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Northern Ireland Delivery Rip-Off (2007 Update)


It's been over a year since my original look at the Northern Ireland Delivery Rip-Off so, given the popularity of that post, I thought it was past time I looked at the whole matter again. The scenario is simple - I want a small computer peripheral or component delivered to my Northern Ireland address. The problem is most of the companies with the best prices (even accounting for mainland UK delivery costs which are the only ones included in price comparison sites), often have the largest penalties or "surcharges" if you want your items delivered to Northern Ireland. The result is it's difficult to tell who is best for getting individual smaller items delivered to Northern Ireland, so I've done a little investigating.
This time I've added a few extra retailers bringing the total to 13. I've used the same wireless card as last time for the test product (although I don't recommend it, the WG311 is awful; if you need a wireless card try a Linksys WMP54G).
Anyway, here's how the results looked.
Pos. | Retailer | Item Price | Std. Delivery | NI Delivery | Total | Change |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
* Mplex and Overclock did not stock the Netgear WG311 so similar alternatives are used as the example product.![]() ![]() NEW indicates the company was not included in the 2006 results. | ||||||
1 | Amazon | £18.99 | £0.00 | £0.00 | £18.99 | - |
2 | Overclock.co.uk * | £18.68 | £4.70 | £4.70 | £23.38 | ![]() |
3 | Mplex * | £15.00 | £10.00 | £5.00 | £20.00 | NEW |
4 | Komplett | £18.51 | £6.75 | £6.75 | £25.26 | - |
5 | Aria | £20.74 | £4.69 | £4.69 | £25.43 | NEW |
6 | Dabs | £19.01 | £3.81 | £8.51 | £27.52 | ![]() |
7 | ebuyer | £18.99 | £2.57 | £10.27 | £29.26 | ![]() |
8 | OCUK | £25.84 | £3.51 | £3.51 | £29.35 | ![]() |
9 | Play.com | £29.99 | £0.00 | £0.00 | £29.99 | NEW |
10 | Misco | £22.31 | £4.69 | £11.74 | £34.05 | ![]() |
11 | Novatech | £19.40 | £2.93 | £17.03 | £36.43 | - |
12 | Scan | £19.92 | £7.17 | £18.74 | £38.66 | ![]() |
13 | Saverstore | £20.15 | £3.51 | £27.00 | £47.15 | ![]() |
Follow up:
As you can see, the top sites like Amazon, Overclock and Komplett have remained where they were, although I've recently discovered Aria and of course Dabs have cut their surcharge to £4, making them competitive once again.
At the bottom end things have got even worse though. Saverstore (formerly Savastore) have gone from bad to worse and Scan, despite claiming that "our rates have lowered considerably more, recently - so it's quite likely the information you refer to is out of date" have actually got marginally worse - which is sad, given they offer a good service and used to be good value.
Of course if you know what you're doing you can always get your PC bits from eBay. While it's a bit riskier, you'll almost always pay the same price for postage as anyone else in the UK.
If you find any companies I've missed out feel free to let me know by leaving a comment and they may well make it into the next list.
