Indulge me with a giant gripe!
Dear McCalls,
I have loyally purchased my Vogue/McCalls/Butterick patterns from your US site for years. You have such good sales. I love Vogue patterns. I buy heaps of them. You have always been so good to me.... UNTIL NOW!
You have new charges unless I am mistaken, and you are seriously slugging us poor international customers.
I assume these are new charges as I made a purchase from you 3 weeks ago. The postage for 7 patterns then was just under US$25 to Australia and all I paid was the cited cost of the pattern and the postage - no 'handling charge'. But you say your new charges are:
Shipping and Handling Charges
No. U.S. and Canada International
1-3 $4.00 $20.00
4-7 $8.00 $40.00
8-15 $12.00 $70.00
-20 $16.00 $100.00
I could be completely wrong but I just checked your postal company calculator and the actual postage charge doesn't seem to have increased. Hey, I'm in Australia, I expect postage costs to be high. But not this high! So, is the increase a 'handling charge' for international customers?
Please explain?
Yours sincerely
Disgruntled International Customer.
It's not an easy job being a sewer these days is it? So many of the fabric shops have disappeared, Burda is mucking around with us, and I have wondered from time to time whether the days of paper patterns are numbered. What I didn't expect was pattern companies deciding to discourage international customers from buying their patterns!
What a weird business decision. Why don't they just increase the cost of the patterns or not reduce them so much on sale, rather than charge international customers a separate fee?
Grrrrr McCalls.... Grr.....
