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when did gardiner stop free delivery?

Baldmonkey

Well-known member
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709
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Uk
just gone on to buy a new pole and after having a £720 total in the shopping cart i noticed that nearly a tenner had been added for shipping, when did this happen?

It might sound daft but it really pee'd me off and i didnt go through with the Purchase. Any website worth their salt offers free delivery over a certain amount

 
just gone on to buy a new pole and after having a £720 total in the shopping cart i noticed that nearly a tenner had been added for shipping, when did this happen?

It might sound daft but it really pee'd me off and i didnt go through with the Purchase. Any website worth their salt offers free delivery over a certain amount
I always thought it was over £50 free delivery with gardiners. I've got to say if I was spending £700, i'd want free shipping too!  

 
yes it was but not according to my checkout total...

am i missing something or incorrect here @Alex Gardiner
Hi Baldmonkey

The free shipping promotion was stopped about 1 month ago having been in place for several years now. I was asked the question why we had decided to do this on 'another forum' a couple of weeks ago - I have copied my full answer from that forum below - this may help highlight why we have done this:

Quote from 'another forum':

First of all I want to say that I think we are very fortunate to be in an industry where we have, for the main part, been able to continue working and earning a living despite the Covid Pandemic restrictions. I am grateful that I was not in the hospitality or travel sector at this time.

My explanation below is in no way trying to complain or moan about the cost or challenges of doing business – I am very fortunate to have a robust business that has been steadily growing despite the world situation around us. Whilst we are still a small family business we do employ nearly 40 staff and having a healthy business does mean that this responsibility is not more burdensome than it needs to be.

Removal of Free Postage on orders over £60 – yes this is a price rise – pure and simple.

We have not always provided free postage, but introduced it as a sales promotion many years ago in order to ‘encourage’ customers to buy more goods from us to increase order size and spend more money with us – and this has always worked very well to gently push up the size of orders from our customers. Despite this, nearly 40% of our customer orders have paid for postage as they were under the free limit – such orders have not been affected.

Why remove this now? There are several reasons that have coalesced into this change.

1.   The price of doing business in the Covid and Post Brexit economy. The rise in prices have been relentless the last 15 months or so. All of our raw materials have increased in price dramatically – sometimes up to 3 price rises in one calendar year. The cost of moving/storing goods has been ridiculous. The cost of shipping a 20ft container has grown from about £1500 (just freight cost, not import and port handling) to about £5000 per container. Even the humble cardboard box has risen in price dramatically and we have faced serious national shortages of packaging materials leading to price spikes. Due to the continued growth within our industry sector, we have had to manage such growth during very challenging times – this has all been costly as every Covid precaution or post-Brexit ‘work around’ has cost us time and money and at a time when many of our staff could still not come into work.

2.   We have started to move into a time period where generally consumers are interested in cutting down waste and only purchasing what they need. With this in mind, some time ago we started charging a small amount for hose packs and connectors on our poles so that these would only be bought when wanted – this was also a price rise which helped our bottom line, but it did have the effect of reducing the purchasing of a component that may not have actually been needed. It also helped reduce the work load fractionally at a time when we were busier than ideal. There is an ethical issue with using promotions that encourage consumers to purchase more goods than they need and the removal of this ‘free shipping’ promotion means there is no pressure to buy just an ‘extra widget’ to hit an order value.

