Interparcel - has anyone used it?

[thebigIAM]

V. clever advertising on the telly. A geezer sits on his orifice at home and presses a few buttons on his laptop. The delivery company arranges to pick item up from his home and on to the destination.

Has anyone used the service? What was your impression?

 

[PerfectP]

Use it all the time.
Currently sitting here waiting for a parcel to be picked up by TNT.

It's a good service, there are others, but I like interparcel.

Couple of improvements could be made to the service -

1. when using the website, if you try and select a time that the courier service you want to use doesn't support, then it dumps you out to the homepage and you have to start again, even though the website allows you to chose the time. Really annoying as you have to go through the first few pages of entering data again
2. if you need to speak to a person, because (UPS in this occasion) doesn't come and collect, if they have more than 10 (i think) calls, the number reports as being engaged, instead of allowing you to hold on in the queue.

 

[nextdayprint]

Not a bad service if you are not a big sender. We used them during startup, well actually we used TNT through them. Wasn't till we were doing quite a few parcels/packets a day that it got better value to go direct to parcel companies.

If you get to that point, I advise you avoid Shitylink like the plague, Fedex is pretty good, TNT seems better but is pricey, DHL not overly enamored with them but mainly had dealings during bad weather so can't really judge them.

Anyway, good luck with your parcels at the moment, especially if they are going anywhere north of the midlands - to the best of my knowledge all of the parcel companies are suffering backlogs of in excess of one week in certain parts of Scotland and the north east.

 

[sphynx]

Used them a few times, good service so far...

 

[Andrew1986]

I have used them several times, and never had any problems.

 

[Waveney Books]

What about the courier companies that are members on here? If you're reading this thread, could you quote me..........please?

Large book, Suffolk to Twickenham.
Approx 12"x2"x12"
Just over 2kgs

 

[PerfectP]

Anyway, good luck with your parcels at the moment, especially if they are going anywhere north of the midlands - to the best of my knowledge all of the parcel companies are suffering backlogs of in excess of one week in certain parts of Scotland and the north east.

Tuffnells are apparently on top of there backlog and are delivering. One of our suppliers is based in Livingston and are using Tuffnells, for next day delivery to us and they haven't failed (yet).

 

[ob1]

used them quite abit, been very reliable, ive used tnt and ups through them but i prefer ups

 

[dev99]

booked five collections with them on Monday and have managed to pick up 3 so far.

still waiting for 2 others to be picked up after 4 days.

Took 3 phone calls and 4 emails to find out whats going on.

 

[Indigo Cherry]

Used them about 40 times, maybe more and have had 1 problem and when I called, they didn't give excuses, just said that they had ballsed up and gave me a 50% refund! Can't ask for more than that!

Also if you sign up to their site, you get 5% off your deliveries.

Matt

 

[thebigIAM]

Thanks for your replies, guys. Some interesting feedback on here.

 

[Raw Rob]

Been using them for several years now, without any real problems. When things go wrong, it's usually the courier company who messes up rather than Interparcel, who are just booking agents. For now, I prefer it to having a contract with one courier as we can choose which courier we want to use for each job.

Rob

 

[thecyclingartist]

It keeps being recommended to be by other creative professionals. So we're all people who aren't doing a lot of large shipments but have the occasional bulky or higher-quantity to post out. (large paintings, quarterly wholesale shipments, one-off large international next day, etc)

Seems to be well-liked in my professional circles.

Tina.

 

[Aussie Dean]

Another wierd thing is that you can only book one item at a time and thenn you must pay for it before booking another item.

Unless I am a n00b and not doing it properly.

 

[Raw Rob]

Another wierd thing is that you can only book one item at a time and thenn you must pay for it before booking another item.

Unless I am a n00b and not doing it properly.

I forgot about that. We also use www.p4d.co.uk which is also a courier broker but allows you to book multiple jobs in one go and has a system for integrating with your ecommerce system (or eBay) to automatically import address details.

Rob

 

[nextdayprint]

Just an update on my thoughts re: DHL

Fedex took just shy of a week to deliver a 12pm next working day job into Scotland (just outside Glasgow) which whilst illustrating shocking levels of ill preparedness for the conditions is still almost understandable - if you squint very hard.

DHL however has taken over a week to deliver a next working day parcel to Gateshead area and has constantly misinformed ourselves and our client causing no end of problem. They "advance scanned it into Gateshead" a week ago tomorrow and told us our client could collect from there, then they told our client it was not there, then they told them it was, etc. etc. etc.

Overall my biggest issue with all the parcel companies I interact with is they have no system in place to warn or stop you from purchasing these services when they cannot fulfill them, so you can still pay for a parcel for 9am next day delivery into Scotland to depots that have 3 or 4 day backlogs and you will receive no notification or warning that your parcel will not make it.

Bad form, especially as this information exists in a database/spreadsheet that the phone operatives have access to.

 

[thebigIAM]

Sadly, the interparcel experiment was a failure.

When I cheerfully said on Friday that Monday would be fine, I honestly thought it would be. But a weekend is a long time in politics and business, so come Monday, it wasn't convenient.

Damn. Sitting here all day between 9 and 5 waiting for them to pick up a parcel? Can't they narrow it down to a morning or afternoon?

Apparently not. And then to cap it all, TNT never arrived to pick up the parcel. Way too much time wasted on this. I should have used Royal Mail.

 

[JamieM]

Fedex took just shy of a week to deliver a 12pm next working day job into Scotland (just outside Glasgow) which whilst illustrating shocking levels of ill preparedness for the conditions is still almost understandable - if you squint very hard.

You can't really prepare for the extent of the problems we have had in Scotland. It's been a disaster and still is.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-11980827

 

[phil battison]

We use Parcelforce for our daily collections but we get the occasional shipment to europe and the prices via Interparcel are significantly cheaper than with Prcelforce and its much less hassle - we've been using them for a couple of years now without any trouble. Only time we've had a challenge as when we had to send multiple packages to a clients offices in around a dozen locations - you have to enter each shipment one at a time and pay one at a time.

 

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