DO NOT PURCHASE FROM THIS COMPANY IF…
DO NOT PURCHASE FROM THIS COMPANY IF NOT MAINLAND UK.
I purchased a camping chair from Outcamping, which included free shipping to orders within the UK. I live in Northern Ireland, and I am accustomed to companies either not shipping to Northern Ireland at all or charging a higher postage rate for non-mainland UK orders. These alerts always pop up at checkout - either that they cannot ship to my postcode or an extra shipping charge is displayed. Fine.
My purchase went through with no extra shipping. Happy days. Then AFTER placing my order, I received an email that I would need to pay extra to have my order sent via either FedEx or DHL, which would have significantly increased the cost of my purchase, so I had the order cancelled.
While I understand that it is expensive to send bulky items, and often even more so to Northern Ireland, I expect honesty and transparency from businesses at the time of my purchase so that I can make an informed decision as a consumer. I do not expect a business to absorb such shipping costs, but the system should be able to tell me the rate at the point of purchase based on my postcode and the size of my order. I find it extremely dishonest to tack on an additional charge after the fact.
**In response to the company's reply, they did contact me. Once I saw the email in the evening, I reviewed their Delivery policy. By the time I had some downtime during my workday to write them a reply, they had cancelled my order. As they had lost my trust, I left it at that and completed the purchase from a different company with a clear delivery policy.
Their policy is absolutely not outlined on the product page. It says, "Shipping calculated at checkout." The shipping that was calculated was £0. That statement hyperlinked to a page that mentions nothing about additional charges.
If you specifically navigate to their Delivery policy from the menu at the bottom of the page, it mentions that exclusion zones may apply, which includes NI, and then says, "Certain UK postcodes do not qualify for our free delivery service and customers in these areas may be required to pay a supplementary delivery fee."
However, as the product page from which I purchased said that shipping would be calculated at checkout, I think this implies that there may be additional charges, which would be added at checkout. I do not think it's my responsibility to engage in a back and forth about FedEx and DHL shipping quotes after I've completed my purchase and been told at checkout that there would be £0 delivery cost.
While I was not ultimately charged, my review of the lack of transparency in their policy stands, as does my warning to other customers from outside of mainland UK. And instead of acknowledging the shortcomings in the clarity of their policy, which might have softened my view, the company doubled down and tried to place the blame on me. I am not looking for a discount or anything of that nature. A simple apology and acknowledgement would have been enough to maybe have me upgrade this to 3 stars, but I absolutely would not recommend that other people waste their time with this service.**
December 12, 2024
Unprompted review