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Morning.
In answer to your question, you may get a list of every courier in the country, but is that really what you want?
G
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Depends what you mean by "Courier" but I imagine you are referring to "Next-working day parcel delivery"
All of them will get most of your parcels there eventually but it is how they deal with the discepancies that sets some companies at a higher level than others, UKMail comes recommended by dots and spots Jeff and Interlink (Part of DPD Geopost) by Minuteman Press, APC (Alternative Parcel Company) is also up there with the best of them IMHO.
Find out which of those has a depot nearest to you so that should a collection problem occur :redface:then you would at least have the option to input the parcels yourself.
You could of course choose your provider on price alone and go with MyHermes or Yodel and have your goods delivered out of a windowcleaners van with doubtful insurance.
We re-sell UKMail services at extremely competetive rates and NO MINIMUM USAGE
We will advise our clients how to get the absolute best from this service and offer proactive verbal communication. ( You can ring us and we will do the progress chasing for you on the odd occasion that it is needed. )
Many of our clients send perishables out through this system to customers such as Harrods, Heston Blumenthal and other top restaurants.
All of them will get most of your parcels there eventually but it is how they deal with the discepancies that sets some companies at a higher level than others, UKMail comes recommended by dots and spots Jeff and Interlink (Part of DPD Geopost) by Minuteman Press, APC (Alternative Parcel Company) is also up there with the best of them IMHO.
Find out which of those has a depot nearest to you so that should a collection problem occur :redface:then you would at least have the option to input the parcels yourself.
You could of course choose your provider on price alone and go with MyHermes or Yodel and have your goods delivered out of a windowcleaners van with doubtful insurance.
We re-sell UKMail services at extremely competetive rates and NO MINIMUM USAGE
We will advise our clients how to get the absolute best from this service and offer proactive verbal communication. ( You can ring us and we will do the progress chasing for you on the odd occasion that it is needed. )
Many of our clients send perishables out through this system to customers such as Harrods, Heston Blumenthal and other top restaurants.
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Weve used most of them over the years and found service keeps changing all the time.
DHL & UK Mail were dreadful when things go wrong, lots of damages and lost parcels. Parcelforce were better but still a few issues and poor customer service
Weve been using Interlink for some time and the service has been great until a couple of months back.
The main issue is that our local depot has taken on quite a few new customers and they have been struggling to cope, not enough vans etc
As a result we have been waiting back on many nights for a pickup and on 3 occasions they haven't arrived at all, upsetting customers etc
Sadly one of these resulted in a lost repeat order worth alot of money each month and no one bothered to get on the phone & apologise. despite being promised the manager would sort it out.
As a result were moving to DPD, who are part of the same group and the prices are a little better with a better weight limit too.
We are also going to run with 2 firms to ensure we have a backup when things get busy
G
DHL & UK Mail were dreadful when things go wrong, lots of damages and lost parcels. Parcelforce were better but still a few issues and poor customer service
Weve been using Interlink for some time and the service has been great until a couple of months back.
The main issue is that our local depot has taken on quite a few new customers and they have been struggling to cope, not enough vans etc
As a result we have been waiting back on many nights for a pickup and on 3 occasions they haven't arrived at all, upsetting customers etc
Sadly one of these resulted in a lost repeat order worth alot of money each month and no one bothered to get on the phone & apologise. despite being promised the manager would sort it out.
As a result were moving to DPD, who are part of the same group and the prices are a little better with a better weight limit too.
We are also going to run with 2 firms to ensure we have a backup when things get busy
G
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M
martin.blackmore
- Original Poster
- #13
I've found APC useless when it comes to home deliveries (my personal "best" is them refusing to leave a parcel at my home because the person signing for the delivery - i.e me, wasn't at home at the time) - a first as far as I'm concerned - this followed a "carded" delivery 4 days earlier where the usual "phantom" card was(n't) left.
City link I used to think were the worst - the local chap was dumping parcels in the river and the depot didn't know about it until the environment agency found floating parcels and pointed it out. I shudder to think.
I'd never use FedEx - I've had the situation twice where a buyer has asked to "collect on their fedex account" - we we agreed to. If the person's shipping account doesn't pay FedEx they try to nail you with the costs - even though we've no account (nor ever will!) with them - needless to say they were told where to shove their bill. But it does take your time fighting them. I wonder how many people just simply pay their invoice. Needless to say, FexEx aren't welcome, even when making deliveries now.