3.   We have a very dynamic and growing customer base that has considerably increased in order volume in the last twelve months– as a business this is always encouraging. However, the rate of customer order increase has been so dramatic that we had to look at ways of slowing such growth down. We have thought about closing our books to new customers temporarily but this would bring it’s own logistical problems. For the wholesale side in March 2020 we put a freeze in place around the world where we would not appoint any new Distributors either in the UK or Internationally – this freeze will remain in place for the rest of 2021 and probably into 2022. On the retail side we looked at many ways of trying to discourage new customers and reduce the order volume from existing customers – just as in a window cleaning business there is a limit to how many windows can be cleaned with finite resources and in 2020 we reached and exceeded such limits.  We aim to ‘work to live, not live to work’. One way of reducing customer orders is to reduce the range of goods supplied and we have been working on this for about 3 years now. However more was needed as we continued to grow so we chose to make the very noticeable method of raising prices by doing away with free shipping. We could have gently increased product prices that would easily have covered this and would probably have not even been noticed, but instead we wanted this very small price rise to be fully noticed, thought about and to have a larger psychological effect than its actual cost is.
Put bluntly we wanted to ‘lose’ some of our customers and their orders and for those who object to this small price rise strongly enough this will hopefully have such an effect and they will shop elsewhere – fortunately, there is plenty of choice in the market today and many other pole suppliers who can be bought from. 

Can I take this opportunity to thank all our customers who have been very understanding during this difficult time – we appreciate their support very much and we will continue to do the best we can to keep supplying our customers with the best product possible in the coming months ahead.

I hope that this has helped clarify why such a decision was made ?

End of Quote from 'another forum'.

 
just gone on to buy a new pole and after having a £720 total in the shopping cart i noticed that nearly a tenner had been added for shipping, when did this happen?

It might sound daft but it really pee'd me off and i didnt go through with the Purchase. Any website worth their salt offers free delivery over a certain amount
Lol ware have you been ???it’s been like that for a while now ????

 
Hi Baldmonkey

The free shipping promotion was stopped about 1 month ago having been in place for several years now. I was asked the question why we had decided to do this on 'another forum' a couple of weeks ago - I have copied my full answer from that forum below - this may help highlight why we have done this:

Quote from 'another forum':

First of all I want to say that I think we are very fortunate to be in an industry where we have, for the main part, been able to continue working and earning a living despite the Covid Pandemic restrictions. I am grateful that I was not in the hospitality or travel sector at this time.

My explanation below is in no way trying to complain or moan about the cost or challenges of doing business – I am very fortunate to have a robust business that has been steadily growing despite the world situation around us. Whilst we are still a small family business we do employ nearly 40 staff and having a healthy business does mean that this responsibility is not more burdensome than it needs to be.

Removal of Free Postage on orders over £60 – yes this is a price rise – pure and simple.

We have not always provided free postage, but introduced it as a sales promotion many years ago in order to ‘encourage’ customers to buy more goods from us to increase order size and spend more money with us – and this has always worked very well to gently push up the size of orders from our customers. Despite this, nearly 40% of our customer orders have paid for postage as they were under the free limit – such orders have not been affected.

Why remove this now? There are several reasons that have coalesced into this change.

1.   The price of doing business in the Covid and Post Brexit economy. The rise in prices have been relentless the last 15 months or so. All of our raw materials have increased in price dramatically – sometimes up to 3 price rises in one calendar year. The cost of moving/storing goods has been ridiculous. The cost of shipping a 20ft container has grown from about £1500 (just freight cost, not import and port handling) to about £5000 per container. Even the humble cardboard box has risen in price dramatically and we have faced serious national shortages of packaging materials leading to price spikes. Due to the continued growth within our industry sector, we have had to manage such growth during very challenging times – this has all been costly as every Covid precaution or post-Brexit ‘work around’ has cost us time and money and at a time when many of our staff could still not come into work.

2.   We have started to move into a time period where generally consumers are interested in cutting down waste and only purchasing what they need. With this in mind, some time ago we started charging a small amount for hose packs and connectors on our poles so that these would only be bought when wanted – this was also a price rise which helped our bottom line, but it did have the effect of reducing the purchasing of a component that may not have actually been needed. It also helped reduce the work load fractionally at a time when we were busier than ideal. There is an ethical issue with using promotions that encourage consumers to purchase more goods than they need and the removal of this ‘free shipping’ promotion means there is no pressure to buy just an ‘extra widget’ to hit an order value.

