Best Courier Services For International Orders

[AUGUST&PIERS]

Hi,

I'm a five months into my E-Commerce business and we have been currently using Royal Mail for UK orders and courier comparison sites for all international orders as we found Royal Mail international quite unreliable and slow.

We are now starting to have issues with the current courier comparison (Parcelmonkey/Parcel2go) such as lost parcels and rubbish customer service, which makes it impossible to claim your money back on lost items + shipping.

I was wondering if anyone could kindly recommend me the best all round courier that I could get an account so I can slim down to only using one company.

We roughly send around 20-30 parcels out a week so would not qualify for a fulfilment service (although hope to work towards working with one towards the end of the year!).

Many thanks,

Piers

 

[MBE2017]

Reliability will come down to two main factors, the country destinations involved, and price.

Parcels to USA, Germany etc, ie major countries will be easier to deliver due to volume than say Tibet.

DHL would be a good starting point, FedEx, UPS, those would be what I considered tier 1 quality couriers, and can often be very cheap due to volumes. Occasionally your client might request a particular courier be used due to local conditions, family working at the company, bribery etc.

 

[JEREMY HAWKE]

Piers You made a big mistake getting involved with those resellers They have no control over anything they simply take your booking and pray that it gets there and when it does not make it they dont really know what to do !
As @MBE2017 has said DHL Fedex or UPS
Dont make the mistake of trying to trim back on the budget as it will cost you in the long run

 

[AUGUST&PIERS]

Thanks for the replies, I agree we have made a mistake using them it's been an awful experience so far.

I'll look into getting a DHL account I think..

Many thanks,

Piers

 

[Paul Norman]

For international orders I have consistently used Fedex and/or DHL.

They will not, of course, be the cheapest. But to a large range of different countries, we found them to be reliable.

 

[AUGUST&PIERS]

Cheers Paul,

I've done a few quotes for DHL and seems a bit too expensive for us sadly.

Would DPD be classed as a tier 2 courier? Their prices seems right for our EU/US/UAE orders.

Many thanks,

Piers

 

[Paul Norman]

Cheers Paul,

I've done a few quotes for DHL and seems a bit too expensive for us sadly.

Would DPD be classed as a tier 2 courier? Their prices seems right for our EU/US/UAE orders.

Many thanks,

Piers

No. I would not regard DPD as tier 2. They are very good, too. I have no experience of using them for the US, or for the UAE. But I have used them for Europe, where they perform pretty much as they do in the UK - which is good.

 

[japancool]

If you're sending 20-30 parcels a week out, talk to DHL about a business account. They'll customise rates for you. You might be surprised how far they come down. Same with DPD.

 

[DontAsk]

Try UPS. I just switched for larger international shipments. Way cheaper than Parcel Force for the same declared value and much better tracking. E.g. 1.4Kg/£600 to US was £30 compared to at least double that for Parcel Farce. RM tops out at £250.

Cheaper than FedEX and DHL on retail price comparison. Don't know what account prices would be like as I don't ship enough.

 

[JRatron]

Would DPD be classed as a tier 2 courier? Their prices seems right for our EU/US/UAE orders.

DPD have been great for us for many years, but for anything to the EU in 2021, they have just lost the plot entirely. They are an absolute shambles currently and I would recommend avoiding them at the moment. We're sadly (and expensively) having to rejig all of our shipping prices and booking systems to someone more reliable like Fedex.

 

[DefinitelyMaybeUK]

DPD have been great for us for many years, but for anything to the EU in 2021, they have just lost the plot entirely

TBH, that's our experience with UPS too at the moment - 2 parcels sent early January to Germany & Italy have just been delivered (!) and another to Austria that's sat at their (Stanford le Hope?) depot for 4 weeks is now being returned because they're saying they're "overwhelmed". Too add insult to injury, the UPS website is still quite happily quoting for delivering with 'normal' collection and transit times - what a shower they have turned out to be. At least DPD had the decency to just return the parcels we tried to send through them a few weeks back. I note that carrier brokers like TransglobalExpress are at least saying DPD & UPS are out of action for now.

The UPS fees on the German and Italy parcels were quite an eye opener - having not used UPS for anything needing customs before, they charge a nice £5.60 per item line on any invoice over 5 items, so won't be going there again. We'd only previously used Fedex & DHL to USA etc and wasn't aware of any such (petty) money grabbing that's now hitting EU parcels - can anyone confirm from experience that Fedex & DHL aren't actually charging these line fees?

 

[JEREMY HAWKE]

TBH, that's our experience with UPS too at the moment - 2 parcels sent early January to Germany & Italy have just been delivered (!) and another to Austria that's sat at their (Stanford le Hope?) depot for 4 weeks is now being returned because they're saying they're "overwhelmed". Too add insult to injury, the UPS website is still quite happily quoting for delivering with 'normal' collection and transit times - what a shower they have turned out to be. At least DPD had the decency to just return the parcels we tried to send through them a few weeks back. I note that carrier brokers like TransglobalExpress are at least saying DPD & UPS are out of action for now.

The UPS fees on the German and Italy parcels were quite an eye opener - having not used UPS for anything needing customs before, they charge a nice £5.60 per item line on any invoice over 5 items, so won't be going there again. We'd only previously used Fedex & DHL to USA etc and wasn't aware of any such (petty) money grabbing that's now hitting EU parcels - can anyone confirm from experience that Fedex & DHL aren't actually charging these line fees?

I think this is rather unfair They did not change the customs procedures. The procedures were changed while there were millions of consignments in the system that did not have the correct paperwork
This was marred by the fact that that thousands of items were sent by customers after the 2nd of Jan that also did not have the correct paperwork

Companies are still sending freight out with out the correct documents and this has all blocked up the system

Exporting to the EU will now be a more expensive job where things have to be done properly.

 

[DefinitelyMaybeUK]

I think this is rather unfair

You're entitled to think so, but our experiences are fact.

Companies are still sending freight out with out the correct documents

And yes, UPS themselves are still advertising and accepting orders knowing that the situation has gone belly up. Was it unfair to high light this? I don't think so.

 

[JEREMY HAWKE]

You're entitled to think so, but our experiences are fact

I'm speaking from both my experience and yours It is very easy to blame each other when this horrendous mess came into effect on the 1st of Jan
The warnings were there but they were evidently ignored

 

[The Soup Dragon]

Have a look at Inxpress

 

[2JP]

Have a look at Inxpress

Had a look. Is there evidence that a second layer of middleman improves the shipping service when it is the first layer (i.e. the actual courier) that is letting things down? I can see how price can be driven down but what about reliability?

 

[The Soup Dragon]

Had a look. Is there evidence that a second layer of middleman improves the shipping service when it is the first layer (i.e. the actual courier) that is letting things down? I can see how price can be driven down but what about reliability?

If you aren't a high volume seller you get access to discounted pricing and you can choose between the big couriers which to use on a shipment by shipment basis.

 

[2JP]

If you aren't a high volume seller you get access to discounted pricing and you can choose between the big couriers which to use on a shipment by shipment basis.

So, no.

 

[The Soup Dragon]

So, no.

All of the couriers are causing headaches to shippers at present. WE got an email saying dont send any more with UPS use a different courier

Ironically we juts sent a parcel by road UPS to Lisbon and it went through no problem