Amazon re-classify Channel Islands as UK Street address
by Chris Dawson
Amazon have written to UK sellers to inform them that as of the 21st March they will have to deliver to UK off shore Islands at the same cost as to mainland UK. They specifically mention the Channel Islands of Guernsey and Jersey, as well as the Isle of Man. These destinations will now be included in what Amazon call the “UK Street” region.
The problem for Amazon merchants is that whilst Royal Mail will deliver to the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands at normal postage rates couriers won’t. Not only are they more expensive to deliver to for heavy items, but couriers classify the Channel Islands as an International Destination and charge International tariffs.
Merchants will either have to swallow the loss on courier fees when shipping to off shore destinations, or increase shipping costs (or prices) across the board to take into account the increased costs.
As Jade of Storage And Home Solutions says “How am I supposed to accurately charge for a courier delivery to a customer who lives in Birmingham, when I will have to charge the same to a customer who lives in Guernsey. Even though this could cost 5 or 6 times more!“.
I can understand Amazon wanting to make it attractive for residents of the off shore Islands to purchase from Amazon, what I can’t understand is how they don’t appear to have realised that the cost to deliver to these locations is significantly more expensive than to the mainland UK.
It would be reasonable enough to include locations such as the Isle of Wight as “UK Street” as they’re classed as part of the UK. However whilst the Channel Islands are British Crown Dependencies they are not part of the United Kingdom and in fact are not even in the EU.
International destinations such as the Channel Islands cost more to deliver to. The problem for sellers is how to deliver to them at the same cost as domestic UK deliveries.
Dear Seller,
We are writing to let you know about a change to the UK shipping regions in your Amazon.co.uk seller account. As of 21st March 2012, deliveries to the Isle of Man, Guernsey and Jersey, as well as other off-mainland locations, will be included in the main “UK Street” shipping region.
We are making this change in order to ensure a consistent delivery experience for buyers on our site. Customers can now shop in confidence knowing that they will be charged the same rates for delivery to addresses throughout the UK, Channel Islands and the Isle of Man.
Your “UK Mainland Street” delivery rates will be automatically applied to the new “UK Street” region. If you wish to modify your current pricing, click the “Shipping Settings” link on the Settings tab in your Seller Central account, and then click the Edit button at the top of the Shipping Model section.
To find out more about changing your shipping settings, enter “Shipping Settings” in the Search box in the upper-right corner of the main seller Help page, or click “Configure My Shipping Settings” under the Configure Account Settings heading.
Thank you for selling on Amazon.
Amazon Services Europe
56 Responses on "Amazon re-classify Channel Islands as UK Street address"
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Gah. That sucks Jade, so glad we left Amazon last year.
Anyone who thinks Amazon is easier to sell on than eBay needs to see a shrink.
depends on your product offer we find amazon 90% better than ebay interms of sales, less returns and 100% better interms of silly questions. Persoanlly I dont agree with the change but hey ho for us in the scheme of things we’ll live with it
Your right. It is very much dependent on the product.
Glad I’ve got this one published, I appear to have an email inbox full of messages about Amazon’s new “UK Street” address policy!
Royal Mail won’t ship my products to the Channel Islands – too large. They have to go by courier. This means every sale I make to the Channel Isles will end up losing me £24. Sure, increase P&P a bit to cover the odd channel islands order, but that means raising prices across all selling channels to comply with price parity, putting you at a disadvatage with with other sellers on those channels who aren’t selling on amazon and so don’t need to raise their prices. There really should be an option for sellers who sell items that royal mail won’t accept for the channel islands to opt out.
Once Channel Island buyers work out they can buy heavy goods without a delivery surcharge on Amazon they’ll be buying TVs and washing machines and then demanding the VAT is refunded.
How can it be a good buying experience for customers if sellers decide to cancel orders because they are not viable? Then the seller gets penalised for pre-fulfilment cancelation and also receives a neg.
Quite agree but a word of warning.
If you think you can cancel orders on this basis regularly you will incur Amazon’s displeasure!
You will either have to stop selling these items, raise your prices, go FBA or take the hit.
If you mess with Amazon’s customers they will eventually shut you out of their site period.
Tread carefully if thinking of cancelling orders like this.
pip pip
“Pre-fulfilment Cancel Rate <2.5%"
Having spoken to a lovely woman at Amazon with regards to this the only option is to remove problem products, her helpful suggestion of using the weight based model for the whole of the UK and incorporate the cost of shipping a 70KG wardrobe to Guernsey was inventive but completely useless.
I am starting to get a bit miffed with these Amazon changes, I can see the value in this one however the "one size fits all" attitude is annoying at best.
