News / Fresh protest against high delivery charges
THE EDINBURGH deli that tried to charge £30 to post a gift voucher to Shetland. The eBay seller that wanted £45 to deliver some blank CDs. The stationery firm that demanded £21 to ship three slim calendars to the islands.
Those are just some of the more egregious examples provided by Shetlanders of online retailers seeking to make a fast buck out of people living in remote parts of the country.
Ask any islander who shops online regularly and they will almost invariably have numerous similar tales of sharp practice to tell. Some retailers simply refuse to deliver to Shetland altogether.
Many customers have lost count of the number of times they have tried, without success, to persuade a company to ship their order using Royal Mail’s Parcelforce service – rather than one of the costlier private couriers.
It is a problem Shetland has in common with dozens of other rural Scottish communities, particularly in the Highlands and Islands.
Last weekend Argyll woman Jacky Cooper decided she’d had enough and launched a fresh campaign against inflated delivery charges.
She is “staggered” by the response: nearly 16,000 people have signed up to the Facebook page she created in less than three days.
Cooper runs a small photography business from the village of Ballachulish, a few miles south of Fort William.
Despite being only yards away from the main A82 road running between Inverness and Glasgow, Ballachulish residents are frequently confronted with similarly extortionate delivery charges to those faced by islanders.
“What I am hoping to achieve is a fairer system whereby people living in northern parts of the UK are not penalised by high charges and delivery refusals,” she told Shetland News.
“Like I always say, London is just as far away from us as we are from London.”
Shetland MSP Tavish Scott applauded the new campaign, which he said “reflects the annoyance we all face, particularly around Christmas time”.
He has previously backed a petition for fairer delivery charges created in the autumn by West Aberdeenshire MP Sir Robert Smith.
Scott said enormous courier fees, often hidden until the final stages of placing an order, “penalise against island life, no matter where you are in the islands”.
He wants to see online merchants being compelled to offer Royal Mail’s Parcelforce service, which delivers packets and parcels at a uniform price throughout the UK, as an alternative.
The following examples provide a flavour of the dismal online shopping experiences encountered by Shetlanders:
- Skerries man Ryan Arthur was once quoted a £45 charge by an eBay company’s courier to deliver a pack of 25 blank CDs costing £9;
- Upmarket delicatessen Peckham’s tried to charge Lerwick woman Yvonne Nicolson £29.60 to deliver paper gift vouchers;
- Heather Moar tried to order three at-a-glance calendars from officestationery.co.uk, priced £3.95 each, and was asked to pay £20.95 postage;
- A website called kiddicare.com charged Kristan Robertson £20 postage for delivery of a small pillow for a toddler;
- Amazon’s “free UK delivery” became an £11.90 postage and packaging charge for Lorraine Jamieson. The five dog tablets she ordered arrived with only £1.69-worth of stamps affixed;
- Fiona Nicholson wanted to buy four egg cups a couple of Christmases ago. She tried four different websites, all of which refused to ship to Shetland despite neglecting to mention this on their page. Amazon was willing to send her the egg cups, but only with an additional £20 delivery charge. Instead she arranged to have them sent to an aunt in Edinburgh, who received them by Royal Mail within two days for only £3.
You can read more about Jacky Cooper’s campaign against high delivery surcharges here. A petition for fairer postage costs, started by Liberal Democrat MP Robert Smith,can be viewed by visiting www.fairerdeliverycharges.net
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