Zooplus Germany via ParcelMotel

Dr_Colossus

Have used Zooplus.ie previously despite the blatant price gouging on Irish customers but looking to make a big enough purchase of dried cat food and can no longer accept the price differences.

Same purchase on .ie site is €127.41 and on .de site is €96.89. Have contacted company to explain the 31.5% price increase for Irish customers as our expensive VAT rate only explains 4%. Their BS reply is below:

"Kindly be advised that our shops are supplied by different warehouses and due to logistic reasons, prices of the products differ on zooplus shops.

Please also note that due to our new contracts with delivery partners, we no longer have shipping to Ireland from German shop."

So has anyone successfully ordered on the .de site with shipping to Parcel Motel? Willing to pay their €9.99 shipping rate to Great Britain and the €7 oversize Parcel Motel rate rather than pay their .ie prices but when I input the Parcel Motel delivery address their site says it's invalid.

kcools

You could try https://www.mailboxde.com
- they’re a German parcel motel type operation. I’ve used them before for orders from Amazon.de and it worked perfectly.

Dr_Colossus

kcools wrote: »

You could try https://www.mailboxde.com
- they’re a German parcel motel type operation. I’ve used them before for orders from Amazon.de and it worked perfectly.

Thanks, expensive shipping on oversize/bulky items from mailboxde.com. For the rough dimensions/weight of my order it's showing shipping starting at €37.82

.......

Dr_Colossus wrote: »

...when I input the Parcel Motel delivery address their site says it's invalid.

Does it say what bit is invalid?

The Belfast post code might be triggering it, what about AddressPal? (an post parcel motel type operation).

Dr_Colossus

....... wrote: »

Does it say what bit is invalid?

The Belfast post code might be triggering it, what about AddressPal? (an post parcel motel type operation).

No, just says delivery address is invalid without specifying which line.

Have used AddressPal occasionally in the past but their oversize delivery cost is dis-proportionally expensive at €25. Have used ParcelMotel a lot and find their oversize delivery very good.
So much hassle trying not to get ripped off in this country. May well have to cave and buy a small order from the .ie site and hope there's some future prevention to such geoblocking.

Have tried a few different suppliers but product either not stocked or even more expensive than zooplus.

tk123

The €7 overcharge rate is the minimum charge for oversized items - have you used the calculator thing with the dimensions/weight to get the actual price? For the sake of the €13 you're saving I'd rather have it delivered to me than have to go and collect it from parcel motel.. I'd expect it to be wrecked too adding additional stops to the journey if there's anything bulky in it? Also assuming you've compared prices on .co.uk and .com?

Dr_Colossus

tk123 wrote: »

The €7 overcharge rate is the minimum charge for oversized items - have you used the calculator thing with the dimensions/weight to get the actual price? For the sake of the €13 you're saving I'd rather have it delivered to me than have to go and collect it from parcel motel.. I'd expect it to be wrecked too adding additional stops to the journey if there's anything bulky in it? Also assuming you've compared prices on .co.uk and .com?

Yes to all above. It's not the €13 saving as such but the unwillingness/reluctance to pay the blatant "Irish" price for the same product significantly cheaper in Germany. If we continue to pay their Irish prices then where's their incentive to reduce prices when they have such a soft market here.

tk123

Dr_Colossus wrote: »

Yes to all above. It's not the €13 saving as such but the unwillingness/reluctance to pay the blatant "Irish" price for the same product significantly cheaper in Germany. If we continue to pay their Irish prices then where's their incentive to reduce prices when they have such a soft market here.

ugggh :mad::mad: Yeah I agree with you.. I ordered from .com a while back and they charged me 6.99 postage even though it falsely stays free shipping in 2/3 places on the page.. I argued with them until they refunded me. As it stands now .com is often cheaper but that's wiped out with the postage - even with the loyalty plan. Their customer service has really gone downhill.

Dr_Colossus

Same crap again, looks like the supposed EU geo-blocking regulation has no effect on Zooplus. As per regulation:

"Equal access to goods and services
Under the new rules, traders will not be able to discriminate between
customers with regard to the general terms and conditions - including
prices - in three cases:

for goods that are either delivered in a member state to which the trader offers delivery or are collected at a location agreed with the customer

for electronically supplied services such as cloud, data warehousing and website hosting

for services such as hotel accommodation and car rental which are received by the customer in the country where the trader operates"

As mentioned previously their .de website offers far better prices and shipping to nearly all European countries except Ireland so I guess because they don't offer shipping here that excepts them from the geo-blocking regulation.

For an order I'm looking to make price it's €91.95 on their .ie website (similar enough on the .com and co.uk websites) but on the .de website same product and weight is €71.59 so a whopping 28.4% more expensive here.

Richard tea

I ordered 24 800g cans of dog food and added some budgie food to bring the price over 49euro for the free shipping. It still wanted to charge shipping? its not overweight which is 31kg? I ended up just ordering the dog food.


Am i doing something wrong or is the site glitchy?

tk123

Which site is that? The .com charges postage :mad: - even though it states it's free

Richard tea

tk123 wrote: »

Which site is that? The .com charges postage :mad: - even though it states it's free

Nearly sure it was .ie