on the border with the Republic.  It’s a similar latitude to Blackpool, and further south than Newcastle. 

Obelixx

@glendaking - maybe it's a peony called gardenia then but there must be an Irish nursery somewhere that sells gardenias.