Overseas courier services

[Snowgoat]

We send software and high-value books overseas, until now mainly using Royal Mail or Parcel Force. Transit time isn't a major factor for us, but reliability and insurance cover is.

As we don't have large enough traffic to negotiate with UPS/DHL/FedEx etc.we've tried the courier comparison sites with mixed results. Problems have included:

1) Documentation on pick-up - almost non-existent - in some cases persuading the driver to scribble a date and time and signature on a bit of paper.

2) Insurance - very high rates - though we have solved this with our own stock cover insurance and broker.

3) Not allowing for fractions of a kilo (in other words being charged 3 kilos for a 2.1 kilo shipment). To Far Eastern destinations this can make a massive difference.

4) Tracking facility for our customers. So far, doing it through the comparison sites, we're not allowed to track on the courier site as we're not the courier's customer - they are.

5) Some of our highest value shipments have been Amazon orders, and Amazon drives us nuts with not allowing us to communicate with the customer properly - so getting customer telephone numbers (for the courier firm) and giving customers tracking site web addresses is next to impossible.

So could anyone recommend a good courier comparison site without the above snags? As I mentioned, we don't send enough to negotiate a reasonable deal with any of the main couriers, or getting anywhere near the courier comparison site quotes. Our parcels are from 0.4 to 15 kilos normally but can get up to 25 kilos. Consignment values from £400 - £3k.

 

[Snowgoat]

Perhaps the above is asking too much.

Any recommendations for a reliable overseas/UK courier comparison site?

We know about Interparcel, ParcelMonkey, Parcel2Go and MyParcelDelivery.

 

[roydmoorian]

If you are not happy with what is in effect an incredibly cheap service (Royal Mail) then I could put these through our FedEx account but you would need to get them to us first.

You have already got your own insurance cover so that would not be an issue.

 

[Snowgoat]

I appreciate the offer, but we're not keen on adding another link to the delivery chain, and we'd like to keep tracking simple for the customer.

Royal Mail has its uses (£500 of software in a 0.4k package to most European destinations is competitive with a courier at £8 - £12, but transit times to some countries (Spain, Portugal, Turkey) can be dire. We've only had one insurance claim with them, but it took 4 months of wrangling to sort out, and you can't even start the claim process for a month at least, which, from a customer's point of view would be unacceptable.

The courier comparison services can be useful, returning quotes from £22 - £120 for a 2.4k package to Beijing, for example. Transit times were 3 - 7 days, and our stuff isn't time sensitive (Fedex was the best deal).