TNT - totally inflexible with pricing - not prepared to even talk about sharpening their pencils - we don't use them any more. They stick to their tariff rates like %^&* to a blanket.
I won't use parcel2go - shocking support if anything goes missing - I ended up just giving up and making a "never again" note to self.
I've been using parcelforce for years, if your volumes are reasonable, expect to pay somewhere between 5 and 7 quid for next day up to 30kgs. Definately not more. Parcelforce has the advantage if you have lots of home deliveries in that they can card the address when not in, and leave it at the local post office - really useful if you have lots of b2c deliveries not b2b.
If something is "ugly" -I tend to use interparcel.com for pricing - not too bad, but not "cheap".
Recently I've been talking to Interlink, as they've been investing heavily in the "where's my order" technology - so that you pass them the email / SMS data and they can inform the customer where the van is - that an their prices are better than parcelforce. I can't say yet how good (or bad) they are as we've not used them yet - but are planning to move a lot of the "small packet" work their way as royal mail have price hiked their prices astronomically the last few weeks.
As everyone has said, no doubt there are good APC depots and bad ones, I can only comment on the one I've had dealings with, and it's far from good, bordering on the deficient side of the scale, and maybe they use super-fast biodegradable cards when you're not in?
My tuppence worth is try parcelforce first, as I can't comment about interlink yet until I've used them and have something to write about.
Hope that helps
martin
City link I used to think were the worst - the local chap was dumping parcels in the river and the depot didn't know about it until the environment agency found floating parcels and pointed it out. I shudder to think.
I'd never use FedEx - I've had the situation twice where a buyer has asked to "collect on their fedex account" - we we agreed to. If the person's shipping account doesn't pay FedEx they try to nail you with the costs - even though we've no account (nor ever will!) with them - needless to say they were told where to shove their bill. But it does take your time fighting them. I wonder how many people just simply pay their invoice. Needless to say, FexEx aren't welcome, even when making deliveries now.
TNT - totally inflexible with pricing - not prepared to even talk about sharpening their pencils - we don't use them any more. They stick to their tariff rates like %^&* to a blanket.
I won't use parcel2go - shocking support if anything goes missing - I ended up just giving up and making a "never again" note to self.
I've been using parcelforce for years, if your volumes are reasonable, expect to pay somewhere between 5 and 7 quid for next day up to 30kgs. Definately not more. Parcelforce has the advantage if you have lots of home deliveries in that they can card the address when not in, and leave it at the local post office - really useful if you have lots of b2c deliveries not b2b.
If something is "ugly" -I tend to use interparcel.com for pricing - not too bad, but not "cheap".
Recently I've been talking to Interlink, as they've been investing heavily in the "where's my order" technology - so that you pass them the email / SMS data and they can inform the customer where the van is - that an their prices are better than parcelforce. I can't say yet how good (or bad) they are as we've not used them yet - but are planning to move a lot of the "small packet" work their way as royal mail have price hiked their prices astronomically the last few weeks.
As everyone has said, no doubt there are good APC depots and bad ones, I can only comment on the one I've had dealings with, and it's far from good, bordering on the deficient side of the scale, and maybe they use super-fast biodegradable cards when you're not in?
My tuppence worth is try parcelforce first, as I can't comment about interlink yet until I've used them and have something to write about.
Hope that helps
martin
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Hello Martin
I understand your frustration however you quite clearly an example of a customer that expects too much .
Do you really expect these companies to get your parcel from one end of the country to the other in a matter of sixteen hours and get it right all the time everytime for £6.99 !!!!!....
Im sorry but if you pay such a small amount you have to accept that things will go wrong . Expect a 3 to 4 per cent disaster rate on your output .This should be taken into account in your budget .
I understand your frustration however you quite clearly an example of a customer that expects too much .
Do you really expect these companies to get your parcel from one end of the country to the other in a matter of sixteen hours and get it right all the time everytime for £6.99 !!!!!....
Im sorry but if you pay such a small amount you have to accept that things will go wrong . Expect a 3 to 4 per cent disaster rate on your output .This should be taken into account in your budget .
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impreza280
- Original Poster
- #15
Hello Martin
I understand your frustration however you quite clearly an example of a customer that expects too much .
Do you really expect these companies to get your parcel from one end of the country to the other in a matter of sixteen hours and get it right all the time everytime for £6.99 !!!!!....
