Best Courier

[gibby]

this was stuff sent out before xmas. They didnt deliver it to the customer on time & then wanted to return it bck to us - with the usual charges.
I spent ages on the phone trying to stop it comming back to us & was promised it would be delivered to the customers but they brough it back to us

G

 

[branchoutltd.com]

Which carrier do you think is best for lower volume parcels - say 5 - 10 per week? All their pricing seems to be quite high unless you send much larger quantities - not great for smaller businesses who have a regular but lower volume need and are paying close to public prices. any advice on lower volumes would be great - say less than £7 for a 1m x 25 x 25 cm box, approx 20 kg

 

[gibby]

a good question

Firstly I would suggest you over estimate the amount going out as it will give you a better rate. Don't accept the 1st rate they give you as they usually come back with a cheaper one several days later

Fastway would be worth talking to but you may have to buy a book of tickets in advance which isn't great for cashflow. You can haggle over this as they now give you 30 days to pay or they can split books of tickets.
We use fastway for 40% of our orders & they are pretty good & cheaper.

You could also try business post but I would only do so if the things you are sending are not easily breakable. They had a big habit of damaging our goods & losing them too.
They do have lots of little clauses in the agreement so watch out. They don't like paying out on claims at all.
For those size boxes they were quoting us 4.75 + vat with no fuel surcharge

G

 

[gibby]

just to complecate things even more - DHL have now sold the home delivery network
Im not sure how this will effect DHL services


G

 

[kiddiroo]

I run a children's toy company (kiddiroo.co.uk) and we had an awful time with Fastway. Our local courier seems to change month to month and we were never informed by the depot that the courier no longer worked for them. Very difficult to get hold of and poor customer service. Parcels being damaged, delayed and even returned. We asked for a refund on tickets due to the problems we were having. You can imagine their response! So we lost quite a bit of money with them as won't use the tickets anymore. We no longer use them. We now use UK Mail which is much more professional and just as good value for money, although word of warning. pay your bill on time as there are no reminders. They just disable your account!

Jane
kiddiroo.co.uk

 

[gibby]

weve used fastway for ages & as long as you use them in their own areas they are OK but yes they have had some issues in the last year

if you use fastway out of thier own areas its dealt with by UK mail - Business post & that can be where the problems start.

We did use UK mail for a few months & they were really awful. lots of damages & lost parcels & you really have to fight to get any claim processed

Just watch the excess as its how the wriggle out of paying claims

G

 

[DS-UK]

We use parcel force great service and prices based on our volumes, also if customers are not in they can leave at closest post office.

Had a bad experience with fastway as our local franchise went belly up, we are now left with worthless pre paid books worth several hundred pounds, i am told that we can use them when a new franchise appears....that was over 12 months ago and still nothing!

 

[TheBalloonPrintingCompany]

For one off's we use Parcel Monkey, we were using Interparcel before but had a very bad experience with them, where they didn't pick an item up, never notified us, never offered an apology when we tried to call, gave a refund when asked and refused to offer a quote on same day delivery. To top it off 2 days later their driver turned up, asked for the parcel (which I ended up personally driving to Leeds to deliver) and when we explained he said we were liable to be charged for him not collecting anything!

 

[adela]

hey Guys and Girls I am sending clothing thorugh the post with my new e-commerce site in a few. Who would you suggest i send my products with?

Stuart

..........................

 

[10thWay]

Whatever you do, don't go with Despatch Bay (Saletrack)/DHL they are an absolute joke. They cock things up all the time and so far, they never admitted to be at fault.

Not great at delivering parcels, but excellent at pointing the finger.

 

[4little1s]

Interesting you say that about Despatch Bay. I have been looking at them recently but a bit put off that you needed to top the service up and then use it as a kind of credit system.

In terms of prices everyone is getting, I know this thread is long and dates back, but what prices are people getting and what prices should I be looking to get for:

20 - 40 UK packages a month, mainly up to 5kg ? Best price I have so far is £6.50 + vat

 

[That Guy]

Interesting you say that about Despatch Bay. I have been looking at them recently but a bit put off that you needed to top the service up and then use it as a kind of credit system.

