Shipping to the UK, Call Centers
Business venting time….Sometimes I just want to quit sending any shipments to the UK. On the one hand, a lot of UK residents are great customers and trustworthy people, but on the other, we get more lost packages and chargebacks from the UK than from anywhere else, despite that we ship a whole lot more packages to the US. Why? The problems are two-fold. First, Royal Mail is just less reliable than the postal services in countries such as the US, Canada or Australia. We almost always ship orders within 1 business day, but Royal Mail seems to arbitrarily take anywhere from 1-3 weeks to deliver, and sometimes not at all.
The second problem is taxes (and it’s related to the first, since customs is a big part of what delays deliveries). In an effort to stifle free trade, the UK slams imported products with ridiculously high import taxes that often add 30-50% onto the final cost. These customs fees cannot be charged or collected by us in advance, they have to be paid by the customer when they pick up the package. This is the same with any international (or outside the EU trade zone) purchase that falls over a certain amount. Big corporations with local warehousing or distribution centers can get around it (like Amazon, etc), but for small operations like us, the customer needs to be aware of their local tax laws. Unfortunately, many in the UK don’t have a clue about their nation’s tax policies, and are actually surprised when they get charged VAT/customs fees, etc. This leads to packages getting sent back to us since the customers were oblivious to their country’s tax system. I wish we could change the UK tax system, but it’s quite out of my hands. If you’re buying anything internationally, you have to be an educated consumer.
My next headache comes from our new toll free number, which I’m currently regretting. I’ve never been a fan of phone sales, since your credit card information is a lot more secure if you simply purchase online. With online sales, human eyes never see your credit card info and everything is encrypted. Of course, there’s no such thing anywhere as 100% security, but basically, an online shopping cart is a lot safer than a phone purchase. We now offer the option of phone orders, but as far as I can tell it’s rarely being used (most smart customers stick with the cart), and worse, the call center keeps trying to overcharge us. I’m still getting false invoices from before we were even up and running, and calculating an 8-week billing cycle seems to be beyond the ability of their billing department. I don’t want to quit just yet, but if the 800 number disappears for while, don’t be surprised.