FBA will not take anything over 30KG AFAIK
Another problem will be when you set Christmas shipping cut off date if the Channel Islands are counted as ‘UK Street’, it would mean that you would get three days less selling if you have to guarantee all ‘UK Street’ buyers delivery for Christmas.
Perhaps Amazon have just negotiated with their own couriers to include CI etc. in an ‘All UK’ package without a surcharge.
In trying to be all controlling, may be this is Amazon’s way of forcing us to use FBA for larger items. We’ll be re-evaluating our online strategy due to this, as 90% of our non-FBA SKU’s go by courier.
Spot on the money!
This has little or nothing to do with the so called ‘customer experience’ and everything to do with ‘encouraging’ more marketplace sellers to migrate to FBA for heavier and/or higher value items.
pip pip
I believe the maximum weight for FBA is 30KG, if your products are in excess of this then your screwed (in the nicest possible way)
Our postage rates are the same for main land Britain, Northern Ireland, The Channel Isles and the Isle Of Man. I thought it was strange when I discovered Amazon charge different rates for the above.
Can you share the name of your courier who will ship items above 2Kg and/or items of value more than £50 insured to these destinations please?
They are going to get a lot of business!
pip pip
We use The Royalmail, they have universal postage rates for UK and her dependences. I find it strange how other couriers would charge a different rate for these destinations, as if I was a courier I’d be trying to attract customers to my business. The Royalmail get a lot of stick, but they are a very fair priced company. I welcome sales from anywhere.
@ Warren
If you are just selling Jiffy Bag items then it makes no difference.
If you ar selling items over 100 Kilos then the difference is huge
1. 36.00 plus VAT for most areas of the UK
2. 135.90 plus VAT for Jersey or Guernsey
3. 91.64 Plus VAT to the Scottish Highlands
4. 104.00 Plus VAT to the Isle of Man
A tail lift truck, a sea journey, drivers wages, diesel at £1.40 per litre
Back to Ebay.
Most sellers over charge for postage on Amazon anyway.
Probably because they have the kind of selling account where it’s fixed at £4.08 per item.
I find myself wondering who it could be who has come up with this idea. I would expect that most, if not all Europeans would realise that there are ancient historic differances that have caused the Channel Islands to be separate from both France and the UK and indeed not a part of the EU. So the chances are that the decision was made by an American who is not intelligent enough to realise that there are problems.
However I wonder what his decision would be if he considered Gibralter. Gib is in the EU and is physically connected to Spain but the inhabitants vote for the MEP’s of the South West of England. So it could be argued that Gib should possibly be considered as part of the South West of England(of course the Channel Islands not being in the EU do not vote for any MEP’s either in France or indeed in the UK). Just wait for the decision to ship to Gibralter at the same price as Mainland UK.
To be fair Gibraltar was a Colony, but now an oversea territory and The Channel Isles and the Isle Of Man are dependences of the crown. But as the Royal Mail treats dependences of the crown the same the UK, so should every other business.
I didn’t know that Gibraltar was in the EU as I would have thought it would have the same status as The Channel Isles, so I’ve learnt something today. Its funny if Gibraltar’s taxes are used to bailout the Spanish as I would have thought that’s the last thing a Gibraltartian would want.
During the European Elections the British Political Parties have to campaign in Gib because Gib Voters vote in the South West of England and of course when the Voters on Gib feel upset about something that the EU has done it is the South West MEP’s that they canvass for their support.
So on that basis perhaps Gib should be considered alongside Penzance, Falmouth and Newquay.
Surely you’ll be pocketing the VAT for Channel Island sales which would offset the additional shipping costs? Or am I missing something?
And Royal Mail will deliver packages over 2kg to the Channel Islands – both Tracked (up to 15kg with just 2000 packages/yr as a minimum) and Special Delivery (up to 10kg from any Post Office) are available options.
If you normally use a courier for heavy items you probably won’t have a tracked account for the odd parcel to the Channel Islands. Special Delivery for a 10kg item will set you back £22.70 compared to well under a tenner for most courier contracts (and probably closer to a fiver!)
Plus my contract with ParcelForce is for any item up to 30kg for the UK. Sending an International 25kg parcel to the Channel Islands would cost a fortune compared to domestic destinations
Of course there is another alternative and that is deliver it yourself. All you need is a sign painted van with something like “Regular Deliveries UK – Channel Islands” painted on it and go to the channel islands by ferry. If you have any spare space then go on the various shipping websites advertising your spare space. Obviously you would need to guarantee a fairly good basic level of packages which would cost a fortune to send by any other means plus a reasonable number of packages coming via the websites to make it pay.
I know that it is probably a non-starter but it might be worth spending a bit of time costing out to see where the break even point is and if there is enough business to make it pay. However I would still suggest that it is probably a non-starter.