Im sorry but if you pay such a small amount you have to accept that things will go wrong . Expect a 3 to 4 per cent disaster rate on your output .This should be taken into account in your budget .
The third party carrier industry works to about 98% OTIF (on time in full). Everybody I talk to has stories about how they were part of the 2%. As I mentioned above, having a 2-carrier strategy is the way to go - you can bat one off against another and switch their cut of your business instantly. One should be for your quick and timed deliveries which need to get somewhere irrespective of cost; and the other should be the cheapest when there is less urgency.
And as most people say, a carrier is only as good as the delivery driver. It's much harder to teach a van driver about customer service than it is to to a customer service person to drive a van.
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Wrong ! Its much easier to teach a multidrop van driver about customer service...I have never seen a customer service person in the parcel industry be a good multidrop driver . I have seen a lot of good multidrop drivers strike up good relationships with customers .
If you think multidrop driving is just about driving a van then you know very little .Any fool can drive a van but good multidrop drivers are hard to come by . I could find customer service experts on any business park all day long .Its a challenge finding multidrop drivers that can sevice the demands of ungreatfull customers that want people to run around for £6.99
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martin.blackmore
- Original Poster
- #19
Jeremy
please don't patronise me and tell me that I expect too much. I send 10's of thousands of parcels a year through one business alone.
I don't expect to be lied to, given the runaround or accept shoddy service. I have no issue with being carded (if I'm actually carded), and have no problem with things taking an extra day or so to arrive - I just need to be told. Nor will I accept the courier lying to the original sender saying that I've had one thing. I'm sure that all of APC can't be bad, it's simply the service that I've had.
I buy enough courier service every year to know what's acceptable, and what's not acceptable from a courier. I don't care what the courier costs - it doesn't matter how low they're quoting - I still expect decent customer service when things go awry.
IMO, APC has a lot of work to do to bring customer service up to scratch - even emailing customer service gets no reply - does that sound like a responsible courier to anyone? When things go wrong, which they always do, a good quality customer service is a chance to step in, fix things, and if anything, makes the customers happier than receiving the expected service.
Dotting a few smilies on a reply doesn't make the poor experience any better - quite the opposite. Stating what do you expect for £6.99 also doesn't help. I expect that couriers work to their SLA, and be nice to the end customers - after all they're the person that the receiver of the parcel first sees - a bad experience reflects on "we senders" much more than the courier itself - they need to see themselves as our ambassadors, not just a £6.99 "if you don't like it, then tough" merchant. I'm surprised that anyone would take sides with shoddy service, that's all.
please don't patronise me and tell me that I expect too much. I send 10's of thousands of parcels a year through one business alone.
I don't expect to be lied to, given the runaround or accept shoddy service. I have no issue with being carded (if I'm actually carded), and have no problem with things taking an extra day or so to arrive - I just need to be told. Nor will I accept the courier lying to the original sender saying that I've had one thing. I'm sure that all of APC can't be bad, it's simply the service that I've had.
I buy enough courier service every year to know what's acceptable, and what's not acceptable from a courier. I don't care what the courier costs - it doesn't matter how low they're quoting - I still expect decent customer service when things go awry.
IMO, APC has a lot of work to do to bring customer service up to scratch - even emailing customer service gets no reply - does that sound like a responsible courier to anyone? When things go wrong, which they always do, a good quality customer service is a chance to step in, fix things, and if anything, makes the customers happier than receiving the expected service.
Dotting a few smilies on a reply doesn't make the poor experience any better - quite the opposite. Stating what do you expect for £6.99 also doesn't help. I expect that couriers work to their SLA, and be nice to the end customers - after all they're the person that the receiver of the parcel first sees - a bad experience reflects on "we senders" much more than the courier itself - they need to see themselves as our ambassadors, not just a £6.99 "if you don't like it, then tough" merchant. I'm surprised that anyone would take sides with shoddy service, that's all.
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Sorry Martin I did not mean to patronise you but you have again showed that you are expecting too much from these companies .
I dont run a parcel company nor have nothing to do with such companies, I have in the past worked with them for quite a few years and supplied vans with drivers to them but they are in general a waste of time and not viable to do business with .
