On-Line buying from Amazon becomes more attractive by the day - Irish Retailers Please Note

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mathepac

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"Dear Customer,

Greetings from Amazon.co.uk.

We are writing to confirm that we are processing your refund in the amount of £11.75 for your Order 205-3870874-9855549.

This amount has been credited to your payment method and will appear when your bank has processed it.

This refund is for the following item(s):

Item: The Little Black Book Of Beatles Songs For Ukulele: Songs for Ukelele
Quantity: 1
ASIN: 1783052732
Reason for refund: Damaged during transit

The following is the breakdown of your refund for this item:

Item Refund: £11.75

Your refund is being credited as follows:

Gift Card: £11.75

These amounts will be returned to your payment methods within 5-7 business days.

The amount credited to your Gift Card balance should be automatically applied to your next eligible order on our website."

"We are processing your refund. You don't need to return the item back to us!​

We've e-mailed these details to you at xxxxxxxx@email_address.post."

The book was purchased as a gift for a fellow Beatles fan who is learning to play ukulele late in life (wonderful instrument BTW). It was damaged in the production process with 4 pages torn, folded and bound back into book thus making a poor gift. On the AMAZON returns page I opted for the "no return, credit refund" and got the email by return. Magnificent customer service. No physical shipping of the defective product, they just took my word for it.

Can any Irish online or bricks 'n mortar retailers match or better it for service? I'd even accept AMAZON's tautology from them if they can!!
 
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Of course no Irish online or bricks or mortar or any book retailer in the world can provide this level or service. I am surprised that you would even ask such a question. But remember that Amazon.co.uk it only a tiny cog it a multi billion operation. In Europe along last year they had something like 44 billion in sales but yet paid no tax as they made a 'loss'. It's able to provide you with your book for free as it makes a margin of 26% profit on Amazon AWS cloud services so while the book didn't cost you anything somebody has paid for it.
But it comes down to what kind of society we want in the future. One that see Jeff Bezos increase his 200 billion fortune or support your local book seller who may well have been able to order the book for you.
 
It's a damaged book. They can't resell it so have no use for it. An Irish retailer would probably do the same if you bought it online.

Google and Apple also offer excellent service.

But then we get to what kind of retail landscape do we want? Look at Grafton Street. It used to be the premier shopping street in Ireland. Now it is full of mobile phone shops and jewellers. It has certainly lost its shine. And that's even before we get to independent sellers, who are being squeezed out by chain and companies like Amazon. Ireland has lost a lot of its identity in going for chains like the UK, whereas mainland Europe still has a lot of independents. I use Amazon a bit but I am happy to pay a bit extra to support an independent retailer too.
 
I would use click and collect a lot for retailers in the area, but once you go beyond that range...

The delivery charges are a big driver in using Amazon for me.
If you have Amazon prime, you can pick from a huge selection of products with no delivery charge.
In many cases these are low value items where the delivery charge if purchased from a standalone Irish supplier would be 20-50% of the cost of the item itself.

I wonder if there's anything the government can do in assisting Irish suppliers with some sort of delivery rebate scheme, that wouldn't fall foul of state aid or competition laws etc.
 
I try to shop on local\irish websites but there still seems to be so many that don't get it right.

Just in the last few weeks from my experience...
- Ordered 2 items off a big Irish sports retailer, one item arrived and for 10 days they would not reply to email or answer the phone, had to resort sending public tweets to them on twitter
- Took 10 days for another retailer to deliver from west of Ireland yet Amazon can send a package from Manchester in 48 hours.
- 2 or 3 retailers with atrocious web sites or no ability to order online

But many do online very well, but it doesn't happen without investment and good operations.
I probably end up ordering from Amazon 80% of time, it is hard to pay 20% more for an irish retailer when there are big price differences.
 
sharkattack said:
But it comes down to what kind of society we want in the future.
Click to expand...
I'm willing to pay a bit extra to avoid Amazon and buy local where possible for this very reason. It's rare that I need anything urgently and have no problem waiting a few days for a purchase. Have found the service to be very good from most Irish online retailers. Have even sent back an incorrect item that a retailer told me to keep. Item would have ended up in the bin. Minor inconvenience to prevent more waste. As @sharkattack says it comes down to the kind of society we want in the future.

