Hello and welcome

[Tina-Maria]

Hello to all Highland & Island bear enthusiasts and welcome to Teddy Bear Fair. It would be great to hear back from fellow enthusiasts.

[Chris Russell]

Hi Tina,

Just putting my Christie Bears hat on for a minute; can you tell me if you are experiencing higher carriage costs when you take delivery of mail-order items. At the present time we are subsidizing quite heavily packages of 2.0 kilos and over that we send to the Highlands and Islands via Parcelforce. I am thinking particulary of filling materials and joints which are generally low value but high weight.

Is there a problem for you, and if so have you found a way round it? If it comes to the crunch, I have some ideas in mind, but would like to understand the situation first.

If anyone else is watching I would welcome your comments.

Chris

[Tina-Maria]

Hi Chris

As you can imagine I use mail order quite a bit with being so remote but it can be an expensive business. This is an overview of how it basically works here:
If a company uses Parcelforce to deliver goods to me, Parcelforce puts on a surcharge of £15 to the Highlands, some companies charge the £15 to me, some less and some waive the surcharge if I spend enough. The strange thing is!!!! if I was to send the same items to this same company I am not charged a surcharge for the delivery for it to go out of the Highlands(its the same ditance whichever way you go!!!).
If carriers are used (disaster) it can take forever to get here because most of them will not drive down single track roads(of which there is 40 miles of to get to me)so what they do is they pass it on to the one carrier who will come down here, but this can mean it taking up to two weeks for what should be a 48 hour delivery.
I actually find the post office the best, at the most it takes a day longer than normal AND IT GETS HERE, the only thing is that I dont know what their weight limit is. Oh! and by the way, when you send something to me by Parcelforce ,they dont bring it to me, it comes with our post woman (who by the way is an absolute angel and if I am not at home she takes parcels home with her and she only lives around the corner)
Sorry this is so long, BUT YOU DID ASK!!!

Tina

[knockiebear]

Hi Tina, I am on the Moray coast twixt Inverness and Aberdeen. Where are you?