Shipping Rant

[Steve A]

I was just browsing around the various suppliers sites and saw a couple of things i liked:

Some knobs for my mip, 2.99 euro each. Shipping 6 euro from Germany to Cyprus.

An I/O board 54 euro. Shipping 16 euro from Spain.

A fire panel 49 euro. Shipping second class 60 (SIXTY)!!! Euro from Poland.

Now where i when i went to school i learned in Geography that Poland was nearest to Cyprus! I am shocked at these quoted prices and i have emailed the company to check its not a mistake.

I have had some great products from GLB Flight Products which is in the UK and the postage from there was less than 10 euros. All the mentioned countrys are in the EU so is it a con?

I even got some prices for products from flight facsimile which is in Australia :mrgreen: and the quoted shipping prices from there were not even close to 60 euros. Whats going on

[autocadplease]

My experience with online shopping is that some vendors only use one shipper (maybe have a contract with them). Sometimes this means the smaller shipments can be expensive as there is a minimum charge.

Shipping here in Canada, I get reasonable shipping from Canada Post or the US Postal Service but get "hosed" when having to use FedEx or UPS.

And sometimes I wonder if the low item prices are there to get you to buy them, then the vendor makes the mark-up on the shipping and "handling".

That is why I like Ebay because you can see if the vendor's shipping charges were considered "reasonable" by past customers.

I feel your pain! :evil:

[Steve A]

I got a very fast email response from the company in question.
Shipping prices on the site are not quite correct as its in beta, It works out somewhat cheaper at 25 euro for the small package, so a happy ending to the saga :D Great customer service too ;-)

[David Withers]

can depend on what risk you are willing to take and speed of delivery etc....if you are the sim company.
(as you all know).

some parts suppliers have cheap prices but load the shipping a bit to make up for the lower cost.....kinda like 4 pound flights to paris...but the tax is 200 pounds :):)

some suppliers also want to be paid for the time it takes to pack the items. etc.

I once bought 5 euros worth of knobs from... well.... somewhere in Europe and the shipping was 15 euros. but...they arrived in four days all the way to Australia... which was kinda very nice.:)

i guess you could try and set your own shipping terms with suppliers?..use snail mail??...and if they don't want the work you could shop elsewhere. thats hoping that the item you are after is available elsewhere.

dave