In terms of prices everyone is getting, I know this thread is long and dates back, but what prices are people getting and what prices should I be looking to get for:

20 - 40 UK packages a month, mainly up to 5kg ? Best price I have so far is £6.50 + vat

Parcels Please do a discount for regular shippers, why not send them an email or give them a quick call: http://www.parcelsplease.co.uk/regular-shippers/

 

[SCAMWATCHfastway]

Hi Leslie, thats were Fastway win, the biggest loser in this scenario is the Franchisee, they are the ones that take all the risks in this trade, and with so many disgruntled customers, the franhcisee either goes bankrupt or walks away with out any money left, while the Fastway management just churn the run at a profit to them.

There are so many reports of poor customer service by Fastway, that there is a reason for them being so cheap, and people buying into the franchise as a franchisee are the ones losing out. The system may seem good down on paper, but there is to many loop holes for corrupt regional franchises to do the dirty on the cf.

 

[gibby]

You may be right.

Weve been using Fastway for 3 years & the local drivers have been great to us. They do work hard & the only thing that has let them down is the company

We have had to pull our business away from Fastway recently, even though they are cheaper than any other courier for small packets

We are just about to take them to court as we have 3 claims for lost & damaged goods. 2 of them are over 6 months old.

Im not sure if this is the same all over the UK but we have nagged, written, reminded the drivers & the local depot over & over about the claims but they just promise it will be sorted but nothing ever happens.

I do like the local drivers & the staff at the depot as they do try hard but we have been told the local manager who also owns a franchise dose not like paying out for claims & will do anything he can to avoid it.

We felt really bad stopping the business with the local driver but if they can't look after long term customers they don't deserve our business

G

 

[Tommy7]

Try Parceleasy.co.uk/quote for a no obligation quote.

 

[guntrip]

Hi Stuart

I'd say a lot depends on what your local courier is like. There can be some good deals with DHL but that is only good if your local DHL driver can be bothered to collect... mine can't DHL 24 waited 2 days for collection then went RM. I like the look of Fastway but my local Fastway driver didn't want to come out for the odd item so maybe when the orders start flooding in I will have another go.

At the moment I vary the service I use depending on the weight and destination, offering Special Delivery Next Day is good but once the weight goes up to 2kg it gets expensive. If someone pays via cheque or BACS you can assume they're not in a rush and give one of the courier companies a go and see how reliable they are.

Good luck and I hope you have better luck than I did

Neil

dont bother with fast ways. we were sold £400 worth of tikets and did not use them according to them enough, they now tell us that we are no longer eligeable for collection service and we should take our parcels to the nearest depot 20 miles away for sending. be ware. also if there is a dlivery they dont like doing although they take your tikets and your parcell they make all sorts of problems for you, non delivery late or lost. Because of this we lost a regular order Be ware. we are now stuck with £100 worth of tikets be ware.

 

[gibby]

We have recently had a quote from Parcel Network.
they are offering us far better rates for using the DHL service than DHL did

Our local DHL driver has told us they have increased the size of the rounds for the DHL drivers & selling off the rural or poor areas as franchises. Mainly because they dont want to pay for the diesel in those areas.



G

 

[pbryden]

Use the APC Courier Network, they are brilliant maybe just a little more expensive but the service is second to none. They have depots in all areas of the country and really are first rate.

 

[JMRidley]

We use Parcel Monkey when we have parcels over 2kg and they have been great everytime. Picked up when we expected and next day delivery for £6.95. We only have a couple of parcels over this weight a week so the quotes we got from other couriers was ridiculous.

 

[bathsign]

Very bad experience with Fastway Couriers: a parcel worth £210 was damaged in transit (they used a 3rd party to deliver it) and Fastway washed their hands of it. I made contact about 10 times and never received a meaningful response; never got compansation.
That's just the beginning. Then the franchise ceased trading, and from internet search it appears this is a common event. The big snag is that you pay in advance, approx £100 - £150 for delivery coupons. I am not the first to be left with these pre-paid coupons and no way to redeem them. Head office are not interested. All the drivers appear to be independant franchisees too, so when the depot goes bust the pack of cards collapses.
If you google Fastway you'll see that this has happened often.
It's interesting to note that other parcel firms point to the low rates as being, in fact, unsustainable. Hence the bankruptcies.

 

[gibby]

Its a shame with fastway as they have some good couriers paying to work for them & I felt really bad when I had to pull the business away from them.

Most of the time the service is great but its when things go wrong that the Fastway business falls down.

We had a few issues last year where goods were damaged or lost & the promised compensation did not arrive despite nagging & sending letters.

I did in the end write to the MD who sent a polite letter stating it was down to the local franchise owner but he would ask them to contact us.

