Re: Shipping Cost from the UK

>On Mon, 11 Jun 2001, David Rodemaker wrote:
>
>> The recent commentary about buying from the UK vs. buying Stateside
had me
>> go and look at pricing. Yowie! As a further continuation, what do the
>> shipping costs generally run (I'm the Chicago area myself)?
>
>Shipping from the UK to North America runs between 30-50% of your
order,
>although some of my orders to GZG have fallen into the 'Small Packet'
>category and shipped for much less.

When people order by credit card, we work out the postage charge based
on
the weight of the final package (plus a small surcharge for packing
costs);
if you're ordering just metal, then often it runs to only between 10%
and
20% of the order value, only a little more than internal UK postage.
It's
resin models and other heavy stuff that push the postage charges up, for
such orders you can be looking at the 30-50% mark.
For example we despatched a small order to Canada today worth about 25
UKP,
and the post/packing charge was only 3 UKP.
For those few people who can only pay by money order or similar, we have
to
quote the higher rates to ensure we get sent enough to cover the cost if
the order turns out to be a heavy one.
>
>As an aside, I've usually gotten considerablly faster service on orders
to
>the UK compared to orders from North American companies! My record is a
>two-week turnaround on an order from Irregular! It makes the steeper
S&H
>charges worth it, plus many firms do not have N.A. distributors.

I think we've sometimes had orders arrive at destinations in the US
within
about 3 to 4 days of them being posted over here - and as we can often
turn
round an emailed order within 24 hours that means you shouldn't have to
wait much more than a week in many cases.

Jon (GZG)