I say all this as a (minuscule) Amazon shareholder. If their take over is inevitable then might as well get some good out of it.
 
A good few posters mentioned price(s) in the context of my post. Strangely, I never mentioned prices or delivery charges in my post, only customer service, but now that you mention it ... We cannot get it right and with a very few exceptions, I doubt we ever will whether it's online or high street. The "coppers in the greasy till" come to mind whenever I think of Irish retailers.
 
"The "coppers in the greasy till" come to mind whenever I think of Irish retailers."

Ah now.........

They have property and staff costs, rates, and all the other business expenses- they have to operate as businesses.

mf
 
Of course they do and they also need customers to make it worthwhile opening the doors or firing up the server. Given a choice of using customer focussed utility companies (eir anyone?), retailers, financial organisations, healthcare or public service or any of our current set of self-serving gombeen-men, who would you opt for?

I'm voting with my mouse and spending my few discretionary euro where I feel valued. Customer service counts for a lot with me and if it costs less and is more convenient for me (I live in the sticks) to get that experience from the likes of AMAZON then so be it.
 
I think the vat exemption for low value items expires at the end of this month.
It's worth signing up for the Amazon prime free trial and doing a blitz of such small value items now.
You need to keep each order below €22 including delivery charges.
 
Prime doesn't exclude you from paying taxes...e.g. following prime member buys
June 10th - product for 6 euro, product for 15 euro, product for 19 euro, product for 12 euro, product for 21 euro, product for 8 euro
All separate transactions.
Now if Amazon groups these transactions (which they do all the time) and sends them together your package is now valued more than the €22 cutoff and you are now liable for import duties.
 
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Bought a replacement dishwasher from a local brings n morter retailer a couple of years back, wouldn't fit in the place the previous one was, just millimeters out for some reason. retailer replaced it no questions asked with a slightly smaller one, that was millimeters too high. they replaced that one with one that finally slotted in. No issues, they delivered and removed everything and didn't charge anything extra.

I can think of a number of similar examples from small online and offline local retailers during lockdown who were glad of the business.
 
sharkattack said:
Now if Amazon groups these transactions (which they do all the time) and sends them together your package is now valued more than the €22 cutoff and you are now liable for import duties.
Click to expand...
Not if you use amazon.de which has more or less the same collection of products as amazon.co.uk.
 
Here's one for you to ponder.

2 days ago at about 5:30 pm I ordered two small electrical items online. One from a well known 'bricks'n'mortar' Irish seller, trading for well over 30 years with an online presence for about 20 of those, and the second from Amazon UK. Both items in stock at time of ordering.
P&P for the Irish purchase was €4 + VAT.
P&P for Amazon was free (yet another 'Prime' trial).

I am now in receipt of the Amazon order, ( coming from Manchester) and I have just received an Email from the Irish distributor stating
that they will dispatch my order today ( coming from Dublin ).
I don't hold out too much hope that I will receive it tomorrow, knowing an Post, and because of the bank holiday more than likely it will be next Tuesday.

So, there you have it:-
Free postage from Amazon and its delivered in 42 hours from ordering.
And €4.92 for postage from an Irish company and its not even dispatched yet !

Irish online sellers REALLY need to get their act together, but I fear it is already too late.
 
SparkRite said:
So, there you have it:-
Free postage from Amazon and its delivered in 42 hours from ordering.
And €4.92 for postage from an Irish company and its not even dispatched yet !

Irish online sellers REALLY need to get their act together, but I fear it is already too late.
Click to expand...
Specifically on the delivery though it's hard to see what many Irish retailers can do on low priced items, absorbing the cost of an post or courier postage would be too much.
Amazon have I assume negotiating bulk discount with couriers and shippers.

Possibly they could do local area deliveries free and drop off themselves... in Dublin that could work.
I know some off licences do that.
 
One well-known Irish online car parts retailer shuts down for 10 days over Christmas.

I bought some wiper blades from them on 22 December and after two weeks emailed them about where the order was. They said that I had missed a banner notice on their website telling me that dispatch stops between Christmas and new year.

And this is the attitude of an online-only firm that has no physical retail presence!
 
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