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

[Louis MacNeice]

Whats with all the "Hermes are shit" memes out there? I suspect funded by a rival company.
This thread makes it clear all the companies are exploitative and flawed.


I actually came to say that theres so much Royal Mail post that hasnt been delivered that I am aware of, from well before xmas that it sounds like a massive fuck up has taken place the last month. I did hear they couldnt get the seasonal extra staff, not least from the likes of Amazon outbidding them. (+ covid absences)

Royal Mail currently has a recruitment freeze on until April I believe. Where I work we are currently running significantly under compliment (something in the 10% region) and apparently we aren't doing too bad! On a 28 hour contract I am mostly doing closer to 40 hours a week to make sure my walk and it's associated one are cleared; although I am regularly having to do two days work in one following my rest day.

Cheers - Louis MacNeice

 

[Louis MacNeice]

My neighbour caught one of our posties putting the red card through the letterboxes on Hogmanay - I'd gotten a card but thought I just slept through the intercom - but I bumped into his partner on the stairs and she said he'd caught the postie putting the card through the door and asked where his parcel was, seeing as how he was in. The postie then admitted he'd not even bothered to bring any of the parcels and just prefilled all the cards instead.

My neighbour was raging and went to the delivery office to complain, but if anything that's made it worse.

That's really weird as it would take longer to correctly pre-fill the cards and then deliver them, than it would just to try delivering the packets!

Cheers - Louis MacNeice

 

[Louis MacNeice]

A colleague of mine who used to work for Hermes described a typical day with them as follows. Turn up at car park 5.30am to await arrival of parcel lorry; sometime not arriving until 8.30am. Load 300+ parcels into car and take them home; sort parcels in front room. Spend rest of day making numerous delivery runs until parcels were shifted or sleep ensued. It's little wonder that this approach to service delivery can result in a crap service.

Cheers - Louis MacNeice

 

[Storm Fox]

A colleague of mine who used to work for Hermes described a typical day with them as follows. Turn up at car park 5.30am to await arrival of parcel lorry; sometime not arriving until 8.30am. Load 300+ parcels into car and take them home; sort parcels in front room. Spend rest of day making numerous delivery runs until parcels were shifted or sleep ensued. It's little wonder that this approach to service delivery can result in a crap service.

Cheers - Louis MacNeice

Again the people on the ground get the shit while the upper management get the money and ignore the complaints. I wish sellers would give their customer a choice in courier, hopefully people would choose a more reliable courier. This would hopefully get Hermes to improve their conditions.

 

[equationgirl]

I had no issues with Hermes until the regular driver on the route went back to his pre pandemic job. I could set my watch by him. Since then it's been up and down but noticeably worse over the past few weeks.

DPD was also similarly reliable but the main driver on the route seems to have disappeared and now DPD may dump my parcel in a random part of Glasgow or deliver it long after the slot they specified.

It's a similar story with my local Royal Mail delivery office. My usual postie was reassigned recently and now I'm on a route that gets done once all the other routes are done, and post can arrive anytime from lunchtime onwards, when it used to be 9.30 on the dot.

 

[redsquirrel]

Hermes are shit though. These companies aren't carbon copies of each other, so some are going to be more shit than others.

Totally anecdotal but Hermes are by far the worst of all the companies I've dealt with. Which as Louis MacNeice is not the drivers fault but I've had more problems with them than all the other companies put together.

 

[Louis MacNeice]

I had no issues with Hermes until the regular driver on the route went back to his pre pandemic job. I could set my watch by him. Since then it's been up and down but noticeably worse over the past few weeks.

DPD was also similarly reliable but the main driver on the route seems to have disappeared and now DPD may dump my parcel in a random part of Glasgow or deliver it long after the slot they specified.

It's a similar story with my local Royal Mail delivery office. My usual postie was reassigned recently and now I'm on a route that gets done once all the other routes are done, and post can arrive anytime from lunchtime onwards, when it used to be 9.30 on the dot.

Agree. Give people a regular doable round and they can/will build up knowledge about and relationships with their 'customers'. It can also make the job much more satisfying and help with staff retention.

Cheers - Louis MacNeice

p.s. It doesn't hurt the Christmas box situation either!

 

[equationgirl]

Agree. Give people a regular doable round and they can/will build up knowledge about and relationships with their 'customers'. It can also make the job much more satisfying and help with staff retention.

Cheers - Louis MacNeice

p.s. It doesn't hurt the Christmas box situation either!