You have mentioned that you expect them to be your ambasador and represent your company .No Im sorry but for the price you pay you will get the simplest of transactions . The driver has about 90 drops to do that day .He wont have any intreast in being an ambasador for a company 200 miles away that he has never heard of . Many users of these companies dont actully understand that the company is unwilling to spend too much time on any consignment due to the low margins, They expect just to deliver when the get there and be gone within two minutes and for the price you are paying you cant expect anymore . The customer service teams care very little again there is no money in the consignment to invest in anything that is inconvenient .The customer service teams dont actully care .
If you want ambasadors ,customer service teams that care for your company and your goods ,good drivers that care then you require a more bespoke service but it does cost money .
If you are not prepared to pay for the service you require then thats OK but dont complain that your not getting this service from you present suppliers when you are only paying for the very basic service.
I dont run a parcel company nor have nothing to do with such companies, I have in the past worked with them for quite a few years and supplied vans with drivers to them but they are in general a waste of time and not viable to do business with .
You have mentioned that you expect them to be your ambasador and represent your company .No Im sorry but for the price you pay you will get the simplest of transactions . The driver has about 90 drops to do that day .He wont have any intreast in being an ambasador for a company 200 miles away that he has never heard of . Many users of these companies dont actully understand that the company is unwilling to spend too much time on any consignment due to the low margins, They expect just to deliver when the get there and be gone within two minutes and for the price you are paying you cant expect anymore . The customer service teams care very little again there is no money in the consignment to invest in anything that is inconvenient .The customer service teams dont actully care .
If you want ambasadors ,customer service teams that care for your company and your goods ,good drivers that care then you require a more bespoke service but it does cost money .
If you are not prepared to pay for the service you require then thats OK but dont complain that your not getting this service from you present suppliers when you are only paying for the very basic service.
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M
martin.blackmore
- Original Poster
- #21
in the case of shoddy APC - I'm not the one paying £6.99 - I'm waiting for a server to arrive to get it built for a new project (yes, I know I deal with couriers) - it's just as valid a point from a receiver point of view - In fact, if my customers were getting this service, then I'd switch couriers at the drop of a hat.
I know they're all much the same - but there simply is no excuse for shoddy service - regardless of price - if they can't deliver a package next day for 5-6 quid, then they should put up their prices, or revise their SLAs accordingly. The price element is not something I can accept as an excuse for failure- If I sold you a 1tb sata hard drive for your computer for £25, and it didn't work well, made noises, and lost your data - would you accept the argument that "it was cheap - should have bought one for £50?" Probably not -If I say I can supply it for £25, then supply it I must, and it better work. If I can't manage to get you a proper working hard disk for less than £50, then I shouldn't be supplying it. Same goes for couriers. If they want to quote cheaply, and don't offer the service they're promising, then then deserve to be beaten up about it.
Yes, I know that if they can only do the job properly for a tenner, and they advertise it, then they'll get less business -- so, they advertise it for a fiver, and hope they can bat off enough complaints to make it work for them. I probably doubt that a fiver is enough for a good quality service, however, it doesn't stop me complaining about when they get it wrong - the more people know about their service, the better positioned they are to make it work. If the couriers said "sorry, I got it wrong" - I'd more than likely accept it - putting their heads in the sand, ignoring you, even using their "own rule books" as a tool, are simply unacceptable.
Other users need to know when things go wrong, how the couriers deal with them. I simply will never use APC, CityLink, FedEx, nor Parcel2go ever, based on the service I have received. If someone asks which ones to use, I can then tell them, and tell them why- with evidence if anyone cares to ask. FedEx have to be the one that makes my blood boil the most just for their bully-boy tactics they tried. The APC debarcle is probably down to the local franchise rather than a global issue? Who knows, unless people say?
I know they're all much the same - but there simply is no excuse for shoddy service - regardless of price - if they can't deliver a package next day for 5-6 quid, then they should put up their prices, or revise their SLAs accordingly. The price element is not something I can accept as an excuse for failure- If I sold you a 1tb sata hard drive for your computer for £25, and it didn't work well, made noises, and lost your data - would you accept the argument that "it was cheap - should have bought one for £50?" Probably not -If I say I can supply it for £25, then supply it I must, and it better work. If I can't manage to get you a proper working hard disk for less than £50, then I shouldn't be supplying it. Same goes for couriers. If they want to quote cheaply, and don't offer the service they're promising, then then deserve to be beaten up about it.
