Last night I sat down at the laptop and placed an order with Amazon for Jan’s Xiaomi Mi band fitness tracker. I made a decision during the ordering process which unwittingly increased the cost by more than 33% and I want to describe what happened to avoid any of our readers making the same error.
We don’t have a postal address in the UK, but after listening to Sarah I decided to purchase it using the Royal Mail Poste Restante service and take deliver at Rugby.
The item was shown on Amazon as free delivery.
During the delivery step there was an option from Amazon to collect the item from a selected delivery location. This is where I made the error. I decided to explore the nearest Amazon delivery address. To my surprise it was the same Rugby post office I’d intended to use for Poste Restante.
Rather than go to the effort of entering the post office address as the Poste Restante delivery location I clicked on the Amazon option to collect from the post office.
There was nothing from Amazon to indicate selecting their delivery location would result in an increased cost. It wasn’t until after I had clicked on the purchase button that I realised Amazon had charged us an additional £6.99 for delivery.
This evening I repeated the order process for a second fitness band but entered the Poste Restante address. This time there was no delivery charge.
The lesson is…… Don’t use the Amazon Pickup Location option. Ninety per cent of them appear to be to the nearest post office and Amazon charge for this service. Manually enter the Poste Restante address into the order and avoid the additional delivery charge.
We did a large Tesco shop today. Actually it took two trips to get everything back to Waiouru. A business card had been left on the cabin roof at the stern. It was from Fleming Bros Agricultural Contracts in Foxton in NZ. We assume a Kiwi happened to be in the local area and noticed Waiouru. If the owner of the card is a reader, please leave us a comment.
Later in the afternoon nb Maris Piper passed going south. We last saw them on the River Lee. Jan had one of those quick side hatch conversations establishing that they were on their way back to the Thames.
This evening I went for a walk up to Newbold and then back via Elliott’s Field Retail Park.
Most of the original buildings in the retail park were demolished towards the end of last year and a new complex is now being constructed. The TKMax and Next retail outlets are already open.
phone photos
The Marks & Spencer outlet looks almost complete. Some of the original outlets have relocated to an area behind The Range and PC World at the second retail park on the opposite side of the road.
1 comment :
Don't forget you can only use Post Restante if the items are being delivered by Post so you have to be sure your supplier uses the Post Office / Royal Mail / Parcelforce for their delivery method. A small share of the money paid for stamps/franking will go to the local post office for providing the service.
If your supplier tries to use a carrier like UPS, Yodel etc. it will probably be rejected by the local post office as they receive no payment for it that way. Occasionally they accept it as a favour for your expected custom, and you end up having to buy something expensive you don't want to get your parcel.
When the post office say any firm can use Post Restante they mean any firm can send items by post and not any courier can use it as a drop off point.
Since privatisation it is no longer compulsory for a local post office to accept Post Restante anyway so you always need to phone them and check in advance. Many local post offices have discovered they can make a bigger profit as a drop off point for Amazon etc. and no longer accept Post Restante mail. You could find your Post Restante stuff is returned and your get your Amazon Delivery point stuff.
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