That's why I miss my regular postie so much, we would have a little chat most days, and it was nice to know he was careful and diligent with my post. Lovely chap.

Now, I'm lucky if I see the same person twice in a week.

 

[Serge Forward]

I forgot about this thread. Here's a parcel that was just left in the street outside my neighbours... Just out on the fucking pavement. It's not a particularly quiet street and we do live in tea leaf central

 

[equationgirl]

Hermes have told me the parcel they've had for a week will be delivered today.

God only knows if the delayed parcels from yesterday will accompany it.

 

[StoneRoad]

Agree. Give people a regular doable round and they can/will build up knowledge about and relationships with their 'customers'. It can also make the job much more satisfying and help with staff retention.

Cheers - Louis MacNeice

p.s. It doesn't hurt the Christmas box situation either!

Yup, our regular postie retired about four years ago, since then the walk [drive] has been rotating within a reducing number of staff ... deliveries have got steadily later in the day. It used to be before 10:00, now we are lucky if it arrives before 15:00 - and some days, not at all !
Some of this is definitely pandemic related, but not all of it.

 

[equationgirl]

Hermes have told me the parcel they've had for a week will be delivered today.

God only knows if the delayed parcels from yesterday will accompany it.

Spoiler alert: they did not. But the driver reckoned they would be delivered tomorrow.

 

[Saffy]

We've had to stop using Hermes now after one too many mishaps over Christmas. I think it's really luck of the draw because the Hermes delivery person who delivers things to me is really good. He actually drew a map once to where he'd hidden my package.

 

[existentialist]

We've had to stop using Hermes now after one too many mishaps over Christmas. I think it's really luck of the draw because the Hermes delivery person who delivers things to me is really good. He actually drew a map once to where he'd hidden my package.

My experience with Hermes (and also with UPS) is that the drivers are usually pretty good (YMMV), BUT it's the central admin that's complete crap. I can't speak for anyone else, but the thing that really boils my piss is not so much when the delivery doesn't come, as when it's impossible to actually find out WTF is going on. And both those companies are the worst at that.

Added to which, I have sent a total of 3 packages by Hermes. All extremely well-packed (my first job after leaving school was packing goods into boxes for shipment, and I know what I'm doing ), and 2 of which arrived late, and extremely badly damaged. The third didn't arrive at all, and Hermes were unhelpful to the point of offensiveness about my trying to trace it. Never again.

 

[StoneRoad]

How's this for [not] packing ?


prob - packing par StoneRoad2013, on ipernity


All that was in the box was the two lights, one of which has just been stood on end so you can see the holes in the box.
There was absolutely zero packing, not even screwed up newspaper ...

We get quite a lot of stuff delivered, and tend to keep the poly-peanuts to use with stuff send off, or pass them over to someone that does sell stuff. Currently, we are putting a lot of cardboard packaging into the recycling skips ...

 

[NoXion]

How's this for [not] packing ?


prob - packing par StoneRoad2013, on ipernity


All that was in the box was the two lights, one of which has just been stood on end so you can see the holes in the box.
There was absolutely zero packing, not even screwed up newspaper ...

We get quite a lot of stuff delivered, and tend to keep the poly-peanuts to use with stuff send off, or pass them over to someone that does sell stuff. Currently, we are putting a lot of cardboard packaging into the recycling skips ...

Who did that?! Name and shame!

Are they still working?

 

[existentialist]

Who did that?! Name and shame!

Are they still working?

I'm not sure they were exactly "working" when they packed that box...

 

[seeformiles]

Last week Mrs SFM got a notification from Hermes that her parcel from M&S had been delivered - accompanied by a photo of a doorstep and open door that wasn’t ours! She complained to Hermes who said that the parcel had been correctly delivered and to take it up with M&S instead. M&S gave her a full refund plus a £5 voucher because the item was no longer in stock. I looked at the photo, took a wander down the street and managed to identify the doorway as belonging to one of our neighbours who’d accepted it without looking at the name or address. Happy ending but shit service from Hermes. Begs the question why a company as big as M&S are even using them as the refund they gave Mrs SFM must have put them out of pocket.

In other postal news, I’m still waiting on a parcel from Royal Mail my Ma posted to me on 18th December (from N.Ireland). She inquired as to its whereabouts (brandishing her cert of posting) and was told to give it another week due to a perfect storm of covid related absence and high volume of Xmas post. Interesting to note that a similar parcel she sent to my brother in London on the same day turned up on Xmas eve - so quite a regional variation it seems.