I did get a call from someone who wasn't interested in listening at all but kept going on about what a good company they were & how hard the local franchise manager works etc.
They didn't want to give us the money back but give us bags to the value of the losses, as it was too much work to sort the money out.

As the guy had been on the phone for over an hour I agreed just to get him off the phone but then he started selling me other services.


The big problem with all couriers is the customer service when things go wrong. All of them have issues & they don't seem to get this.

Currently we use Interlink who are really good with deliveries but you do have to check every invoice as they have a habit of adding extra charges that shouldnt be there.
We have nagged them for an account manager to get in touch but it never happens.
Also trying to get the included bags & labels is a pain as the local depot don't like giving them out.

G

 

[Crivvens!]

We stil haven't found anything better, faster, more reliable or cost effective than Royal Mail. In over 5 years we've had only one package go missing, and no more than 5 or 6 be delayed. We use over the counter Special Delivery and Next-Day as we always require a signature on delivery. If you are generating the necessary number of items, and don't want a signature but want them tracked, Royal Mail offer a cost effective service for this as well.

 

[roydmoorian]

For smaller non urgent / non irreplaceable items Royal Mail MUST be first choice but do help them to get it right by including return address details. You would be surprised at how many do not .They do an amazing job considering the scale of operation and the constraints they are put under to deliver TNT & CityLink mail at a loss etc.

However there are some items which simply MUST NOT get lost or delayed - see my homepage

 

[Crivvens!]

It's exactly because our customers want their orders quickly that we use Royal Mail. At least 90% of orders arrive the day after we post, the rest the day after that (assuming a weekend hasn't got in the way). We haven't found a faster, more reliable service anywhere. The only - very rare - delays seem to happen with deliveries to the London area. We send to customers from Ireland to Japan, Finland to Cyprus, and always use Royal Mail (Airsure and ISF for outside the UK).

 

[Sean Taylor]

I have used APC OVERNIGHT in harlow for many years now after switching from FedEx, i have found them to be better priced and the customer service team to be far more helpful, as they seem to have a much smaller and more tightknitted workforce.

 

[bublibob]

No service depending on humans is failsafe but I now use UKMail through O21 of Doncaster. Reliable and efficient. Anything up to 20kg £7.50 next day. Occasionally the next day does fail but in these cases I am not charged. I pay my account monthly after delivery so it is in their interests to provide a good service. One point I really like is that if I ring up the 'phone is answered promptly by someone who sorts any problems quickly and efficiently.

 

[P4D | Parcels4Delivery]

No service depending on humans is failsafe but I now use UKMail through O21 of Doncaster. Reliable and efficient. Anything up to 20kg £7.50 next day. Occasionally the next day does fail but in these cases I am not charged. I pay my account monthly after delivery so it is in their interests to provide a good service. One point I really like is that if I ring up the 'phone is answered promptly by someone who sorts any problems quickly and efficiently.

Agreed. It's all about service at the end of the day. Courier prices change often, suppliers go up and down in favour, every single one of them has potential to fail on a collection at some point - hopefully it won't happen to you, but like any other business, nothing is failsafe. Having someone there to help you when you need it and when things do go wrong is absolutely invaluable.

 

[MarkD92]

Hello there,

I find the best choice for larger parcels is DHL's service. Our local guy is really good, always on time for pick ups and we've never had anything go missing with them.

For smaller parcels I use the post office's service, which isn't as reliable as DHL's in my opinion as we had a bit of trouble with a package going to Ireland, but other than that both are good.

 

[gibby]

I wouldnt touch UK mail again as we had so many items totally destroyed by them and they were not fragile items.
We gave them a try as they were very cheap at the time, I think £4.75 for upto 30kg but they were a real pain when we tried to claim for all the damages.

G

 

[IXP1]

All carriers are good at different things...
It all depends on what type of infrastructure they have!

DHL: International.
UK Mail: Next Day UK.
Royal Mail: Small Items.
TNT: Ugly Freight.
Nightfreight: Long Length Items.
Fed Ex: UK to America.

 

[catsandcanines]

I have used UK Mail, Parcelforce & City Link but have now switched to APC Overnight through a local delivery company. It costs £6.50 plus VAT for a next day delivery service and no problems after almost 2 years of using them.

I also like UPS but they are a bit too expensive.

 

[exceedmedia]

I have used UK Mail, Parcelforce & City Link but have now switched to APC Overnight through a local delivery company. It costs £6.50 plus VAT for a next day delivery service and no problems after almost 2 years of using them.