3.   We have a very dynamic and growing customer base that has considerably increased in order volume in the last twelve months– as a business this is always encouraging. However, the rate of customer order increase has been so dramatic that we had to look at ways of slowing such growth down. We have thought about closing our books to new customers temporarily but this would bring it’s own logistical problems. For the wholesale side in March 2020 we put a freeze in place around the world where we would not appoint any new Distributors either in the UK or Internationally – this freeze will remain in place for the rest of 2021 and probably into 2022. On the retail side we looked at many ways of trying to discourage new customers and reduce the order volume from existing customers – just as in a window cleaning business there is a limit to how many windows can be cleaned with finite resources and in 2020 we reached and exceeded such limits.  We aim to ‘work to live, not live to work’. One way of reducing customer orders is to reduce the range of goods supplied and we have been working on this for about 3 years now. However more was needed as we continued to grow so we chose to make the very noticeable method of raising prices by doing away with free shipping. We could have gently increased product prices that would easily have covered this and would probably have not even been noticed, but instead we wanted this very small price rise to be fully noticed, thought about and to have a larger psychological effect than its actual cost is.
Put bluntly we wanted to ‘lose’ some of our customers and their orders and for those who object to this small price rise strongly enough this will hopefully have such an effect and they will shop elsewhere – fortunately, there is plenty of choice in the market today and many other pole suppliers who can be bought from. 

Can I take this opportunity to thank all our customers who have been very understanding during this difficult time – we appreciate their support very much and we will continue to do the best we can to keep supplying our customers with the best product possible in the coming months ahead.

I hope that this has helped clarify why such a decision was made ?

End of Quote from 'another forum'.
Firstly Alex thanks for taking the time to reply. 

Whilst your reply was eloquent and concise, the after taste left after digesting your long and precise reasoning was that you have been very busy, shipping costs globally have gone up due to the pandemic, we are too busy, we don't want new customers that much, we will increase end cost to counteract people wanting to buy our product and we don't want to sell as many products... Your business and quite rightly you should run it your way but I've gotta be honest I'm very disappointed in the undertone of the answer. 

But all that said I appreciate you getting back to me when tagged and as you quite rightly put it "there is plenty of choice in the market today and many other pole suppliers who can be bought from." 

Lol ware have you been ???it’s been like that for a while now ????
Obviously I haven't been a customer of gardiner for a while, and by the looks of the reply I'd better find a supplier who wants to sell to me and would welcome my custom ????

 
Personally I appreciate the incredible 'window' into running a supply business, the rising costs and other challenges will not be unique to Gardiners. I expect other businesses will do away with free shipping soon enough.

Life is getting more expensive and in a lot of cases quality is dropping, partly I suspect due to the increasing use of recycled materials.

 
Personally I appreciate the incredible 'window' into running a supply business, the rising costs and other challenges will not be unique to Gardiners. I expect other businesses will do away with free shipping soon enough.

Life is getting more expensive and in a lot of cases quality is dropping, partly I suspect due to the increasing use of recycled materials.
I completely agree Martyn, some prices have increased and i know shipping containers are very expensive at the minute. i guess i just take um bridge to being told that as a customer who only buys things i need, i probably fall into the category that i am not actually wanted or needed by a supplier and actively encouraged to shop elsewhere.

This hasn't been born out of a long feud over something and after a lot of arguing told to "bugger off somewhere else" but given as a structured business model

 
I would rather be told a harsh reality than honey coated BS.

I can tell you that the strategy of guiding customers to order less frequently works. Living at the far end of the Universe as I do I have never enjoyed free shipping and the low cost option was removed some time ago, the result is that I only place an order when I can order enough to justify the shipping. You would be amazed how many businesses won't deliver to my location at all.

 
Posted 2 hours ago

  This bit from Alex is shocking.

I do Hope he doesn't end up regretting it.  