Yes, I know that if they can only do the job properly for a tenner, and they advertise it, then they'll get less business -- so, they advertise it for a fiver, and hope they can bat off enough complaints to make it work for them. I probably doubt that a fiver is enough for a good quality service, however, it doesn't stop me complaining about when they get it wrong - the more people know about their service, the better positioned they are to make it work. If the couriers said "sorry, I got it wrong" - I'd more than likely accept it - putting their heads in the sand, ignoring you, even using their "own rule books" as a tool, are simply unacceptable.
Other users need to know when things go wrong, how the couriers deal with them. I simply will never use APC, CityLink, FedEx, nor Parcel2go ever, based on the service I have received. If someone asks which ones to use, I can then tell them, and tell them why- with evidence if anyone cares to ask. FedEx have to be the one that makes my blood boil the most just for their bully-boy tactics they tried. The APC debarcle is probably down to the local franchise rather than a global issue? Who knows, unless people say?
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Can I just point out something vital here: the cost you pay a booking agent like us or any of the other official agents who work in close partnership with the carriers is irrelevant to the service you receive.
If you booked with DHL, TNT, City Link or any courier directly and paid £40, or you booked with us and paid £6 - the service you get; the *actual* collection and delivery is exactly the same... the same driver, the same route, the same drop. It's only the way that you booked it and the price you paid that is different.
Of course it's the carriers' responsibility to ensure their drivers are carrying out their role appropriately, but as your booking agent, we see it as our responsibility to get you answers when things do go wrong, so we ring the carrier on your behalf. It's also our responsibility to work *with* the carriers to get you not only the best deals, but also the best service, and since we are closer to our customers we can often foresee problems. We can't stop them happening of course.
All of this is completely irrelevant to the price you paid us.
If you booked with DHL, TNT, City Link or any courier directly and paid £40, or you booked with us and paid £6 - the service you get; the *actual* collection and delivery is exactly the same... the same driver, the same route, the same drop. It's only the way that you booked it and the price you paid that is different.
Of course it's the carriers' responsibility to ensure their drivers are carrying out their role appropriately, but as your booking agent, we see it as our responsibility to get you answers when things do go wrong, so we ring the carrier on your behalf. It's also our responsibility to work *with* the carriers to get you not only the best deals, but also the best service, and since we are closer to our customers we can often foresee problems. We can't stop them happening of course.
All of this is completely irrelevant to the price you paid us.
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Come on guys, put yer handbags away!
Wading into the argumnet about prices = service.
Its not some that really follws the rule.
We have used more expensive services in the past and the service has been poor. Parcelforce were a great example of this as our customers were constantly complaining about crap service when things went wrong.
Also one customer spent over £20 trying to find her parcel and was kept on the automated service 0870 number for ages.
DHL were also alot more expensive and they were hopeless when thing got lost, broken etc.
What I don't like about Interlink is that the drivers often get minimum wage. They do work hard, they have worked hard on communication skills for the drivers lately and the info to customers. Ringing various depots when problems have come up has been a pleasure.
Sadly the local dept have let us down on collections to often due to having more customers than they can really handle & we are off to DPD with better rates included.
Sadly things keep changing as service goes up n down all the time.
We are looking to have more than one courier for this reason but do watch out as they do charge a minimum invoice amount each week if you don't send anything - but you can get around this
G
Wading into the argumnet about prices = service.
Its not some that really follws the rule.
We have used more expensive services in the past and the service has been poor. Parcelforce were a great example of this as our customers were constantly complaining about crap service when things went wrong.
Also one customer spent over £20 trying to find her parcel and was kept on the automated service 0870 number for ages.
DHL were also alot more expensive and they were hopeless when thing got lost, broken etc.
What I don't like about Interlink is that the drivers often get minimum wage. They do work hard, they have worked hard on communication skills for the drivers lately and the info to customers. Ringing various depots when problems have come up has been a pleasure.
Sadly the local dept have let us down on collections to often due to having more customers than they can really handle & we are off to DPD with better rates included.
Sadly things keep changing as service goes up n down all the time.
We are looking to have more than one courier for this reason but do watch out as they do charge a minimum invoice amount each week if you don't send anything - but you can get around this
G
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Hello Gibby when I talk about expensive bespoke services I dont mean using the large parcel hubs and paying more money to have a yellow priority sticker stuck on it
Im talking about smaller companies where you do get a high quality service but you pay a lot of money . This service is around £70 ! this would make you run a mile but if want a garenteed service that is what it costs !.
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