Crap, unreliable parcel delivery/courier companies - feel free to vent here

[Gromit]

Parcelforce are still terrible, AFAICS. And you're a UK courier if you courier things around the UK.

If I'm getting a parcel, I want two things. To know when it's going to turn up - the more precise the better - and then for it to turn up. At a push, a bunch of other stuff like being able to rearrange or tell them to leave it somewhere, but I can take it or leave it.

On the first of those, DPD and UKMail are pretty good, Yodel and most others average, and RM and Parcelforce still pretty stone age.

If you want live info then yes Parcelforce are behind the times. The best the tracking gets is that its out, its been delivered. Thats it. Others will give you a 1-2 hour estimate and name of the driver and shit yeah.

If as a seller you want a courier company to deliver on the day they say they are going to deliver and not lose your parcel and not charge you a fortune. Parcelforce are the kiddy.
If there is a missed delivery you want the customer to have a local option to collect instead of one depot god knows where covering a huge area then Parcelforce kill it again with their access to lots of local Post Offices to leave it at.

 

[editor]

Is it DPD that texts you delivery times and suchlike?
If so they are a step up from those that don't.

Fat lot of good if they don't turn up at those times.

 

[editor]

Btw i hate to be a pedant but dpd are a parcel carrier not a courier. A courier collects parcel from A and delivers direct to B. A carrier collects from A then puts the parcel through a network of depots before the local depot delivers to B. Couriers are significantly more expensive.

Just to make you and any other pedants happy, I've amended the title..

 

[The Boy]

Are DPD the ones who send you a text with the name of your driver, delievry window etc? If so, they're one of the better ones ime (not that the bar is all that high, mind). My OH worked for Amazon for a while too and apprently they were one of the better ones to deal with from that side of things as well.

make of that what you will.

 

[weltweit]

Fat lot of good if they don't turn up at those times.

Sure, but that has never happened to me.

 

[editor]

Sure, but that has never happened to me.

That's great news. Thanks.

 

[NoXion]

Got a computer delivered by them to my address once. It had signs of poor handling and I had to superglue the heatsink properly into place. An easy fix so I didn't bother complaining. If I ever get a computer delivered again I'm going to try and make sure they don't use them.

 

[Teenage Cthulhu]

DPD are excellent.

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

DPD are excellent.

Agree, had loads of stuff delivered by them, text message telling the driver's name and when he'll be there, never been late yet. Credit where it's due.

 

[gosub]

Yodel, I don't like

 

[stuff_it]

you do have such poor luck with couriers.

They have his house marked on a map & warn newbies.

 

[Pingu]

another "dpd are good" vote from me, get a txt to give a 1 hour window for delivery which is accurate. they actually show up and driver isnt some surley twat who seems to think he is doing me a favour

 

[Nine Bob Note]

Apart from the two computers (the initial one and its replacement) I ordered late last year from Chillblast that both arrived smashed after clearly having been dropped, leaving me heartbroken and in tears, I find them exceptional. If I'm expecting something from Amazon I always get an email as soon as its arrived at the depot in Preston giving me a one hour delivery window which is always made (typically late in the day, but I do live in the arse-end of nowhere). I don't seem to get the good-looking blond driver who wears shorts all year round any more, but other than that... TBH, I never had a problem with Citilink. Yodel, well, that's a different matter

 

[maomao]

Parcelforce are better. Besides DPD are french not a UK courier.

They're owned by GeoPost who are French but it's a German company and still based in Germany.

 

[belboid]

myHermes are the worst of the lot. No tracking, can't redeliver to an alternate address, won't deliver to certain areas after dark, create delivery routes that are impossible to fulfill unless there is no other traffic and everyone answers their door within ten seconds. Fucking abysmal

 

[editor]

Unless DPD get in touch with me directly tomorrow and sort out a collection, they will remain in the Bag O'Shite category.

 

[keybored]

Never had any problems with DPD. Parcelforce seem ok to receive from, but I had loads of grief trying to send some kit abroad.

As for shockingly shit, are Hermes still in business?

Edit: Ah!

myHermes are the worst of the lot. No tracking, can't redeliver to an alternate address, won't deliver to certain areas after dark, create delivery routes that are impossible to fulfill unless there is no other traffic and everyone answers their door within ten seconds. Fucking abysmal

And they will leave valuable parcels in some random "safe place" (in my case, my recycling bin which has no lid, in the pissing rain, twice) when the consignment was sent "signed for".

 

[xenon]

DPD are probably the best UK courier. So, no.

Also UKMail are good these days. One hour delivery windows, notifications, decent web tracking.

