John Lewis to charge for Click and Collect deliveries under £30

John Lewis has announced that it will be charging £2 for Click & Collect deliveries on goods costing less than £30. The Click & Collect service is currently free, but the company said yesterday (1 July) that this was “unsustainable”.

The new charges will come into effect on 28 July and apply to order from both John Lewis and Waitrose (which is part of the same chain).

John Lewis currently handles around six million click and collect orders a year, up from the 350,000 made when the service launched in 2008. The parcels are despatched from the centre John Lewis distribution centre in Milton Keynes to more than 350 collection points around the UK for customers to collect the following day.

In 2014, said John Lewis, around 18% of click and collect orders were less than £30, and bearing the cost of delivering low-priced individual items for free has become too much of a burden.

“We are sure customers will understand why we are doing this,” said John Lewis managing director, Andy Street. “There is a huge logistical operation behind this system and quite frankly it’s unsustainable. We consider ourselves to be leaders and we want to take the lead on this.”

Mark Lewis, John Lewis’s online director, said: “John Lewis is committed to being a leading omni-channel retailer and understands the importance of providing its customers with choice, convenience and above all else a long-term commitment to customer service.”

He added: “The change we have announced today will mean that the majority of orders will remain free of charge while allowing us to invest further in the expansion of click and collect to ensure it continues to delight customers as it grows in popularity”.