You can’t pocket the VAT you charge, the customer is within their right to request it is refunded and if they don’t you have to declare it to HMRC
If the customer doesn’t request the VAT be refunded you do not have to pay it over to HMRC because the export to a non-EU country would be zero rated. In effect you’d be charging more for the item, assuming the customer didn’t request the refund.
http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/vat/managing/international/exports/goods.htm
This is a real blow to us and we may have to remove our heavy items from Amazon!
Warren, we have to use couriers as Royal Mail would charge around £14 to deliver a 10kg parcel within 3 days that is not tracked, whereas a courier can deliver it next day within the mainland for less than £6, that’s why we we have to charge extra, surely you can see that it is the customer who wins here as we can save most £8 in unnecessary delivery charges!
I don’t sell heavy goods, so I’ve not had these problems. To me its the courier companies ripping people off.
Of course it is, they all do it, its like the energy companies however we are still stuck with them.
You can send upto 15kg with royal mail tracked so long as you are on the new contact (we are not so we have a 5kg limit)
And as Royal Mail class any of these as UK as they have all have a UK postcode the tracked price will be the same as shipping from liverpool to hull etc.
Guys speak to your royal mail account manager about the tracked service
So how much is it to send a 5kg parcel via Royal Mail tracked?
Hi Tony, Royal Mail tracked doesn’t work like that. You have a price based upon your volume and to be honest you need to be sending in excess of 5000 parcels a year via the service to get a half way decent price and if your average weight goes up so does the averaged cost of all your parcels.
Thanks Chris, I don’t think it would work for me as I have lots of low value items at 500g large letter rate, lots at 1.5kg and then high value at 5-10kg, I’m sure it’s better for me to stay with Royal Mail packetpost for non tracked and courier for high value heavy items. I just need to find a way around the Amazon changes!
THe max price they would charge (i.e if your volume is at the lowest amount is around £5-£6 + vat.
? do you mean royal mail tracked? because the price goes up to about £18
We have found larger courier item, UPS and other carriers to the channel island to be higher than France.
For example (Interparcel)
Gurnsey + Jersey 5 KG at 50cm x 39cm x 39cm = £31.35 + VAT
France = £19.00 + VAT
Northern ireland and isle of man are achievable.
Some peoples margins are not high enough to swallow the extra costs i reckon.
Royal mail will only accept items up to 90cm in length and there is no standard parcel service to channel islands which means there are no good options for anything over 2 kilos or 90cm length. We use royal mail tracked but sendind 15 kilo parcels to the channel islands is going to have a massive effect on your account price.
I can see warren is already trolling…..
I think it is just going to be something else we have to just swallow, already we have the odd heavy order from ebay to highlands and we just have to send it.
I can’t think that people from the channel islands are suddenly going to rush to Amazon and start buying heavy items!
I would imagine that the choice of goods available in the CI would be inferior to that of the average mainland city ergo more reason to shop online.
I know that I may be being simple here. But why of necessity would the choices of goods available on the Channel Islands be worse than could be expected in any Mainland City. After all with the Channel Islands being fairly well linked by sea and air to both France and the UK as well as having a generally high per capita income I would have thought that both Guernsey and Jersey would on the whole have a very good choice of goods in their shops. Maybe an inhabitant of the Channel Islands would like to comment.
I would like to point out I tend to class Birmingham as “the south” so the Channel Islands are somewhere past there, that is my entire knowledge of them. My assumption is based on the variety of shops in say Manchester as opposed to a smaller town with 1 smaller supermarket carrying half the lines. I may of course be entirely wrong!
Because of the Channel Islands special tax category they attract a lot of Tax Exiles. Obviously this also brings with them a lot of Banks and Financial Institions and of course because there is a lot of money kicking around on the Channel Islands this will attract a lot of Retailers.
So if anything the Channel Islands probably enjoy a far higher per capita income and probably a considerably better local shopping situation than is available in a small town. Probably more comparable with an up market part of London.
In regard to Supermarkets these tend to be based on numbers of people rather than the wealth of the local population. So probably more up market think Waitrose rather than Lidl.
Climate wise the Channel Islands always advertise themselves as being the warmest part of the British Isles. So think warm and sunny.
If you get a chance to watch the old Bergerac TV series from 20 years or so ago(still occassionally on Sky) you will see that the islands are very warm and attractive with a lot of well healed inhabitants.
Again does tamebay have a Channel Islands Inhabitant who can give us the situation locally today.
As far as thinking about Birmingham as being South. I always think of Exeter as being the Midlands, and Bristol as being The North. Anything North of Bristol is Arctic Circle.
