Start up - Which courier? RM, Hermes, Interlink

[Shane - Gymstop]

We are trying to decide what courier to use out of the below. We ship out t-shirts, vests, joggers, nothing overly heavy.

Hermes - I have read some horrible reviews about them, but the pricing makes me forget the reviews, which is bad plus it is a tracked service.

Royal Mail - I do not particularly want to take 10-30 parcels daily to the Post Office as this would waste a lot of time.

Interlink - Next Day service, at around £5 per parcel, regular pick ups, and have a depo fairly locally.

What are your guys opinions on couriers for startups?

 

[vibrantcolour]

Hermes takes a lot of the catalogue work i.e. Next etc, so clothing is a good fit for them - though interlink has the obvious advantage of parent co DPD's wonderful tracking.

 

[Paul Norman]

For a start up sending clothing, you will find most couriers more expensive than Royal Mail.

You will struggle to find people to support Hermes. DPD's tracking is brilliant - but they will cost a lot more than Royal Mail for the items you are sending.

 

[Root 66 Woodshop]

As a start up give these guys a try

Easy to book orders in online

https://www.transglobalexpress.co.uk

We use them all the time now

 

[Chris Ashdown]

Use Royal mail as others have said. If you go on a business account you get better rates.

You can also pay a amount and they will pick up your mail every day at a set time and give you bogs for all the packages

Of the rest DPD or UKMail are the only ones who offer a good service but whoever you use their will always be some problems

 

[Root 66 Woodshop]

Tad bit unfair there Chris...

Have you used Transglobal? - We've had no fault at all with their service - therefore DPD or UKMail can't be the only ones.

 

[Virtual Reality Hire]

Royal Mail will probably be your cheapest option. APC overnight could also be an alternative as they have the largest courier network in the country I believe and offer mail bags at £3.50 or there about.
We use APC a lot and would definitely recommend them.

 

[bharris]

Royal Mail i would have thought would be the best for a startup. If you spend £15k per year then they will pickup for free. Watch courier zones NI, top of Scotland and other islands normally cost twice as much.

On an earlier thread returns from the clothing sector is typically 50-60% so make sure you allow plenty of margin to cover the costs.
Good luck

 

[Damian Rushworth]

Used DPD for years having tried most of the others. Found them to be the most reliable and importantly they damage very few consignments.

 

[deniser]

We use a combination of Royal Mail and Interlink.

RM collect from us at a set time every day and have been 100% reliable in collecting. If a van breaks down or someone is on holiday or off sick, they seem to have ample spare staff and vehicles to cover.

We have quite a high lost parcel rate though - much higher than when we used to go to the Post Office - even when we send it recorded. The maximum compensation you can claim is £20 for Signed For and zero if not signed for.

Interlink are a really good courier company and we rarely get complaints from our customers but they do have staffing problems from time to time and collections can be late when they are relying on temporary staff which is a nuisance. But when there is a permanent driver on the route things run very smoothly.

Their one hour timed delivery slots and the fact that customers can give extra delivery instructions when they get the notifications means that problems rarely arise and customers are happy which saves us a lot of hassle!

We use Interlink for the next day deliveries, large parcels, parcels with a value of over £100 (because they actually compensate you for loss or damage even if you don't insure) and parcels to Europe for which their prices are extremely competitive compared to RM. We only ever lost one and had one damaged.

It would be easier to use just one service but they neither covers all the services we need and they seem complimentary.

 

[bharris]

We have quite a high lost parcel rate though - much higher than when we used to go to the Post Office

I am surprised with your loss rate with Royal Mail, for us hardly anything goes wrong. The biggest problem we have is that the customers often have errors in their addresses. We make a point of checking each delivery address (very time consuming but since introduced, virtually no lost parcels). Lately more people seem to be using auto fill for there address and we have been receiving many spurious address.
As you have mentioned Interlink, we too use them and have had no problems either. The only courier we have had problems with (and that is many problems) is UKmail / ipostparcels.

 

[Abe Choi]

Our loss rate is minimal with Royal Mail as well. If something does get lost it seems to be more a batch than a few here or there. So we usually go on the offensive by managing other customers expectations and following up instead of waiting for the storm. We ship mostly in the UK and the EU with Royal Mail and lost mail is definitely far and few between.

Given we ship large letter only, we don't have much of a choice as other carriers would be far too expensive. As for a data point, Royal Mail consumes about 15% of our revenue. Would be good to know what percentage others spend on their shipments.

 

[bharris]

Royal Mail consumes about 15% of our revenue. Would be good to know what percentage others spend on their shipments.

Postage and packaging (box, beans, tape etc.) is about 10% for us which i always thought was high. I think many new businesses disregard the true cost of shipping and offer it for free without thinking.