 

[NoXion]

Last week Mrs SFM got a notification from Hermes that her parcel from M&S had been delivered - accompanied by a photo of a doorstep and open door that wasn’t ours! She complained to Hermes who said that the parcel had been correctly delivered and to take it up with M&S instead. M&S gave her a full refund plus a £5 voucher because the item was no longer in stock. I looked at the photo, took a wander down the street and managed to identify the doorway as belonging to one of our neighbours who’d accepted it without looking at the name or address. Happy ending but shit service from Hermes. Begs the question why a company as big as M&S are even using them as the refund they gave Mrs SFM must have put them out of pocket.

That's really strange, because when I ordered some clothes from M&S last November, they were delivered by Royal Mail, and the whole experience was hassle-free.

 

[seeformiles]

That's really strange, because when I ordered some clothes from M&S last November, they were delivered by Royal Mail, and the whole experience was hassle-free.

Must have gone cheap since then

 

[StoneRoad]

Who did that?! Name and shame!

Are they still working?

a "private" individual disposing of "old stage lighting & other equipment" ...

and when tried to contact was almost impossible to do so, and then there was no reply ...
[as a result, checks were made, and the disposal was legitimate-ish]

 

[StoneRoad]

I'm not sure they were exactly "working" when they packed that box...

no, I don't think so, either.
fortunately, the lights were sufficiently robust that damage was minimal.

 

[iona]

Been waiting for a delivery but turns out Parcelforce have broken it. They could've let me and/or the sender know so they could send a replacement. They could've delivered it anyway and left it for me to sort out. What did they actually do? Chucked it in the bin without telling anyone

 

[equationgirl]

Four of my pre-Hogmanay parcels were delivered by Hermes last night, at 9.20pm, by a driver I'd never seen before. Two are still outstanding, who knows when they will turn up.

I sent two parcels by Royal Mail on Wednesday last week, on a two day tracked service. One was delivered in London on Monday, but the other was only delivered in a different part of London today, no missed delivery attempts.. No idea why there was a difference.

DPD sent me a notification that someone has sent me a parcel. Pray for it to reach me, people.

 

[equationgirl]

Been waiting for a delivery but turns out Parcelforce have broken it. They could've let me and/or the sender know so they could send a replacement. They could've delivered it anyway and left it for me to sort out. What did they actually do? Chucked it in the bin without telling anyone

That's terrible service. I hope you manage to get a replacement.

 

[Pickman's model]

Last week Mrs SFM got a notification from Hermes that her parcel from M&S had been delivered - accompanied by a photo of a doorstep and open door that wasn’t ours! She complained to Hermes who said that the parcel had been correctly delivered and to take it up with M&S instead. M&S gave her a full refund plus a £5 voucher because the item was no longer in stock. I looked at the photo, took a wander down the street and managed to identify the doorway as belonging to one of our neighbours who’d accepted it without looking at the name or address. Happy ending but shit service from Hermes. Begs the question why a company as big as M&S are even using them as the refund they gave Mrs SFM must have put them out of pocket.

In other postal news, I’m still waiting on a parcel from Royal Mail my Ma posted to me on 18th December (from N.Ireland). She inquired as to its whereabouts (brandishing her cert of posting) and was told to give it another week due to a perfect storm of covid related absence and high volume of Xmas post. Interesting to note that a similar parcel she sent to my brother in London on the same day turned up on Xmas eve - so quite a regional variation it seems.

I surely can't be the only poster to have noticed hermes

 

[seeformiles]

I surely can't be the only poster to have noticed hermes

 

[iona]

That's terrible service. I hope you manage to get a replacement.

Yeah, got an email back pretty much immediately apologising and saying they've sent a replacement.

 

[equationgirl]

Yeah, got an email back pretty much immediately apologising and saying they've sent a replacement.

Here's hoping it won't come by parcelforce, to give it a fighting chance of reaching you.

 

[equationgirl]

My parcel with DPD earlier in the week turned out to be a 'sorry we made you redundant' hamper from my now former employer. I'd love to know who thought that was a good idea.

DPD did however promptly deliver the parcel that was re-sent by the supplier. The one dumped in Govan has only just today (two weeks later) made it back to the delivery depot after being dumped in Govan.

Hermes have had a parcel since Jan 4th and Sait would be delivered today between 4 and 6, which so far it has not.OOh look, it's been rescheduled to between 6 and 8. Colour me surprised.

Hopefully I won't have to deal with them again for a good few months