North-East MSPs call for change on 'unfair' delivery charges from online retailers

North-east shoppers are paying millions in parcel delivery surcharges as more people shop online amid the coronavirus pandemic, new figures have revealed.

Shoppers across the region have been hit with an additional £7.1million in charges for delivery to the area.

Now, Aberdeenshire East MSP Gillian Martin and Banffshire and Buchan Coast MSP Stewart Stevenson are calling on online retailers to cut surcharges – which have risen hugely since Covid-19.

Figures from the Scottish Parliament Information Centre (SPICe) have revealed £1 of every £3 spent is now done online.

And the most recent calculations for 2020 have shown the additional cost to Scotland of parcel delivery surcharges was more than £40million alone.

This is an increase of 19% since the original costing of £36.3million in 2017, with the main factor driving this increase was result of the continuous growth in online shopping.

And figures show in Aberdeenshire East the additional costs to the consumer this year alone have been a whopping £2.6million while in Banffshire and Buchan Coast, consumers have been hit by an extra £2.1million in delivery charges.

Meanwhile in Aberdeenshire West additional costs this year so far have been £2.3million.

This is in contrast to only slightly further south in the Aberdeen South and Kincardine constituency where additional costs were at a much lower figure of £25,000 in comparison to the more northerly constituencies.

Commenting, Gillian Martin MSP said: “As more people have turned to online shopping, while staying at home, people living in the north-east have been unfairly hit by additional costs for purchases once again.

“This additional ‘delivery tax’ means people living in more northerly parts of Scotland are hit by additional costs that others do not have to pay.

“It is simply outrageous that millions of pounds of eye-watering charges have been added to even the smallest of orders.

Commenting, Stewart Stevenson MSP said: “We know many high streets were in decline pre-covid and a national lockdown has driven more people to purchase what they need online.

“However, we can see this clearly has an impact on our retail sector and on the costs of purchases by constituents in the north-east who are unfairly hit by additional costs of online shopping.

“My colleagues Richard Lochhead MSP and Drew Hendry has been campaigning on this very issue for the past few years, but it seems online retailers have taken advantage of lockdown to hike additional costs up once again.”