"Sylvia Else" wrote in message
...
William Sommerwerck wrote:
I know the feeling. Hard to understand why suppliers are unwilling to
put $5 worth of components in an envelope and send it by normal post.
Particularly if the customer expressly accepts the risk of its getting
lost.

There's the overhead of picking and packing the products. Consequently,
most
companies have a $20 to $30 minimum purchase, or impose an handling
charge
for smaller orders. Some don't.



I've no objection to being charged the true cost of picking etc, plus a
fair profit margin. But the cheapest delivery option of the supplier I've
been using is $10, being for sending by courier (often same day). I assume
that's somewhat similar to what they're charged. If they'd put it in an
envelope and stick a stamp on instead, I could save about $9.50.

Indeed I could presumably save more if they didn't insist on sending a
copy of the invoice by separate cover.

Sylvia.

Here in the UK, Farnell, whom I use a lot, have a completely unfathomable
shipping policy. If I order a couple of transistors, one time they will come
in a Jiffy bag, by standard surface mail. The next time, the very same parts
will come packed in a box the size of your head, filled with plastic air
bags, and shipped via UPS, who annoyingly vary their routes "for security
puposes, innit mate?" such that the parcel might arrive anywhere between
about 8am, when I'm not around, and 5pm. Another time, you might order a
transformer that weighs a kilo or so, and they will ship that by Royal Mail
Parcels. It's really quite bizarre.

Recently, they seem to have rationalised their inventory at the Leeds depot,
and now supplement it from a warehouse in Belgium of all places. So I can
place an order at 3pm, and most of it might arrive the next morning by Royal
Mail, and a packet of resistors will come by UPS later on, shipped from
bloody Belgium ! And of course, if the part that's urgent is the one that
they are shipping from Belgium, you can guarantee that on that particular
occasion, it will arrive a day after the parts that you put in there to
'make up' the order ...

I'm glad that they don't charge me for shipping. How on earth can they
justify the cost (and in this case I'm almost inclined to include all the
carbon footprint eco-bollox) of shipping a packet of resistors from Belgium
to the UK, overnight ?

Arfa