Highlands left out of mainland flower deliveries

Retailers including Tesco Direct and Waitrose Florist have refused to deliver Mothers Day bouquets to homes in the Highlands, an MSP has revealed.

Richard Lochhead has campaigned for fairer delivery charges in the Highlands and Islands.

The firms are unable to deliver to some rural communities on the mainland in Scotland, according to an investigation by Richard Lochead, who has pioneered the Fair Delivery Charges campaign to expose the unfair fees levied on shoppers in rural Scotland.

Mr Lochhead said: “This is just the latest ridiculous snub for shoppers in the Highlands, who are once again told they don’t live on the mainland. Rural consumers are often more dependent on online shopping, but are constantly faced by hidden fees and extortionate surcharges.

“For shoppers without a local florist or who live far from their family, this sort of approach goes beyond inconvenience and becomes infuriating.”

Mr Lochhead found that during the checkout process when trying to order flowers for Moray, the retailers’s websites told him that deliveries were not possible to the postcode.

A Waitrose spokeswoman said: “We want to meet demand wherever possible but unfortunately we are not able to deliver flowers to everywhere we’d like because the time they’d need to spend in transit would compromise their quality. We apologise for any disappointment caused on this occasion but we are continuing to look at how we might be able to deliver to more places in future.”

Tesco has not yet responded to requests for comment.