DPD are shit in my experience. Admittedly only had one parcel from them. They claimed I wasn't in and I had to get them to redeliver after taking day off work. I was watching the tracking online. Nearly here, nearly here, oh gone away. No one in. Twats.

Citylink are shit as well.

 

[existentialist]

I think we have to be careful not to generalise - an awful lot depends on the drivers doing the actual deliveries/collections, and if you've got an arsey bastard (or a complete incompetent) on the van, the company can have the best procedures in the world, and it'll still be shit.

When I lived in London, CityLink were a disaster area, Yodel (or Home Delivery Network as I think they were then) weren't much better, and DPD weren't anything to write home about either.

Out here in farthest Wales, pretty much all of them are impeccable - my guess is that, because the delivery schedule is somewhat warped by a 3 hour round trip just to get from the depot in Swansea to here, they have enough slack that they're able to stick to their window AND get all the deliveries made. Not to mention that I imagine they're more than keen not to have to card people and make the entirely unreasonable demand that THEY make the 3 hour round trip to the depot if they're naughty enough not to be in...so deliveries get left with neighbours, etc. DPD, Yodel, even Citylink weren't bad here. The biggest PITA are probably DHL or Fedex, who tend not to be quite so flexible about delivering to neighbours, so we get into that whole London-stylee rearrangement of deliveries and trying to have someone stay in for the delivery window. Pain.

The exception is Hermes. I've sent stuff twice by Hermes and...well, to smash it as comprehensively as they did on both occasions suggests that they must have played British Bulldog with it, or used it as an obstacle in forklift races. Never again. Their deliveries to me haven't tended to be too bad, although I must admit, with hindsight, that the packaging has tended to look extraordinarily...foxed. So maybe they're not too kind to their stuff in transit.

 

[mauvais]

Citylink are shit as well.

They don't exist any more.

 

[existentialist]

They don't exist any more.

They survived remarkably long, considering the length and breadth of their reputation for shitness.

 

[mauvais]

They survived remarkably long, considering the length and breadth of their reputation for shitness.

Maybe, but as this thread shows, there's something of a gulf between how the sender and recipient perceive these companies. Hence the long success of Yodel, for instance.

 

[spliff]

http://www.urban75.net/forums/threads/the-first-world-problems-of-urban-75.285394/

 

[editor]

I sent them a link to this thread. I expect movement.

 

[pesh]

quite like DPD, especially the texts to tell you when to expect delivery. hasn't gone wrong for me so far.

 

[Jackobi]

Rm have doubled the size of a small parcel so theyre very competitive...

The problem with Royal Mail is that anything bigger than a postcard gets dumped at the local depot after no attempt to deliver, I always end up doing half the job myself by traipsing up to the depot to collect it.

 

[existentialist]

I sent them a link to this thread. I expect movement.

Hello, DPD PR flacks!

I am quite surprised at your experience, though, editor, as I recently sent something to my stepdaughter that went via DPD, and was able to watch on their tracking page as the van wended its way around the environs of Canterbury towards her while I was chatting to her online, and I remember thinking "all of those terrible stories of couriers carding people but not actually knocking, and so on, are now a thing of the past".
0
So it's a bit disappointing to learn that, even with all that supposedly foolproof technology, they're still capable of backsliding into the old ways

 

[editor]

The problem with Royal Mail is that anything bigger than a postcard gets dumped at the local depot after no attempt to deliver, I always end up doing half the job myself by traipsing up to the depot to collect it.

At least there is that option.

 

[existentialist]

The problem with Royal Mail is that anything bigger than a postcard gets dumped at the local depot after no attempt to deliver, I always end up doing half the job myself by traipsing up to the depot to collect it.

I guess one of the upsides of living in rural arse-end-of-nowheredom is that things like this become a little more...informal. Our postie knows who knows whom, so is usually able to leave stuff with neighbours rather than playing it strictly by the book; a friend of mine says that, if his postman tries to deliver and he's out, he brings it back home with him after his shift and pops it round then, all terribly against the rules, but it makes the punter happy and gets the post delivered

And at least two of the residents on our terrace are "last hop" delivery drivers for some of the couriers, which has its advantages, too. I'm not sure I approve ideologically of this trend towards paying piece rates to people to use their own cars to make deliveries, but there are definitely some practical benefits.

None of which particularly helps editor and his collection problem, though...

 

[trabuquera]

Yesterday DPD left a parcel for me with a neighbour not next door but 3 doors down and I don't know them from Adam. Which was awkward. And makes me quietly resentful of DPD.