FertileFibre - Cheeky Postage Surcharge & Price Irregularities

I have been looking for good quality coir for use in my epiphytic cacti compost mix and this company appeared to be supplying the stuff I needed at a very good price however they have both an independent online shop and also an eBay account however the eBay listings are slightly cheaper for smaller orders.

example:

eBay listing of 1 coir bale = £9.60 delivered
Independent website = £11.21 delivered

so that's a saving of £1.61 if you buy from eBay

They also mention that there will be a surcharge for delivery to the Isle of Wight which I haven't yet managed to ascertain the cost of however I did manage to get in touch with there courier APC who have told me that it is actually cheaper for them to deliver items to the Isle of Wight than many areas of Mainland Britain as they have there own depo here!

overall my first impressions are not good ones...

The product

Now this is a completely different story it appears to be of good quality and extremely well priced which ever site you purchase from compared to their competitors they also list a number of other products such as Perlite and there own compost mixes at very good prices so overall I think I would recommend them and hopefully they will sort out there price problems and I might be able to enlighten them to there postage error

 

Link?

 

Could it be partly down to the cost per transaction on eBay being significantly lower than the cost per transaction on their own site? That's just a guess, based on my own experience that card transaction costs vary widely not just between one provider and another, but also depending on the package. For example, some will charge a fixed transaction fee (which can be upto about £3 in the worst cases but is more typically anything upto 50p). Some charge a percentage of the sale value. Some charge a bit of both. Then some have a fixed monthly or annual fee (hundreds of pounds) plus any combination of the above. Add to this the support costs for their own site. Compare all this to the cost of running an eBay shop. The running costs on one will be different to the other.

 

http://www.fertilefibre.com/

http://myworld.ebay.co.uk/fertilefibre/

Perhaps but then why bother with you own separate shop and not just divert customers to eBay if it was cheaper? My own understanding is that most business start trading on eBay for exposure and then sell cheaper direct which is why I looked on there site n the first place :rolleyes:

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If they are not up to date with their internet sales/marketing strategy, as many companies aren't, its quite possible they got suckered into commissioning someone to build them an online shop, getting tied into a contract in the process.

I have a number of mates who are self employed in various trades. I can guarantee that at least once every few weeks I'll get a phone call off a mate telling me someone's been pestering them to sell them a website at a cost of just £2k and that they need it because everyone needs a website these days. And every time I tell them yes if it was 1990, but now you just go on eBay and Facebook and if you want your own site, you pay a few quid for a basic site that directs all sales traffic to the eBay shop.

 

I bought my coir bale block from IKEA at £3 , really good stuff it look like the pro- coir bale used by Dutch grower , it actually comes from holland even if is made out of coconut fibre , also once i bought it from poundland .

 

Those would be bricks though sal? bales make about 70lt of coir once hydrated you have to be quite careful as they can be contaminated with salts which will cause damage to plants I think most coir is processed in shri lanka

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Aesculus the only reason I will never buy them again is the price , way too expencive , but at the time i was looking for anything with a zero ph , but I noticed that the 50% of the plants I bought recently have been grown in coir .
In todays world I really don`t belive anymore in price quality , maybe your ebay coir bale is produced by the same company that produce the one for IKEA.

 

I don't know about Coir ... but I buy Perlite quite a lot cheaper (than their price)

 

Yes I find I can get a 100lt bag delivered for around £22.... Still beats the hell out of paying £7.99 for 10lt at the garden centre though

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Very true

JFC Monro sells 100L Perlite for £14 - but carriage dependent on how close you are, and the size of your order (although I've always found the delivery cost very reasonable, compared to the draconian wording on their website!)

 

I've emailed them to see what there carriage would be to here, any idea what size difference is between standard and super coarse is?

 

No, sorry. I just buy "standard". I've only bought from them before when I've been able to make up the order to a full pallet, and they've always been kind enough to say "I'm sure we could squeeze that on Sir! if not we'll take care of the extra pallet"

 

Sounds like very good customer service problem is if I could make pallet up I'd have about 20yrs worth... I

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Indeed! But Perlite is light weight, so maybe they have a carrier that will be cost effective.

They sell other stuff - even I don't buy a full Pallet of Perlite