Mole.
Is your desk issue due to the couriers the suppliers are using or is it a general thing with all deliveries to your location?
If you can find a courier you're confident will deliver to you from the mainland then I'd be happy to buy the desk you prefer and send it on. I'm in the South of England.
We could work out the details between us easy enough. This is a genuine offer of help, I'm not looking to make a profit!!
There's been some major changes in the way the large parcel/light freight courier service works for the highlands and islands over the last year. The main sorting/despatch depot for the highlands and islands was previously based in Inverness, seemingly now it's been moved down to Glasgow which has had a knock on effect with the smaller, local haulage companies who are relied on to deliver stuff northward. They're stilll Inverness or island based but now have to travel to Glasgow to pick up...this adds another 3+ days to the shipping times (plus resulting fuel costs) on large parcel or haulage services heading north. The way large parcel shipping works is that if the hauliers are late in delivery, regardless of the reason, they are penalised financially.
Now we've got an unacceptable situation for those of us in the frozen north who rely on buying items online being refused delivery of larger items for that reason. It's just not worth the couriers delivering only to not get paid for it. I'm talking about
all major couriers as well as all the local short haul couriers who previously took large parcels from Inverness and moved the stuff north. The major couriers will deliver to Glasgow (being the main shipping hub now) but no-one will take on deliveries of light non commercial freight, namely large parcels, going to the far north/northern or western isles due to the increased fuel costs and delivery times. Small parcel services (95% of that being Royal mail) are largely unaffected due to it being air-freight and arriving at destination via local airfields then delivered by the postie, anything larger that relies on road/ferry transport is now virtually impossible.
My PC gaming chair took over a month like I mentioned...with Amazon (the seller) bearing the increased shipping costs themselves, plus reimbursement to me for the huge delay involved after I laced up my butt kicking boots and shouted at customer services for 3 days. That episode cost them over half the cost of the chair in complimentary Amazon vouchers, which along with them bearing the extra delivery costs meant they gave the chair to me almost free...but they're not going to make a habit of it for obvious reasons.
We've got local MP's lobbying in parliament about the whole large parcel saga, not only from the end consumer standpoint but also on behalf of all the local freight hauliers who more than likely will end up in dire financial straits or being put out of business due to the main parcel shipping hub being moved south, purely to reduce operating costs and increase profit margins for the UK's southern based mainline road haulage companies... so we'll just have to wait and see what comes out of all the shouting...
But the large parcel saga is only a small part of it, this nonsense effectively means the price of
everything will go up since we're reliant on almost all essential or consumer goods being shipped onto the outer islands (Orkney, Shetland and Western isles) by sea...from food on our shelves to the fuel we put in our vehicles or heat our homes with. It already costs way above UK mainland prices for those of us living up here...everything from a box of cornflakes to topping up the car at the local fuel pumps can be almost double the price.
Someone is going to end up paying for this profit mongering from the mainline hauliers in the end, it'll more than likely result in us as end consumers in the outlying fringes of the UK being once again, charged massive surcharges for delivery of large parcel items as well as increased shipping/delivery times on anything bought online or shipped to the islands. The major haulage/courier services in the UK all levied this penalty of a 'distance tax' up until a few years ago but it was thankfully outlawed due to local government intervention, so... in the meantime, or until some form of further government intervention works something out with the mainline road hauliers, it looks like we're headed back into the dark ages....being penalised for living in a place where everyone else doesn't
Failing that, we'll be dragging the tartan frocks and claidheamh-mòrs out from the box under the bed and heading down to set fire to bits of Englandshire again