 

[LowedgesWebDevelopment]

Hi. Start with myhermes - because on beginning, customers will not trust you, they always gonna be asking - where is my parcel, have you send my parcel. Once you gonna build trust, go into royal mail OBA - for untracked they got better prices than hermes, and for 24 h / 48 hours tracked they beat competition.

 

[deniser]

I am surprised with your loss rate with Royal Mail, for us hardly anything goes wrong.

For years it was 1 in 1000. Now it's 1 in 200. And Signed For parcels go missing too which they never used to. It's extremely disappointing.

 

[bharris]

For years it was 1 in 1000. Now it's 1 in 200. And Signed For parcels go missing too which they never used to. It's extremely disappointing.

How strange... We have never had a problem, i cant even remember when the last parcel went missing. I don't know what you sell is it a desirable commodity for someone to pinch? Are your customers telling the truth? The only difference we have noticed is that customers are more frequently entering the wrong address (particularly with the help of auto fill on chrome). We had a customer 2 weeks ago ranting that we had sent the parcel to her sisters house and how dare we just do what we want, she wouldn't accept she had put the wrong address in even when we pointed out that there is no way we could have known her sisters address. Have you reported the issue to Royal Mail? The do (well did) investigate parcel theft.

 

[deniser]

How strange... We have never had a problem, i cant even remember when the last parcel went missing. I don't know what you sell is it a desirable commodity for someone to pinch? Are your customers telling the truth? The only difference we have noticed is that customers are more frequently entering the wrong address (particularly with the help of auto fill on chrome). We had a customer 2 weeks ago ranting that we had sent the parcel to her sisters house and how dare we just do what we want, she wouldn't accept she had put the wrong address in even when we pointed out that there is no way we could have known her sisters address. Have you reported the issue to Royal Mail? The do (well did) investigate parcel theft.

The last two to go missing were both sent signed for.

It's difficult to say at what point they have gone missing because if you have the parcels collected they are not scanned in the same way that a courier scans them on collection. The tracking just says:

"Latest update: Information on your Royal Mail Signed For™ item is not yet available.

Royal Mail Signed For™ items are only scanned when the item has been delivered. Depending on whether the item was sent 1st or 2nd Class, this may be a few days after posting. Please check online first for any future updates on your item."

When you take them to the post office the tracking shows that they were accepted at the Post Office at a certain time and date so you know they have at least entered the system.

So it can't be the customers lying. We have checked the addresses and they have been correct. It seems they are being pilfered along the way somewhere.

 

[bharris]

It seems they are being pilfered along the way somewhere.

Hope you have reported it to RM. i know you don't get any compensation, but they do investigate (or used to).

 

[Chris Ashdown]

We use Royal Mail tracked service and have no problems, I also think that stating on the web site that the service is tracked also is a warning to people who may want to try it on

 

[deniser]

Hope you have reported it to RM. i know you don't get any compensation, but they do investigate (or used to).

WE will when we have some time. They do pay up to £20 if you use signed for. Just about worth filling in the form for.

 

[deniser]

We use Royal Mail tracked service and have no problems, I also think that stating on the web site that the service is tracked also is a warning to people who may want to try it on

How many do you send are how big are they?
The bigger parcel the more likely it is to go missing.
We have never had anything go missing which fits through a letterbox.
But the last two never even reached the point of delivery being attempted as there is nothing on the tracking.

 

[matlob]

The post office offer a drop off service so you don't have to wait for parcels to be labelled and weighed.
You can just drop them off and they will sort. Think it is a sort of top up card so you just buy credit and keep topping up when you use it up.

 

[julieMD]

I have used Hermes for over a year and so far no issues, I use them for a 3-5 day delivery and Royal Mail for Next day. I drop the parcels at collection points.

Hermes are cheaper then Royal Mail but Royal Mail offer a faster delivery turnaround. It depends on what you need and how much you are willing to pay.

For a small parcel, up to 1kg, signed for Hermes charge £3.75( 3-5 days), Royal Mail 1st class is £4.40. (usually 1 day ).

 

[Parcelhub]

Which eCommerce platform are you selling via?

 

[Jayser100]

If you are confident you will be selling up to 30 items a day then you can use the Royal Mail daily collection service (PPI) whereby they come to you once a day to pick it all up. The annual fee for this is expensive but, if you spend £15,000 on postage a year the fee is waived. The postage you pay as a PPI customer is significantly discounted compared to what you pay over the Post Office counter. If you become a PPI customer, you will have to pay the annual fee initially but they will refund it if you spend 15K in your first year. The fee is now £787.00 per annum.