When you see a nice cheap product on Amazon or any other online retailer beware of the shipping and handling charges. This HDMI to DVI-D converter goes for a paltry £2.59 but then attracts a hefty £11.08 from the reseller. I can’t pretend that I didn’t notice it on the order page but at the time I wanted to get the order done and dusted so I didn’t quibble. The box it comes in better be lined with velvet and the address better be hand written and signed with the artist’s name…
I had enough trouble with console AV cables and certain retailers in the last few weeks I wanted the whole sorry episode over and done with.
you see that a lot on ebay as well – cheap products (hard-drives, etc), and the real expense is in the delivery.
up until recently, the delivery price wasn’t prominently shown.
Nearly got caught out with this once myself, because Amazon don’t separate out the shipping on products from multiple vendors. They already separate out the products on the final page, they should have the shipping in there too.
adam
@dahamsta: I’m almost sure they displayed the shipping rate on the final order page but here’s the kicker. You’re at the last page after going through the order process; there’s no big cancel button. There might be one below the form, but I usually just click BACK on the browser. They be smart people at Amazon.
I just noticed that shipping on two cables I bought at the same time is only £5.97 before VAT. They came from Amazon in Germany.
Must watch out for this in the future.
They do specify it Donncha, but they don’t separate it out for multiple products. You could be paying 3p to one vendor and £30 to another and you wouldn’t know.
They’ve never had a cancel button on their page. Would you? 🙂
adam
This kind of thing makes shopping on Amazon a real pain.
I have a similar quibble with the order process when buying direct from Amazon. I never know exactly how much the order is going to cost until I get to the final page. There’s shipping, Irish VAT and the STG to EUR conversion. I created a GreaseMonkey script to make life a bit easier, http://www.17od.com/2009/12/14/amazon-prices-for-ireland/.
Hope you don’t mind me plugging it here Donnacha.
Same thing happened with me while ordering some equipment for the DCU Games Society. The Amazon reseller who was selling us the Chrononauts board game charged £23.50 P&P on a £17.35 game.
What makes it even worse is how a different seller selling Powergrid, War on Terror, Race for the Galaxy and the Agricola expansion is only charging £27.92 for the lot…
It would all have been so much easier if Amazon themselves just sold them direct 😐
To be fair to the seller, you got hit with their Europe-wide rate and I notice that other sellers of similar items charge even higher rates for similar items. In fact, many don’t even allow shipping outside the UK, too many scammers, same goes for the US version of Amazon Marketplace.
The folks you bought from actually offer free UK shipping for that item and, from the perspective of a user here, postage rates for Marketplace items are always listed very clearly, right above the “Add to Shopping Basket” button, right next to the price BUT, of course, it would be a lot handier if Amazon could recognise that the country you are in and list the relevant postage fee instead, rather than forcing you into the check out process to find that info.
BTW, Amazon Prime is an absolute life-saver for me here in the UK, such a pleasure to get free next-day shipping on even the most trivial items. I even buy my shoes from Amazon now which, frankly, is something I never imagined would be practical.
@donnacha | WordSkill: Haha, I dunno if I’ll ever buy shoes without trying them on, but we get free shipping here too, on orders over 25 Euro. I suppose from Amazon itself, and not resellers though.
My one consolation is that I didn’t pay Maplins the 25 Euro they wanted for a similar connector. Daylight robbery there.
Bit of the ol’ Ryanair charges going on with the total prices 🙂 I really wish they would add the price of shipping to listed prices on ebay and Amazon. If you’re signed in, it knows where you live. Ok so maybe you’ll be sending the item somewhere elsewhere but I’d still like that option as a default.
The HDMI to DVI-D connectors came, all 3 of them even though I only asked for 1. Maybe they felt sorry that I had paid so much for postage.
I’m in the US, so it might be a bit different, but I usually end up adding an item or two so I can hit the $25.00 free shipping thing (which is what they want people to do!).
I know on eBay, sellers will sometimes set a high shipping and a low bid/price to avoid paying final value fees – eBay’s supposed to crack down on it, but doesn’t seem to care much. They have pretty buyer friendly return policies though, so it’s hard to really scam a buyer (scamming sellers is another matter… grrrr…)
What gets my goat is the Marketplace seller stating ‘FREE SHIPPING’ and when I get to the ‘Confirm Order’ page, there’s a hefty shipping charge. Or the seller quotes 4.50 shipping charge but at the confirm order page it has miraculously become 11.82.
I’ve cancelled more orders that way by hitting the ‘Change quantities or Delete’ button because it’s a disgrace to state one thing and then go back on your word.
Yup I freaked when shipping was 2x the item cost, when I got the feedback form, I said seller and item = great shipping cost was not acceptable, they would not let it post, and it did not contravene the tos. now guess what the shipping form is a multiple choice, without an option to address shipping, just the seller, so this is obviously a amazon cash cow not the sellers.
I suggest everybody post neg comments on the feedback form sellers will complain and something will have to be done.
someone create a website addressing this and apologies to sellers but they should get amazon in line it’s costing us(sellers) business