Sorry to hear this Richard, Your service has been excellent over the last few years. I'm too far away to call in for orders but would be prepared to pay a premium charge for your mail order service, should you change your mind. TonyB
For the first time in a long time I'm glad I live in Stoke!
Adam
On Feb 8, 5:45 pm, Tom Woods wrote:
I had thought of all sorts of different plans, including AFL, existing customers and recomendations, clubs etc, but there's always a snag, the price the couriers charge if there isn't sufficient volumes and that sort of thing pushing costs up - and believe me, if we are 50p more for delivery than Scroggins some, if not most, people won't buy. The main thing though the strange sales patterns - we sell the cheapest ERR3340's on the web (a deliberate spot of market research) but haven't sold one mail-order for 3 months, but get plenty of orders for obscure gaskets and massively expensive things (e.g. suspension compressors, sold 10 in 6 weeks) that have small margins and often aren't stocked elsewhere. So as I said earlier, we're not getting the bread and butter stuff, no matter what the prices is, and that makes it not worthwhile. One customer had a lengthy quote from us, which took over an hour to prepare, and thenforwarded it, with our company details included, to just about everyone you can think of asking them to beat it (unfortunately for them, they sent us a copy too). I'm all in favour of people checking prices out, but that was taking the piss as I'd had to work out all the part numbers for the clown too. There is also a personal dimension, and that's smart arse comments, like the one in this thread, where parts are unobtainable for some reason (usually LR haven't got any, which is becomming rather common), or orders from us to suppliers go wrong for any number of reasons and people are frankly rude about it, which made me wonder why I bother - it's not always my fault and I don't see why I sould have to put up with the grief!
Richard
Ye Gods! Get that man a beer or ten, quickly....
Richard
Isnt that the point? _most_ people would get put off by an extra surcharge but the ones that dont are the customers that you presumably want to keep, as i'm assuming they will be the 'regulars' and the people you like dealing with?.
There are quite a few of us who try to deliberatly choose where we buy stuff or services from and would prefer to use an independant who we know and would be quite happy to pay slightly more for the priveledge.
You would loose the awkward penny pinchers and keep the regulars with a surcharge. and even if you do get an order which is a pain you are getting paid for just packing it (i'm sure many people spent time thinking 'i hate this fecking job but i'm getting paid for it so i'll put up with it' ).
Isnt this the same with any job or field? ;) its how the world works! (i'm currently getting grief from places for things which are beyond my control!)
he has clearly already been drinking! wait till he sobers up! ;)
For me it's not about price - Richard gave me excellent service, shipping a low value order all the way to Brisbane when local suppliers could not help. I'm going to be really hard pressed to find an alternative supplier for odds & ends - major components I can readily get here.
I'm another one of those who regularly read this group and one of the best things I came across was beamends. Not had to use anyone else since, for all parts.
The service will be sorely missed, honest mail-order prices and the same person everytime.
O.T.O.H. I can appreciate that it must be a P.I.T.A. to run on occasion and it's a living not a hobby.
If Richard ever decides to carry on with a surcharge then I would still consider him value for money.
Adam, any chance of popping in and picking up a few parts for me?!! Stick them in the post I'll buy you a beer! :-) Got to be a good money making opportunity in there somewhere!
Anyway, as others have said Richard, sorry to hear we won't be able to get parts directly from you (especially those of us who live abroad), but as someone who has huge amount of time wasted by the general public just using you for information rather than buying I 100% sympathise - I'm not at all surprised by your 'quote forwarding' story. Sometimes even if you are making a profit on it, it just isn't worth the time or the hassle. I gave up on mailing/courier-ing things a long time ago - not least of which because of the multitude of problems with various courier companies.
Matt
Feeling a tad guilty about (particularly overseas) regulars, there is a Plan B (loosely based on Plan 9)......
If you arrange your own courier to make a collection from here, I'll go along with that, as it more or less becomes a counter sale and fits in with the "Argos" pre-order idea.
I don't know if that helps?
