Lying just 40 miles north of Scotland’s capital city, Perth could be described as being at the heart of Scotland.
However, one resident was shocked to be told by a Hampshire company that they could not deliver to his Perth home because it is not part of the UK mainland.
Telesales people at Emery Mail Order told Ken Bell that the Fair City was in the Highlands and insisted the Highlands were not part of mainland Britain.
Mr Bell had answered a Scotsman newspaper advert offering a specialist device to convert old film images to a digital format. Emery told him that, because of his ”non-UK” address, he would have to fork out an extra £10, on top of the normal £3 delivery charge, due to the ”difficulty” of getting to the area.
A furious Mr Bell tried to convince the sales girl that their delivery vehicle would be able to drive to his home, but to no avail. Only the intervention of the newspaper persuaded the company to drop the charge.
Mr Bell said: ”I phoned down to order it and then they asked for my postal address. When I said it was a PH address, I got told ‘That’s outwith the UK mainland, that’s the Highlands and Islands, so there’s a £9.95 extra charge.’
”I pointed out that Perth is only 35 or 40 miles north of Edinburgh, it’s actually in the middle of Scotland not the Highlands.
”The girl went off to speak to her supervisor and came back to tell me that a PH postcode was Highlands and Islands as far as they were concerned so that puts it outwith the UK mainland.”
Mr Bell was eventually able to get the extra charge dropped after writing directly to the newspaper which carried the advert but said he has been left wondering just how much of the country is ”not part of the UK.”
”I think it’s a typical south of England attitude; civilisation ceases after the Watford Gap,” he said. ”They have no concept of the geography up here.”
He added: ”On checking the conditions in the order form, I found it did read that the offer was for ‘UK Mainland readers only’ but nowhere did it point out that the UK mainland stops south of the Tay.”
The company’s packaging listed a number of other addresses, including the IV Inverness postcode and the PA area surrounding Paisley, which they treat as not being on the mainland.
A spokeswoman for Emery Mail Order Ltd said they did not have their own delivery fleet and that charges were dictated by external companies.
”We, as a fulfilment company, don’t have our own couriers so we are reliant on outsourcing that to other companies. The couriers have standard charges that they employ so we just use those.”