Which courier(s) do you use?

[anonuk]

We currently use a combination of Royal Mail (for small parcels), DPD Local and APC but are looking to a) reduce costs and b) simplify things.

Paying £2.95 for second class parcels,
Around £8.50 for both DPD and APC (inc vat)


I’ve been looking at Despatch Bay and they largely use DX and Parcelforce, while another company (Inxpress) use DHL. All have very competitive rates.

Just curious to hear what courier you guys and girls use, what sort of rates you pay, and whether they are any good.

 

[Mr D]

Royal Mail
APC
UPS

If booking courier I often look on parcel2go - but will still tend to stick to the above list I know will deliver.

 

[anonuk]

Royal Mail
APC
UPS

If booking courier I often look on parcel2go - but will still tend to stick to the above list I know will deliver.

Not had much dealings with UPS.

My main reason for looking is that we send posters out which are boxed in 75x8x8cm boxes. They only weigh about 400g, but APC and DHL charge £8.50. Just booked a trial delivery through Despatch Bay using Parcelforce and they came to £6.82 each.

If I was willing to go with Hermes (whcih I'm not), Parcel2Go would have been about £3.00

 

[Mr D]

Use UPS mostly for expensive foreign sales. APC for UK expensive sales, especially fragile.
Bulk of the stuff is royal mail click and drop - simple, cost effective.

 

[Martin Patfield]

InXpress have access to multiple couriers so why are they only giving you that one option?

I signed up to InXpress on the basis that we have largely awkward / ugly freight in Whiteboards. Everything is custom made and no specific set size.

 

[anonuk]

InXpress have access to multiple couriers so why are they only giving you that one option?

I signed up to InXpress on the basis that we have largely awkward / ugly freight in Whiteboards. Everything is custom made and no specific set size.

To be fair, InXpress gave us quotes for the smaller parcels but were based on Hermes which I do not want to use, and the DHL quote is the only parcel quote they gave so assuming that it was the cheapest they have available.

Quite happy with the DHL price but not used them before so not sure what their service is like.

 

[Martin Patfield]

I liked DHL. They have not long in the past bought out UK Mail which was towards the lower end in service and cost. I hope they weren't dragged down to UK Mail's service level.
I have been out of the game a little while in terms of shipping as we have our own vehicles so can't give an up to date opinion on usage.

 

[CHUKTC]

Re UK deliveries we use UPS for larger parcels (over 5kg). If you sign up for an account with them you can negotiate much better rates than those published, for smaller consignments royal mail or Parcel2go.

 

[Ashley_Price]

This is one of those subjects where no matter who one person says is good, others will say is terrible.

For years I used Initial Citylink (before they went bust) and never had a problem. Yet on this forum, back in those days the number of people who would complain about Citylink. I wondered if I was using a different Citylink to everyone else.

 

[AndyMuir9]

I mainly use Royal Mail for orders in the UK and DHL or UPS for international orders. Never had any major issues with any of these companies.

 

[Ashley_Price]

When I had an office supplies business, occasionally we needed a courier, and believe it or not, we found Hermes were very reliable. (Waiting for the negative responses now )

 

[anonuk]

When I had an office supplies business, occasionally we needed a courier, and believe it or not, we found Hermes were very reliable. (Waiting for the negative responses now )

We’ve not specifically had any bad experience with Hermes (except the fact they fail to collect every time we book a collection because the delivery driver in our area is lazy).

My hesitance in using Hermes comes from comments from customers who have indicated that they would not buy from us if we used Hermes.

We are quite happy with Royal Mail for the small parcels (apart from not being able to get business rates).

 

[Greg Thomas]

We used to use Parcels2go until, we had an issue with insurance - which put us off, but the prices were the best.
We use Click and drop service via Royal Mail - All done in the office for goods we are shipping directly.
For Amazon we use 24hr tracked Royal Mail for prime deliveries and for Etsy we use their built in post labeling service which is Royal Mail again.

 

[JEREMY HAWKE]

Everybody uses Jeremy Hawke Couriers now it's the the future

 

[Mr D]

i use to find services with free delivery thru UK . i don't like to waste my time looking for delivery services . It is much easier when you order anything , and they have their own delivery service .For example the last time i ordered car supplies ,they had got free delivery and i didn't have to find a delivery service for this .

As a customer of mail order by various means for over 40 years I can say I have never spent time looking for delivery services. I leave that to the sender. Must have ordered over 10,000 items personally in that time.
Appears common for the sender not the receiver to organise delivery service.

 

[Guy Incognito]

TNT / FedEx at the moment but might well be moving as they can't supply enough trucks for the volume of oversize items we send out. Looking at Tuffnells.