Richard
While I can quite understand you getting fed up with mail order selling, lets face it there's nothing but hard work in it whatever the field, I can't get my head around what you're going to carry on doing. Correct me if I've got the wrong end of the stick but you're not posting goods but are still going to to do everything else, hold stock, maintain the web site, take orders and payments from the site, give quotes by email, order items in specially etc etc. So you have virtually the same overheads and problems but far less customers, I'm not sure how that really helps you?. Surely you could just put up your prices a bit which would reduce your customers a bit, but at least what you did sel would be more profitable. Greg
I'm in Belfast, Northern Ireland and I have virtually (sic) stopped mail order with what is euphemistically called the mainland because of the grotesque surcharges levied by the couriers to deliver here. This is small package stuff.
e.g. packing and delivery to mainland UK ~ £4.99 surcharge to NI +£15. Now that IS extracting the urine, big-time!
We have a very busy shop and trade counter as well! And Gary's snowed under (figuratively and literaly) in the workshop. Mail order hasn't been "core" for quite some time, even though it's what we started out doing!
I spent last weekend working out a job spec for a potential employee, and as a result of calculating where they would be best used was a little surprised at where the profit was comming from and where the costs were going to, hence the descision.
Richard
Not all that easy to comment on someone else's business unless you are on the inside really - it's not always as simple as putting up prices. As Richard has pointed out he gets relatively few orders for "bread and butter" stuff, and putting up prices may make those orders more profitable, but the likely upshot of increasing prices is that he would get less orders as people go elsewhere to buy cheaper. Many people on here represent a slightly different client to the everyday customer - in general most people on here appreciate the service Richard provides over getting things for the cheapest possible cost, but that is rare!
BTW, with regards the "your own courier" idea, if anyone wants a cheap one-off courier rate - "payperdrop_uk" on eBay do DHL UK and European (I think Worldwide as well) prices are not bad - for one-offs at least (i.e. you don't have to have a contract with DHL as they are effectively sub-contracting the service)
Matt
It's not just NI - the Scottish Highlands (and north thereof) and Islands, Isle Of Wight, Isle of Man, Channel Islands etc all attract surcharges of £15 - £30, except with Royal Mail/Parcel Force (for the time being?......)
Judging by labels attached to returns, those in mainland EU pay consideraby less for the likes of DHL the we in the UK do too.
Richard
Andrew> Disaster :-(((
Andrew> Now I need to find someone else who:-
Andrew> a) know what they are talking about Andrew> b) is honest Andrew> c) charges reasonable carriage costs Andrew> d) a nice guy
Andrew> PPS Any recommendations for companies who meet my criteria Andrew> above?
I use Dingocroft for almost all my bits.
In news:35f16eb24e% snipped-for-privacy@btconnect.com, beamendsltd wibbled :
It is cheaper for me to send a package to London, say that to send the same package from London to here, Belfast!!
Better!
TonyB ( Greatly relieved....)
Speaking as a below averagely successful business person this idea, though attractive to your old mail order customers, doesn't seem that much different in terms of profitability than the mail order arrangement.
You have identified the reason mail order is not profitable is that the bread and butter items aren't ordered. So it looks like you were not receiving a premium for stocking items other dealers did not. Perhaps the thing is to identify your better customers and restrict the service to them.
For my part I would prefer to order all the parts in advance, as waiting to be served in our local LR dealer is time consuming and though I think highly of our local LR specailists they are both 20 miles away and I have to 'phone first to make sure of parts availability. Having said that I've had to buy precious few parts for my LR products over the years, even less for the Hilux ;-).
AJH
That's pretty much what I'm doing really, I can't see the idea catching on generally as most probably aren't aware that that you can organise a collection and I don't have to send out hundreds of e- mails. For EU customers it may even be cheaper! And it means if someone in Austrailia wants a chassis.......
That's where the pre-order idea came from really - the shop gets pretty busy and if someone (perfectly ok by me) wants a load of twiddly bits they don't have to hang around while I pick the order, or if their mate Bob is passing by for some reason they can get him to pop in and pick it up, or send the Missus or Grandad or even their mate Franco in his 44-tonner as happened a few months back.
Richard
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