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Carriage FAQ |
Contact us | Terms & conditions | Privacy policy | Carriage FAQ | About us |
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| Q: Who is your carrier? |
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A. We use APC Networks as our UK carrier and TNT International for shipments outside the U.K. You can have your own carrier collect a consignment from us if you prefer: phone or email us to let us know when you place your order. |
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| Q: Where will you ship to? |
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A. Anywhere, worldwide. |
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| Q: Your carriage cost seems high. Why is that? |
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A. Our Shopping Basket knows the size and weight of all the items we sell. If you buy several items, it tries to make an intelligent assessment of the overall size and weight and then offers you some choices.
Sadly, the systems aren’t as intelligent as people. It may be obvious to us that we can get all your items in once small bag when the computer thinks a bigger package will be needed. Because we charge your card manually, we assess the best method to send the goods at packing time and we can choose the most cost-effective way. Six times out of ten we get the cost lower than you expected. Three times out of ten we agree with the computer. For one in ten consignments we find that the computer has underestimated. If the difference is small, we absorb the cost. If the difference is significant we contact you to advise that the carriage is going to cost more and ask what you would like us to do.
Our system usually takes the worst case option for the cost of carriage and you may well be charged less.
Sometimes items travel at volumetric rates, and that makes carriage expensive. |
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| Q: What is ‘volumetric?’ |
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A. Some items are small and heavy and the cost of carriage is charged according to their weight. Some items are quite big, but don’t weigh much, so they take up more space than the carrier expects for an item of that weight. Carriers cover themselves for this by charging by the size of the package if the package is big but the weight is low. The problem is that the resulting price – the ‘volumetric’ price - comes out about three times higher. If this is for an international shipment for a parabolic antenna the cost of shipping to Europe can hit GBP 50.
Volumetric charging is very annoying to us because the carrier doesn’t tell us that a package that we think is travelling by weight will be ‘volumed.’ We get a bill three times higher than what we charged the customer, and that’s a significant loss to us.
Our Shopping Basket does not take ‘volume’ into account – email us before you place an order if you think you might be ‘volumed.’ We will certainly contact you if we suspect that a carrier will apply volumetric pricing without warning us first.
All carrier companies follow the same practice about volumetric pricing. |
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| Q. is there any insurance if I choose First Class mail for a small package? |
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A. No. Ordinary post has no insurance and we do not provide proof of posting. That said, we have had just one small package go missing in five years, so it’s pretty good. Ordinary letters seem to get lost regularly, but packages, by and large, arrive safely and on time.
For a low-value item, First Class post is usually a good option. |
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