Silvers having a laugh.

[hairygit]

Okay guys, I can understand the gripes about postage, but we have to bear in mind the utter rip off that is Royal Snail pricing policy, they keep moving the goalposts on parcel sizes and weights. Packing materials cost money too, even an A4 jiffy bag doesn't give much change from a quid to buy. I sympathise with Dave Silver on some of these issues, he doesn't deliberately set out to rip people off, far from it, and without him and his love for older Hondas we'd be in shit street for many parts, he is very fussy about the quality of parts he has specially made.   Maybe if you are that bothered about postage prices, go and collect them, then it's free, or maybe if a member lives nearby he/she would be willing to collect them and post them by a cheaper courier company, or arrange for a courier company such as hermes to collect them for you. Also, with Royal Snail, anything valued at over 28 quid for insurance purposes has to go by "special delivery" which starts at £7.50! so even 2 sets of points and 2 condensors would cost that to send, plus packing materials. Okay, rant over:))

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[LesterPiglet]

You seemed to have missed the point that a package is £2.50 postage if it's aftermarket then it jumps to £11.75 to post the exact same package if the parts are genuine. This has nothing to do with Royal Mail.
It's a bad way to do business.

[mickwinf]

I agree with hairygit, the post office have got very expensive, I only use them for very small items, and Hermes for larger stuff. I find its better to order a few items at once from silvers, items send via a carrier only costs £5-6 if I remember correctly, good value for bigger orders. Lester I think its the insurance that costs more for items over a certain value, Post office always asks value when you take in a parcel, so it could be that making the cost rise

[Trigger]

I agree with Lester on this. Order a aftermarket ignition switch at £20, and postage is £2,50. Then add a OEM tappet and it jumps to £11.75.
 And as for insurance from the PO, it is a joke. I sent a kick start off for a re-chrome. The PO lost it and when i made a claim they sent 6 first class stamp as compensation. They recon that it is a second hand part and only has scrap value.

[matthewmosse]

Good point hairygit, I can quite see that side of it, but I'd say there are cheaper services than royal mail, especially when it comes to a halfway big or weighty item, I sold a cb250 brake disk and speedo drive the other day, 99p and £8 postage, thought that would cover it, poped into post office £14 to send it - the post office lady did assure me it was insured for something like up to £50 or something, but since it ony got a 99p bid that wasn't an issue, as it was I sent it for about £5 via Hermes, who even collect at that price. I note the Hermes prices went up after RM's but still cheaper. One thing Dave Silver has in his favour in a big way, no one can rival his range of parts or indeed the quality of a lot of it.

[David Silver]

Firstly, we do not make any profit on the packing and postage. Up to £20 is sent via royal mail which carries
no tracking  and in the event of total loss is the max they are prepaired to pay out. Above this value we use a courier which carries a fixed charge in the UK mainland and a higher fixed charge for Islands and Northern
Island which is the highest. Customers using any website shopping cart generally want to know at the time of placing their order what the final total is, in any case the millions of permutations of parts combinations would render it impossible to organise it any other way. Of course, this does not favour orders that only just breech £20, however, on many occasions as the orders are actually processed manually we will often still use royal mail when the order is clearly below 2kg (maximum allowed) and the value is only slightly higher than £20.

[AshimotoK0]

David also added this via Facebook :

David Silver Spares wrote: 

"Hi Ashley, I have posted my reply on the forum. Please note that I am in the USA currently and have a very full week so may not be able to make any further replies for now. Towards the end of next week, I am packing up a museum of vintage Honda M/C (Google Bob Logue museum) which is coming to the UK for display at Leiston. Your members may be intereted in seeing them.Announcements about this will follow"

[mick]

Hello David and welcome to the forum  cheers Mick.

[hairygit]

So there you have it guys and girls, David has taken the time to explain the issues with postage and couriers ( which was basically what I was saying yesterday) Now, how about we stop all the grumbling about carraige charges and think about the good things he and his company have done for us, examples being brake calipers for 750 F1/K7/A, tanks for 400 fours, exhausts for the same, chainguards, and many other parts unobtainable from Honda. I know replica parts aren't good enough to satisfy the concours few among us, but these parts are well made and keep our bikes on the road, which is what more than 99% of us want!

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[matthewmosse]

Hi David and thanks for the explination. I'd like to just echo the thanks for all that you do in providing us with those hard to get parts for our beloved Hondas, as I've said before, without your services many of our bikes would no longer be viable.

[AshimotoK0]

So there you have it guys and girls, David has taken the time to explain the issues with postage and couriers ( which was basically what I was saying yesterday) Now, how about we stop all the grumbling about carraige charges and think about the good things he and his company have done for us, examples being brake calipers for 750 F1/K7/A, tanks for 400 fours, exhausts for the same, chainguards, and many other parts unobtainable from Honda. I know replica parts aren't good enough to satisfy the concours few among us, but these parts are well made and keep our bikes on the road, which is what more than 99% of us want!

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+1 from me . This is why I asked him to join us on here.  Welcome from me too David

Now lets have a proper discussion with him about sourcing repro parts etc. Interesting on his Facebook pages that they find rechroming in the UK for their 400/4 resto business economically not viable in the UK. Just like we are  finding!

Cheers .... AshD

[Trigger]

Yes, hairy.  But it still is an unfair system. It will cost Lester £11.75 for a package over the value of £20. I could order a package to my house in Greece cheaper. Orders under 2 kg and under the value of £60 will only cost £6.00 p&p. That is half the price and ten times the distance. Dave why do you use a courier in the UK for package over the value of £20 but, still use the Royal Mail for goods upto the value of £60 to europe?. 

[hairygit]

I agree Trigger, but Lester does not live on the mainland, and royal mail sets the rules on that. Maybe if people phone an order through, and make it clear that they understand compensation to a maximum of £20 is all that's available, his staff may send it at the cheaper rate, entirely at the buyers risk. Or as I suggested earlier, maybe there is a member here who lives close to Silvers that would be willing to collect the items and arrange to post them on?

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[Trigger]

I remember when Dave first started out. I was very impressed with his service out of a garage. But has the years have past he has become expensive to the point where i buy my parts from other european outlets. Today i ordered a carb float valve, set of 4 from one of my german suppliers which cost £28 with a P&P charge of £6.26.  So, if they can do it why can't Dave do it. 

[matthewmosse]

Cost, in a word. A lot of the tooling will have been lost. The subbies may no longer exsist or have been bought out. then there is the limmit of what people will pay and how many.