Small parcels to France

[Wickham]

Hi all, I am looking for a reliable carrier of small parcels with low volumes to France. I emphasise the fact that they must be reliable.

I did use Landmark Global via Interparcel but they lost 3 out of 7 parcels and returned 1. I won't go into detail but they need to adopt some form of customer services.

Unfortunately I had the same experience with Royal Mail, who also lost my £360 claim form along with original receipts internally. Very convenient you would think right?

Must be a tried and tested reliable service please.

 

[wired-circuit]

Tried LaPoste directly? Did you know you can send ONE box, containing multiple parcels to LaPoste in France for local distribution. The problem you'll find with the Royal Mail is your mail sits at Heathrow for days before it even reaches France! Outside that for low volume, maybe Transglobal or DespatchBay?

 

[JEREMY HAWKE]

Hello @Wickham

We can do this but its very expensive I will admit that myself

So I recommend this company who I never here a bad word about
Your collection will be made by UK Mail but don't be alarmed by that as it gets loaded on the Eurodis trunk in the UK

http://eurodis.com/

 

[DontAsk]

If Royal Mail, or anyone else, lost 3 out of 7 parcels then I would suggest you are doing something wrong, or your customers are having a laugh. They simply would not be in business with that kind of loss rate.

Did you send the tracked or signed?

 

[DontAsk]

The problem you'll find with the Royal Mail is your mail sits at Heathrow for days before it even reaches France!

What utter drivel!

 

[Mr D]

Tried LaPoste directly? Did you know you can send ONE box, containing multiple parcels to LaPoste in France for local distribution. The problem you'll find with the Royal Mail is your mail sits at Heathrow for days before it even reaches France! Outside that for low volume, maybe Transglobal or DespatchBay?

We used to find our parcels made it to France next day, then take anything up to 3 weeks to be delivered in some areas.

We always found royal mail were best for low value items, where we had higher value parcels then UPS were pretty good.

Royal mail loss rate was under 1%, bit like British loss rates. And like in Britain there were instances where the postie would not or could not deliver and item found its way back to us a few weeks later.

 

[Deleted member 59730]

For reliability you need to write the address in the correct order for the French post which is not what gets it to France, or any other country, best. As an example don't use Brittany but Bretagne. Make sure you have the town in the correct relationship to the postcode.

I use French envelopes with little squares for entering the postcode in the exact position.

I once had a package end up in a tiny village in France because the Royal Mail did not understand where ITALIA was!

 

[Wickham]

If Royal Mail, or anyone else, lost 3 out of 7 parcels then I would suggest you are doing something wrong, or your customers are having a laugh. They simply would not be in business with that kind of loss rate.

Did you send the tracked or signed?

The whole reason for using a courier was because it's tracked.

Exactly what I thought at first that the customer was pulling a fast one. In fact I was slightly rude to the first customer as I thought this was the case. But when a regular customer contacted me, then I knew it was the courier at fault.

That actually makes my blood boil you saying; "If Royal Mail..." Implying they never lose anything. Let me tell you something, "If Royal Mail" didn't lose parcels in the first place I wouldn't need the services of a courier.

Read my original post above, not only did they lose my goods but they lost my claim form as well, bunch of imbeciles!

This is not the only time they lost my goods either. You only have to search Royal Mail in any UK forum to realise that they seem to do this as regular as clock work.

Or if you want some bed time reading... for the rest of your life! Try this search in Google; Royal Mail UK forum lost

I would of post a link myself but this forum blocks new members from posting them. Even when quoting other peoples posts with links in, which I find almost as annoying as your reply.

Hello @Wickham

We can do this but its very expensive I will admit that myself

So I recommend this company who I never here a bad word about
Your collection will be made by UK Mail but don't be alarmed by that as it gets loaded on the Eurodis trunk in the UK

eurodis dot com

Hi Jeremy, thank you for your help with this. I will look further into this company. Thank you again.

Tried LaPoste directly? Did you know you can send ONE box, containing multiple parcels to LaPoste in France for local distribution. The problem you'll find with the Royal Mail is your mail sits at Heathrow for days before it even reaches France! Outside that for low volume, maybe Transglobal or DespatchBay?

Now I never knew you could use LaPoste directly. Do they have a online portal to use for UK customers?

Yes I can believe this about Royal Mail. It's probably why they only track to the airport to some destinations. They wouldn't want to make it known to the public that post is sat in their warehouse for more than 48 hours.

 

[Mr D]

And if you search for pretty much any delivery service you can find examples of them losing things. Lots of examples.

And yet royal mail themselves claim to deliver around 499 in 500 items. Are their figures so wrong?

 

[Wickham]

For reliability you need to write the address in the correct order for the French post which is not what gets it to France, or any other country, best. As an example don't use Brittany but Bretagne. Make sure you have the town in the correct relationship to the postcode.

I use French envelopes with little squares for entering the postcode in the exact position.

I once had a package end up in a tiny village in France because the Royal Mail did not understand where ITALIA was!

This made me laugh, sorry. I don't know where it went but I had one customer email me 10 months later to say his order had just arrived, he said that it had that many foreign stamps on that it probably looked like a passport belonging to Phileas Fogg... shame the parcel didn't break his record! I thought. Like I said they are a bunch of imbeciles, and it's the customer who have to pay for their mistakes. Just wrong on so many levels.

