In message , Emery Davis
writes
Hi all,

I wonder if one of the professionals or someone experienced with mail
order can help me.

I have an order of 18 plants coming (to Normandy) from a well known
Dutch supplier. I ordered all small plants because I wanted to use
parcel post to keep shipping costs down. Out of the 18, there is one
plant at 80/100 cm, a 60/80, a 50/60, two 5 liter pots, and thirteen 3
liter pots. (Normally anything up to 120 cm can go by post).

I had an email discussion with the supplier where he clearly understood
I wanted to ship by mail.

I was surprised to receive a bill for 236 EU (exc VAT) for shipping by
truck, almost the same price as the plants themselves.

Ouch :-(

Upon inquiry the
supplier claims that the total weight is 110 kg, too heavy for post
(although they also claim on the web site that up to 30 kg us possible,
so even if, it should have been able to go in 4 packages...)


They presumably could, seems maybe that someone there was lacking a bit
of clue?


I can't imagine how these 18 small plants could weigh so much. It seems
to me a 3 liter (3/4 gallon) pot + young graft or seedling should weigh
around 2 pounds, i.e. a kilogram or maybe two maximum.


Probably more than a kilo I reckon, depending on the compost and how wet
it is. but even if the pots were all full of water, that's still only 49
kg. I suspect the suppliers has estimate weights for products in it's
database that over estimate the weights. For a lot of things it probably
doesn't matter - shipping costs (to a company) aren't necessarily just
based directly on the weight of individual parcels. A friend of ours
runs a mail order company, and they might contract to send say 5000
parcels of up to a certain weight. for a fixed price per parcel.

But it might be that your order was out of their norm.


Can anyone tell me what a 3/4 gallon young plant should weigh for
shipping purposes (approximately, obviously!) Any ideas as to how I
might proceed with the supplier, who is in the position of being the
only one marketing certain rare plants?


Have these been shipped and so you are contesting the charges, or are
you still in discussion with the supplier?

--
Chris French