Please help! Seeking advice on a recent online shopping experience I had.?

I recently ordered 5 items (totalling $76) from an online store. The store offers free delivery on orders above $69. As such, I was entitled to free delivery on my order. 2 days later, I was informed that one of the items I had ordered ($21) was out of stock. I requested for the order to proceed, and the remaining amount to be refunded. I was told to top up $7 for delivery as my remaining order did not meet the min amount for free delivery, even though my initial order did. Is this normal?

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Deedee

17 Sep 2020

$7 sounds like courier fee.
1. If you're willing to wait, and really want the $21 item, you could ask the seller to ship when it becomes available.
2. Otherwise, is it possible for you to look through the store to buy something else to meet that minimum free shipping amount if you do not wish to pay for shipping?
3. Another possibility I can think of is making noise to the seller for inaccuracy of posting item availability. Then it becomes how far you want to "fight" with the seller. It is after all no fault of yours that you did not meet the minimum amount.
4. Last option. Ask for full refund if you are able to live without the items which add up to $55. (Then the seller will think about losing $55-$7=$48, or even the possibility of losing a potential returning customer :))

Above are just my thought process when it comes to online purchases. I believe I encountered such cases once but the seller offered free shipping with credits to offset future purchase as I could not find anything else to purchase. Seller was insistent on refund through credits only so I couldn't request for full refund. I think I ended up with the credits being expired haha.

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Alcander Seow

17 Sep 2020

Environmental Engineer Minor in Business at Nanyang Technological University

Hi Anon, for some cases, it is normal. Sometime, the store will just give you free delivery. Other cases are that the free delivery policy is affected by the changes made to the order.

I would suggest that should you encounter the same thing again, ask whether the changes made to the order will affect the delivery fee. Then consider whether you are willing to accept the changes & the delivery fee changes. Though I have yet to encounter such incidents. I did encounter one where I ordered items which the total amount allows me to apply for the free delivery option. Then, when I apply my discount, & paid for the goods, I realized that I paid for the delivery fee. When I confront the customer service agent, he/she told me that the discount I used to reduce the total amount caused it to be below the 'free delivery' amount, thus, I had to pay the delivery fee. So instead of having a discount on my goods, I paid the original price (the discount was used to reduce my delivery cost).