June 2, 2005

Couriers

Ok, yes it's been a while... I haven't been enthused enough to update this thing for a bit.

Anyway... Courier companies. Why are some of them so flippin' useless? I've arranged a few deliveries lately (what, with Junior being fairly imminent and all) and most have arrived when the supplier has stated.

When things go well, courier companies are fine (as are most companies really, I guess you only find out what respect a company has for its customers when something goes a bit wrong). When things do go wrong however, they can be an absolute nightmare to deal with.

I ordered some U2 tickets for Manchester Stadium a while ago when they went on sale and finally got notification early in the week that they were going to be delivered on Wednesday via a company called Special Mail Services of whom I have never heard.

So, I did a bit of googling round to see what people thought of them in general and to see whether there was a phone number in case the driver didn't show. I found that people's opinion of them is very low.

I am now adding my voice to the dissent, they didn't turn up on Wednesday when they said they were going to. So far they haven't turned up today either. I've now used their website to book a delivery to me at work to see if they will turn up here instead. There is no phone number on their website and my googling for one hasn't turned anything up either.

What I did find, however, was the name and email address of their "Head of Customer Care" so here it is:

I know there are thousands of addresses to send the U2 tix to but a company should never over-promise and under-deliver. I am particularly hacked off because there doesn't appear to be any reliable way to get in touch with this company - apparently there is an 0870 number but, given a previous post about the evils of 0870 numbers I would be reluctant to call it even if I had it! Although, if it was the only way to get hold of tickets I paid a fortune for I guess I would.

The gig is on the 15th and I am now very very nervous that I'm not going to get the tickets in time.

What are your tales of woe with courier companies?

Posted by Garry at June 2, 2005 11:34 AM
Comments

Oh couriers! Don't get me started! May I be a bore please...

Garry, I work in a freight forwarding company (logistics, getting stuff from A-B worldwide, customs work etc) and couriers tend to be the bane of our lives. These mailing giants do, as you say, over promise and under deliver.

I speak mostly from a world courier angle, but the Americans are obsessed with couriering everything whenever possible because they automatically think it is the best way. We've had urgent turbine parts for powerstations delivered to us by courier, worth thousands of £'s, and therefore worth a fair bit to Her Majesty's customs. However, couriers have a special deal whereby they can block their goods together for customs clearance, so of course when these arrived in the UK, there was the most horrendous paper trail to sort out because the couriers didn't send it through customs properly.

The fact is we could often beat the couriers on time, by getting a turbine part out of the USA and to the powerstation in the UK in a little over 24 hours. It took some dedication and a willing driver to pick up at midnight and drive through the night (usually me!) but we did what the couriers could not possibly do.

The same goes for exports - the couriers batch everything together and the upshot is that export good slip through the customs trade statistics net, and the UK's Trade stats are out of whack.

Next up, couriers who deliver our lovely DVD's to our door from USA/Canada or wherever - ever had one of those bills for VAT and Duty for customs clearance? I'll bet you 9 times out of ten they are incorrect and you're paying too much (or in one case for me not enough) to the Taxman. I'm not saying we should avoid import taxes, but these guys need to get it right. Unfortunately the ignorance of the public over customs duty rates is such that nobody notices. Unfotunately it's my job and I am a Customs duty rate geek! Every time I get one of these bills from DHL or UPS I always check it thoroughly and it's always wrong.

As for your instance, it seems they would have done better to chuck it in the 1st Class Royal Mail - it would have got to you quicker. I'm not that keen on the Royal Mail either, but compared to some they do a better job.

Sorry to rant, but you touched a raw nerve there!

Posted by: Gavin Kagan at June 2, 2005 4:00 PM

Have many tails of woe too:

Securicor Omega who left £500 worth of computer propped up against the front door.

Parcel Farce who regularly deliver our parcels to random addresses in the street and don't bother to tell us which one. If they can't do that, on one occasion I've had a Parcel Farce driver fake a signature and prop our parcel against the front door! (Worth noting at this point that Parcel Farce apparently charge their drivers 50p for coming back to base without having delivered it somewhere - so the drivers are positively encouraged to get rid of them somehow...)

Amazon are currently Parcelnet who have local deliverers, which of course means that we have no way of contacting them.

I've also got a phone company coming via D(rop it) H(ide it) L(ose it), and you can probably tell what I think of them!

Having said that, in our current house even basic Royal Mail is a pain as we moved from RG40, which is Wokingham sorting office into RG2 which is Reading sorting office and much more difficult to get to. There is currently a campaign in the village to get our postcode changed to RG40 though.

Posted by: Richard at June 3, 2005 4:56 PM