Amazon rating

Mairin2

I bought an item on Amazon and when it arrived, it cost more on postage and packaging than on the item itself. What annoyed me was that when I saw the price of p&p, I requested it not to be shipped but they did - all be it roughly a week later.
I was asked to leave feedback on Amazon's website so I did, highlighting the fact that the post and packaging was excessive. I got the following email back from Amazon.

Your order from Mail Order Express - 202-0780346-2394745
Mail Order Express - Amazon Marketplace [p6n65x2ppvfgfq7@marketplace.amazon.co.uk]

Dear Maureen,

I am writing to you regarding the order you placed for the Baby Annabell 3 in 1 bag through Amazon. We noticed that you left us negative feedback regarding the cost of the postage on the item. The reason our postage costs to Ireland are high is because it costs us significantly more to post items to Ireland than it does to UK Mainland addresses.

Would you like us to refund part of your postage, and in turn you can retract your feedback? Naturally we keep an eye on our feedback and we want to maintain high standards, but we also don’t want you to feel like you have been misled and overcharged.

Kind regards,

Alex Bramwell
Website Assistant

Lady Chatterton

I'm a big fan of Amazon!

However, I generally wait until I've a few items to purchase before placing my order. If you spend £25 or more you qualify for free P&P.

ThirdMan

I wouldn't retract the feedback. Their postage prices are excessive. The Book Depository can afford to offer free delivery on a single book, yet Amazon can't. In fairness I would't expect free delivery, different companies have different business models, and that's fine. But I would expect them to be more competitively priced, given their status as the world's largest book retailer.

You should exercise caution when buying online. You can't buy something then complain about the postage. All that information is available before the point of purchase. You say you chose not to have it shipped. Does this mean you actually cancelled the order, and they still processed it? If that's the case I'd re-edit your feedback and include a warning that Amazon's cancellation procedure is defective.

Toby Take a Bow

ThirdMan wrote: »

The Book Depository can afford to offer free delivery on a single book, yet Amazon can't.

I find Book depository very long in delivering the books, which makes sense if you're getting free delivery. Amazon are usually far, far quicker but you pay for the postage. Makes sense to me.

ThirdMan

Toby Take a Bow wrote: »

I find Book depository very long in delivering the books, which makes sense if you're getting free delivery. Amazon are usually far, far quicker but you pay for the postage. Makes sense to me.

That's why I pointed out that different companies have different business models, which will appeal to different consumers depending on their needs. I have no problem with paying for postage.

Amazon have offers like 'free postage for orders over £25', and then have people falling over themselves taking advantage of it. But they're a billion dollar company, and are the largest book retailer in the world. If I want to buy two paperbacks for £16, I don't really want to spend £5 on postage. But I live in a bubble, where companies with record breaking profits don't mind taking a slight hit during a global recession.

You can tell I'm a fantasy reader...

Eoin

Out of interest - was this bought from a seller through Amazon or from Amazon themselves? I tend to find Amazon's postage to be OK, but all bets are off when you buy from another seller on their marketplace (if they bother their holes shipping to Ireland at all).

mcgovern

As far as I know, the feedback is only for Marketplace sellers. They don't do the Super Saver Delivery generally, and often have crazy delivery prices, so I avoid if at all possible.
Having said that, it's the buyers responsibility to check delivery before ordering.

timetogo

Parcel Motel may be of use to you in the future (if there's one near you). I was buying something small a couple of weeks ago. Postage to the UK was free but to Ireland it was over €8. I shipped it to the Antrim Parcel Motel for free and the cost charged by PM was €3.5

nc6000

I'm finding Amazon to be pretty poor of late. Their deliveries are taking an age to arrive and my most recent order which was placed on the 5th of February is giving me a delivery estimate of Monday the 18th even though it was dispatched on the 7th.

Almost two weeks to receive something which was in stock when I ordered it.

By comparison I placed an order with The Book Depository on Sunday and it was dispatched yesterday. I wonder will this arrive before my Amazon order?

x_Ellie_x

I have to agree that Amazon.co.uk delivery has been really crap lately. A month ago I ordered books & dvds (all in stock) from both the UK and the US Amazon sites on the same day and choose free delivery on both sites and the package from the USA arrived first!

Mindfulness

First off, Amazon are trying to push people to the Amazon Prime service, those users get the best postage and fastest delivery. It wouldn't surprise me if other deliveries were downgraded to make people think about joining Prime.

Eoin wrote: »

Out of interest - was this bought from a seller through Amazon or from Amazon themselves? I tend to find Amazon's postage to be OK, but all bets are off when you buy from another seller on their marketplace (if they bother their holes shipping to Ireland at all).

This irritates me no-end Two years ago at Christmas I had a basket full of items, was ready to order and on doing so was rewarded with the 'this seller does not deliver outside of the U.K.' notice for at least seven items Took me ages to find sellers that also sold the items and would ship to Ireland.

However, Amazon's search function allows you to exclude other sellers and only focus on items sold by Amazon themselves and perhaps more importantly, I discovered that quite often these sellers are bedroom-businesses and if you contact them directly they will organise to post to Ireland for you, often at cost rather than at profit

Eoin

Good thinking - I sometimes add the same items to my cart multiple times in the hope that one of the sellers will ship to Ireland (at the very least, it could be more obvious before the checkout page).

Though if I have to pay shipping on items individually, I normally find that eBay will be as competitive.