 

[Wickham]

And if you search for pretty much any delivery service you can find examples of them losing things. Lots of examples.

And yet royal mail themselves claim to deliver around 499 in 500 items. Are their figures so wrong?

I still use Royal Mail, but only for low value orders, they can't even be trusted with these! They still manage to lose stuff and you know what? I kind of expect them to, so much so that I have template emails made up to reply to my customers for when they Royal Mail do!

What day did they arrive at those statistics? Maybe they need to expand the date range a little. Listen statistics are always used to paint a fudged picture of the truth, and if a company needs statics to convince it's customers and employees that the company is doing a good job then there is something seriously wrong. Both employees and customers should be seeing and feeling the results, not being told by statistics.

To be fair I have seen a slight improvement in their services since they privatised it, but I put this down to the postal workers realising that they would be now thieving from themselves as ultimately it would effect their share price.

There is only one company I have come across who has a track record like that and that is UPS, I have sent well over 2,000 items with them and get this. Not one thing lost! Not one thing! Oddly they don't publish this as a statistic, crazy right?

The only problem I find is they are expensive and not all of my customers, mostly French like paying their prices.

 

[Mr D]

Don't know what date they worked out their statistics. My statistics for royal mail deliveries are currently better than 1 in 500 going missing. Closer to 1 in 800.
The French deliveries are occasionally annoying, only France and Spain can I have orders take 3 weeks to arrive. Brazil, Australia, Japan - all quicker than some parts of France and Spain.
What can you say except they aren't royal mail?

Yes UPS are pretty good.

I don't usually let buyers determine if they are willing to pay the price UPS charge. I choose the courier, if courier it is going to be. And buyer merely pays what I set for the item or doesn't buy.

 

[Wickham]

Don't know what date they worked out their statistics. My statistics for royal mail deliveries are currently better than 1 in 500 going missing. Closer to 1 in 800.
The French deliveries are occasionally annoying, only France and Spain can I have orders take 3 weeks to arrive. Brazil, Australia, Japan - all quicker than some parts of France and Spain.
What can you say except they aren't royal mail?

Yes UPS are pretty good.

I don't usually let buyers determine if they are willing to pay the price UPS charge. I choose the courier, if courier it is going to be. And buyer merely pays what I set for the item or doesn't buy.

Yes I agree with Spain and France. I can also add Poland, Romania and Russia to that list, though I have now resolved the problems in these places.

Canada I also have had trouble with in the past, but of late things have been good. Maybe I should not tempt fate!

 

[Mr D]

Yes I agree with Spain and France. I can also add Poland, Romania and Russia to that list, though I have now resolved the problems in these places.

Canada I also have had trouble with in the past, but of late things have been good. Maybe I should not tempt fate!

Poland?
OK Romania and Russia I've found hit and miss, have sent a lot to Poland in past 30 years - these days 3 or 4 days is the norm via royal mail.

 

[Wickham]

Of cause how much can you blame on RM is questionable. How much is destination country postal service or even the recipient stealing from you? It happens!

 

[JEREMY HAWKE]

The service level will of course reflect the costs and of course we need to take this into consideration

Where there is no alternative we can help

http://www.jeremyhawkecourier.co.uk/uk-europe-delivery/

 

[Wickham]

@Mr D
Here you go received 5 minutes ago from a customer in France. Total of goods £34, sent via RM. It's become so bad that I am going to suspend taking orders from France until I can resolve this issue.

"To date, I still have not received these products.

I would be grateful if you could carry out a search as soon as possible and keep me informed.

Please accept, Madam, Sir, the expression of my highest consideration"

 

[Wickham]

I am also starting to believe that it is in fact LaPoste who are losing my mail. As it seems no matter who I use in the UK, as soon as it's handed to LaPoste it has a lower success rate of being delivered.

 

[Mr D]

Yes, so courier to avoid laposte?

 

[Wickham]

@Mr D yes I think this is the answer, if not certainly the next step to try. I will start searching out couriers who do not hand over.

On my list so far is eurodis, though after reading the info at their website I maybe a bit to small for what they will handle. I will drop them an email shortly.

 

[roydmoorian]

UKMail puts some non domestic consignments through Eurodis and some through Norsk if using a road economy service.
Spanish Eurodis consignments from the UK go via Munich which is why it takes so long.
DHL Express uses air and is much faster and for small items (sub 1 kg) can cost no more than a Euroroad service.
Currently the DHL tracking is by far the most useful.
Eurodis can sometimes get to Poland or Germany next working day but the ETA will be 7 days.

 

[Mr D]

DHL? The same DHL that are delivering to KFC?

 

[ProjectOcto]

Have a look at www.parcelstation.co.uk - they deal with ecommerce sellers shipping in the UK and globally. Their USP is that they 'buy' great rates from the big carriers en masse, so you get better prices using their network. Plus they do the whole pick up and traceability elements, before pasing parcels into Hermes, DPD, La Poste etc

 

[roydmoorian]

Had a request last Wednesday 29th afternoon to get a number of ADR items (with L-ion batteries a small pallets worth) from Rochdale to Paris before Tuesday 3rd - Delivered within 24 hours by 15:00 on 30th, of the initial contact. Not cheap but most things are possible even approaching a bank holiday weekend.