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Thursday June 20, 2002
Amazonian

Lots of people have had bad things to say about Amazon. About their privacy policy, about their stance on patents and so on. The one thing that few people mention, and which irks me everytime I use them is their policy on delivery. Amazon.co.uk split the cost of delivery into two elements. The first is a cost per item, the other a larger per delivery cost. You multiply the cost per item and then add the per delivery delivery charge too. What annoys are four factors:

  1. The total delivery charge is often quite sizeable just under ~9.5% for one £15 CD (The local supermarket here sells chart albums for £9.99). Obviously the incentive is that the more you order the less the delivery cost per item is. Fair enough, but it’s still a large amount.

  2. The delivery charge isn’t calculated until close to the end of the order process. Which can often turn a great deal into something more mediocre (see the above example).

  3. The split delivery charge could be ditched, making delivery more transparent: CD’s are all charged at the same per delivery charge. As every CD is charged at the same amount they could simply state the price of a CD including the extra and be done with it. The same applies for books, games and so on. This would then leave the single per delivery charge.
  4. The charges are hardly nice round numbers conducive to easy mental arithmetic (for people like me who are used to calculators).
A few other online retailers I use don’t charge any delivery at all (www.dvdplus.co.uk and www.cdwow.com). Obviously this makes the number on the page a lot easier to comprehend. Another retailer I use, www.streetsonline.co.uk charges a flat £1 per delivery. For all I know they could have done what I stated in 3) above. That’s still relatively easy. Anyhow, the games they play.

Posted by Phil on June 20, 2002 12:00 PM | Categories: Misc