Put bluntly we wanted to ‘lose’ some of our customers and their orders and for those who object to this small price rise strongly enough this will hopefully have such an effect and they will shop elsewhere – fortunately, there is plenty of choice in the market today and many other pole suppliers who can be bought from. 

 
Posted 2 hours ago

  This bit from Alex is shocking.

I do Hope he doesn't end up regretting it.  

Put bluntly we wanted to ‘lose’ some of our customers and their orders and for those who object to this small price rise strongly enough this will hopefully have such an effect and they will shop elsewhere – fortunately, there is plenty of choice in the market today and many other pole suppliers who can be bought from. 
gotta be honest i couldn't believe what he wrote, after how much the majority of this forum put his way in monetary terms too be told something like that isn't great...the shipping cost is the least of my worries after that

So who do you want as customers then? 
probably wholesale by the sounds of it or the likes of companies that have 10 or 20 vans on the road.....not the little man by the sounds of it

 
I would rather be told a harsh reality than honey coated BS.

I can tell you that the strategy of guiding customers to order less frequently works. Living at the far end of the Universe as I do I have never enjoyed free shipping and the low cost option was removed some time ago, the result is that I only place an order when I can order enough to justify the shipping. You would be amazed how many businesses won't deliver to my location at all.
There is a difference between harsh reality vs honey coated BS and being told to shop elsewhere and we don't want customers.

 
The reality is, if Alex wants to manage demand, he needs to put his prices up across the board. That is how businesses manage to balance the issue of supply and demand. 

They don't put posts up on forum like this explaining they don't want new customers or want to lose some. 

 
There is a difference between harsh reality vs honey coated BS and being told to shop elsewhere and we don't want customers.
I'm quite appalled by his comments. 

A good man, a good company who sadly is now taking the mickey. 

If lots of people did shop else were then I'm sure he will change his tune. I'm not bothered about shipping costs as it goes against tax, its the cockiness of the comments. I thought men of the god squad were better than that.          

 
I take on board the postage increase simply as my friend had stated to me the prices if 

the one thing gardiners have going for them that currently at the minute there poles are the best, but I think it's up to the other companies to take note of this up there game and take advantage of it. Gardiners have been the leading pole brand for years and I think they come across as slightly arrogant because of it,

I do like the fact Alex comes on here and backs his company up, I was toying with going to a different brand pole but unfortunately you know what your getting from gardiners.

So it's up to the other players in the field to step up

 
Last edited:
I think you've all missed the point Alex is trying to make. He doesn't want to stop selling to us, he simply wants to manage order quantity. So rather than have lots of barely over £50 orders (I know I've put those types of orders in in the past) I get the feeling he wants less frequent larger orders. That is also shown by the fact they have been reducing what they sale for years. I wouldn't be surprised if Gardiner gets to the point were they just sale poles and brushes, with next to nothing else. I personally would still go to them for these, as they are the best and the after sales is second too non. 

Respect to Alex by making sure the business conforms to what he wants, and not conforming himself to the business! 

 
I’m sure plenty of you moaning have changed a customer to 6 weekly from 4 weekly because of demand, your profit will have increased in doing so. Never mind putting prices up every year etc as we all no doubt do, dropping customers if they are inconvenient such as a van stop for one house.. do you ever get the odd customer who thinks it’s shocking that you don’t want their custom? Thinking the world revolves around them..

Gardiner are actually being a lot more ethical than companies still offering free shipping, they only offer free shipping to get more money out of you, and you buy things you otherwise wouldn’t have, now when shopping at gardiner you will only buy what you need. Do you honestly think other companies care about you as an individual because they offer free shipping? Completely missing the point of Alex’s post and just like I’m not going to lose sleep on the 1 percent of customers who cancel when I increase their price, gardiner won’t lose sleep over anyone desperate to shop elsewhere for “free shipping” which in most cases will just mean prices of individual items are higher or you’ll buy random stuff you don’t need ?

I for one will continue to order what I need from Gardiner because their products and customer service is brilliant 

 
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