I also like UPS but they are a bit too expensive.

I would second APC overnight. We switched to them from Fastway last year and havent had any issues with lost parcels or delayed deliveries. They even call us after a couple of days if the parcel hasnt been delivered so we can track down the customer and sort out redirections...

Their online booking system is a bit 1990's but apart from that we cant grumble at the prices or performance.

 

[Paul Birkett]

The best rated courier company is Interlink Express, set up as franchises around the uk (so the owners have much experience with small businesses) and owned by La Poste and Geopost, provide the best service, the best delivery and are the only courier in the world to offer a one-hour delivery window so the the receiver knows when to be in. They are also rated top for international deliveries with working relationships with all the top airlines worldwide.

 

[thenrik]

hey, there's a new parcel delivery price comparison tool out there if you do not know which delivery company to use parcelchecker.co.uk

 

[Deleted member 104813]

I've run a mail order company for the past 2 years.

UPS are amazing, but expensive. However they have recently adjusted their rates to make them more competitive. They have great branding and customer experience, custom built vans with shelves, and their drivers are in my experience, very polite and efficient. Basically, UPS are the gucci service.

At the other end of the scale is UKMAIL, who use contract drivers, are mostly unbranded (rusty white vans ...). Their depots are franchises I think, and there doesn't seem to be a lot of interdepot communication. Also, don't use them for international stuff. The tracking is non existant (basically I get to know when it's delivered and that's about it) and it's of course handed off to another company to deliver abroad. However, they are DIRT cheap especially on their bagit service in the UK. So, you pay for what you get.

However, they also seem to have a very unreliable website that is down / unavailable a lot recently, so I can't book consignments onto it ... which is why I'm here having a gripe actually ... it's down right now, and has been for 1 hr +

~

 

[chalkie99]

hey, there's a new parcel delivery price comparison tool out there if you do not know which delivery company to use parcelchecker.co.uk

Oh, and I see it just happens to be your site!

It's completely useless by the way - bears no resemblance to what you can actually send a parcel for using those companies.

 

[mailboxexpress]

Consider using Mail Box Express we have a 100% same day delivery rate and have very competitive next day delivery rates.

 

[mikeydude]

I am stunned at the number of people that are singing the praises of the various couriers on here...we have used many and the royal mail...here is a snapshot of them all...

UKMail fairly useless...franchised delivery drivers that just leave stuff unsafe outside customers houses. charges to redeliver, don't insure anything less than £50 in value etc etc

city link.....charge even if you don't use them!...too many damages

PArcel force......parcel farce! too many restrictions on sizes and all sorts ....damages etc

yodel...Hmm.... frequent damages, lost parcels, poor insurance\refund service.

Royal mail...constantly loose items obviously stolen in post the rate of loss was that high...now way too expensive and complex to use for most items as too restricted in weights and sizes etc
hopelesss claims system...you virtually never get your money back.

TNT... rough with items..too many damages

Fastway.....stingy franchises owners that are individually responsible for refunds etc so never want to pay for damages or loss etc. often miss delivery targets, labels seem to just fall off.
I never see them about now so I assume they are not trading.

Hermes.....smash 5% of what we send out and loose another 5%...only good thing about them is they do refund for broken items and delays etc. buut they are MUCH to rough with parcels.


I could go on......

 

[bublibob]

Whatever you do give TNT a wide berth. I changed to TNT and they offered my first parcel free. When they lost it I should have walked away but thought it must be a one off as if it was typical they wouldnt have any customers. I was invoiced weekly and paid every month. When I paid I sent an email to the relevant email address giving my account number and the invoices paid. I did this the second month and on the third month had a failed collection. When I queried this I was told it was for unpaid invoices. After an age on the phone it was sorted out, I thought, but it happened again the next month and the month after. After a year of spending ages on the phone sorting out their invoices I decided to go elsewhere. I asked for an email to confirm I was paid up to date and received a reply to that effect. During the following 2 months I used TNT occasionally while I tried other couriers. I then paid all invoices for those few parcels and now they are taking me to court for unpaid bills despite owing them nothing. Each time I made a payment the payment was allocated incorrectly. I have been asking them for a print out of all payments received since the email confirming my account was clear but they refuse to do so. Every time I ring up I speak to a different person who promises to sort it out and reply but of course they never do.
I have sent all the details to the court and am now waiting to see what happens.
Steer well clear of TNT