A warning to those thinking of sending up to 15KG using RM Tracked, remember the cost per parcel is based on average weight of samplings. So a few 15KG parcels would soon push up your average weight a lot and you would be stuck with higher prices for all parcels for the next 3 months. That is the reason we still send heavier items by courier to keep our Tracked average weight down.
Oh hang on, it doesnt mention anything about delivery estimates
I assume this also applies to expedited delivery? *starts removing anything remotely heavy from Amazon*
Having exactly the same issues here as everyone else… A dreadful policy.
PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE be vocal to Amazon and complain via their seller support contact form – You never know if enough people complain they might backtrack… Just like they’ve recently done on the selling fees for large appliances!
The policy itself is a good one, it just needs an opt-out for certain products to make them unavailable for anything but a mainland address.
Yes, Clarky… I do take your point – Probably me being over zealous!!! It definately does need an opt-out. I contacted Amazon early this afternoon and surprise, surprise, no response yet… Other times, I often get a response within an hour or two!!!
Hi, i have already contacted Amazon and have already had a personal reply so PLEASE if you sell on Amazon contact them and complain the more people that do it the more chance there is of success.
This would be a game changer for us.
Since most of our products are too heavy to go by the subsidised Royal Mail to these off-shore areas.
The cost of putting 100 Kilogram Item on a 50 mile road trip to mainland destination is far less than putting that same item on a road trip to Southampton Docks. Followed by a 158 mile Journey by sea to Jersey. Followed by another Road Road trip to the Channel Island street address.
So we are between a rock and a hard place. Either we put the prices up for everyone to accomodate the occasional Highlands and Island buyers, or leave the prices where they are and hope we do not get any business from these remote places.
Unless we find a way to avoid subsidizing these buyers from our own pockets, We will avoid using Amazon as one of outlet channels on 21/03/2012 and leave this outlet to the “Jiffy Bag” Sellers.
I also complained about this (for me its a size issue – RM will not accept it). Amazon did reply that they had passed my concerns on to the appropriate team, so for anyone who is affected by this, I would suggest you voice your opinion to Amazon. You never now, maybe they will offer an opt out for larger/heavier items?
Does Amazon FBA deliver to Channel Islands? I have tried to purchase one of our items and it comes up with an error saying that they do not deliver to this area and either to choose a different address or change the quanity to “0″.
Scroll down to FBA in the second table.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=524836
Response from Amazon “you are right it is not yet possible to ship FBA items to the channel Islands. I have been lead to believe that it will happen however I do not know the date.”
Also the new “Buy Delivery” option to get Amazon to pick goods up from you and deliver do not ship to Channel Islands either.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=hp_rel_topic?ie=UTF8&nodeId=200790490
So I would suggest that the motive behind this move is not to encourgae sellers to use FBA or other Amazon services. It is just a bad thought out idea which will either be removed before 21st March or break Amazon, with either prices increases across the board, or simply sellers moving away from Amazon. It’s a lose, lose situation for all, Sellers, Amazon, Mainland UK customers.
I would also guess that prices to ship to Channel Islands will rise soon to. As the will no longer have the VAT free advantage over mainland UK. (See http://tamebay.com/2011/11/channel-islands-vat-loophole-to-end-on-1st-april-2012.html)
I believe all the off-shore warehouses that ship DVDs / Music etc will move back to mainland where I would guess it is cheaper to sell from, rent costs, staffing costs etc, plus quicker delivery times too.
This means less commercial traffic from Channel Islands so many services (ferry/flights) will be cut removing many of the empty outgoing space to the Islands. In the same way the cost of a container to China is cheaper than from China.
Like many CI customers, I have always used Amazon as the supplier of choice, both for personal items and for my business. Lately it has become increasingly difficult to get anything shipped to CI. Whatever I put into my shopping basket invariably provokes an error message:
We’re sorry. This item can’t be shipped to your selected destination. You may either change the shipping address or delete the item from your order by changing its quantity to 0 and clicking the update button below.
It has got to the point where it is easier to use other vendors. Bye Bye Amazon.
The reclassification of the shipping areas came into force today. Straight away I got an order to ship a 120kg trampoline to a remote part of Northern Scotland incurring a courier surcharge of £55.
I contacted Amazon and not only are the Isle of Man, and Channel Islands now considered to be Mainland but also Northern Ireland, and all of Scotland. (Though there is some uncertainty about the Outer Hebrides).
This will mean a lot more orders with huge courier surcharges that I am expected to absorb, than if it were just the Channel Islands and Isle of Man, as Amazon stated in their original announcement. I can’t immediately see a workable way around this.
Same thing happened here, we can’t even contact customer because the contact customer button is disabled, have to cancel the order.