END OF THE ROAD FOR RIP-OFF DELIVERY CHARGES
No10 pledges to protect Scots consumers
A MAJOR review of ‘rip-off’ delivery fees will consider measures to protect Scottish consumers from excessive charges.
In a victory for the Scottish Daily Mail, the UK Government yesterday confirmed that it will examine evidence and assess what type of action is required.
Ministers also confirmed they will remind delivery and courier firms of their ‘legal obligation’ to tell clients of any charges before ordering.
The commitment to hold a full review of the issue is a success for this newspaper’s End The Delivery Rip-Offs campaign, which has highlighted the ‘unfair’ charges added to the bills of customers across much of remote and rural Scotland.
Customers in some areas pay an average of up to 50 per cent more than those in other parts of the UK.
UK consumers minister Margot
James said: ‘It is legal for delivery companies to make differential charges but they have a duty to consider the fairness of their pricing structures and a legal obligation to ensure delivery charges and conditions are clear to consumers before they place an order.
‘Ofcom has completed a two-year study of the issue and I will work with the Consumer Protection Partnership to establish a review of the evidence collected so far to see what can be done to protect Scottish consumers from excessive charging.’
Her comments are the first clear commitment from the UK Government to consider action to address the problem, after the Mail found examples of customers in the North-East being charged more for deliveries from UK-based firms than people living in some European countries.
Business Secretary Greg Clark is due to hold a meeting on the issue later this week.
Communications regulator Ofcom yesterday disclosed the full scale of the practice. It confirmed it had found examples of higher prices charged not only in the Highlands and Islands but in major cities such as Aberdeen, Dundee and Perth. Central Belt towns including Falkirk, Paisley and Kilmarnock were also affected.
The commitment from the UK Government comes after Theresa May was questioned on the issue by Moray Tory MP Douglas Ross at Prime Minister’s Questions last week.
He said: ‘I very much welcome the commitment from Margot James. Too many people are being ripped off purely because they happen to live where they do. We have to make sure this is the last Christmas where this happens.
‘Huge swathes of Scotland are being cut off by delivery companies. This is not just an inconvenience – to businesses it can be crippling.
‘There must be innovative and collaborative solutions to this problem. In 2017, I find it unbelievable that delivery companies cannot find a way around it. Moray and the North-East of Scotland is not some unreachable mystery land, it is part of our United Kingdom and the whole region must be able to move at a 21st century pace.’
A ‘Statement of Principles’ was introduced by the UK Government in 2014 in an effort to force firms to ensure they charge fair prices for deliveries.
But research published by Citizens Advice Scotland last week revealed online shoppers in Northern Scotland can be expected to pay a ‘postcode penalty’ of between 30 per cent and 50 per cent more than the rest of the UK purely because of where they live.
A new report by Ofcom found the ‘majority of operators’ charge extra to deliver to certain parts of the UK when third-party firms are used. But it found customers’ charges were normally far higher than third-party costs.
In a briefing document for MSPs, Ofcom said: ‘The causes of the higher prices as given by parcel operators include higher fuel and transport costs, fewer parcels being delivered to the same place and a reliance on third parties in certain areas.
‘However, we acknowledge that these explanations alone can do little to appease the frustration consumers experience from surcharges.’
A Scottish Government spokesman said: ‘For a long time we have been calling for an end to the unfair higher delivery charges many Scottish communities face – with rural and island communities being the worst affected.
‘We have been frustrated by the repeated refusal by UK ministers to take action. While the announcement of this review is a welcome step, it must lead to concrete action for long-suffering families and businesses.’
THE internet has transformed the way we shop but the regulations surrounding this commercial revolution have not always kept pace sufficiently.
So it was with delivery charges. Scots, especially those in rural areas, have benefited from the convenience of ordering, by just the click of a computer mouse, from stores and suppliers many miles away.
But too often there has been a sting in the tail as courier and delivery firms offer a raw deal on charges and display a shocking lack of knowledge of Scottish geography.
Our hard-hitting End the Delivery RipOffs campaign highlighted outrageous overcharging and mainlanders being told they were islanders. There was also the nonsense of delivery charges for goods from thousands of miles away on the Continent being cheaper than those for items from a few hundred miles away in England.
There were countless tales of customers getting deep into the transaction, only to find late on that outrageous delivery rates were to be applied.
All in all, the situation was becoming a Wild West, where bungling and outright rip-offs were the reality and not a rarity.
Now, in a major victory for consumers, the Government is to probe the situation to decide how to act to protect customers from the inept and downright predatory. Margot James, the UK Government’s consumers minister, says: ‘It is legal for delivery companies to make differential charges but they have a duty to consider the fairness of their pricing structures and they have a legal obligation to ensure that delivery charges and conditions are clear to consumers before they place an order.’
She says the evidence will be reviewed with a view to action to force the industry to reform.
As we enter the frenetic Christmas period when the majority of us will be ordering at least some gifts online, that’s very good news indeed.