Courier unreasonable behaviour

basill

JasonLVC wrote:

if it's CityLink I buy elsewhere, they are that bad. They rarely, if at all, leave missed delivery cards, you can never get through to th depot. .

I get a lot of work deliveries to home and client sites via Citylink, to give them credit they always leave a card, but they dont wait!!

B

codetown

Thanks for the replies and comments.
Of course what mcelhinney says shows clearly that couriers DO know what route to take in the morning as they need to deliver certain packages at certain times. While I understand they might not plan much in advance, I disagree totally with the model generally used today to tell the customer 'it is your problem'. They (City Link) do deliveries and should try to help, not create further problems!

Most shops do not offer any options whatsoever. They do not even tell you which particular courier they give delivery to (unless you call and ask), let alone giving any timing option as the ones that CityLink might offer to their customers (i.e. the shop sellers). So let's not start the argument 'you have what you pay', as it is not true. You have simply what others decide to give you with no choice!

As for the telephone: I absolutely disagree. A courier driver is an employee of a company, not somebody out for a joy-ride! He should be doing his best to deliver (not just run and move goods back and forth). If the company gives him a mobile phone (as they do) why can't they contact him to ask when he *thinks* he will deliver in a particular area. And the reply is just a 'in the morning' or 'in the evening' that would be fine for a customer!
I work in an office and receive calls all day (even if this is not at all my main activity) but I reply them as those calling on the other end need help/guidance/support. What should I do? Not answering or hiding my telehone number? That might increase the number of lines of code I write.
But would disrupt other people needing help in other tasks.
If a driver gets 20-30 calls in a day, what is the problem? Those calls will help people receiving and him not having to redeliver those 20-30 parcels! So that certainly will reduce the total load on the system.
I am not pretending to have the exact time, but have the possibility to have rough indications on when it is expected! And if they fear people might call more than once and disturb, then they should at least call themselves the driver and ask for indications! I am absolutely convinced that this should be the norm.

I also had bad experiences with CityLink man coming silently with prewritten cards and running away. That is disgusting and I had been waiting for hours there and they just could not care less!

codetown

lister wrote:

I am frankly in awe of companies who manage to give even an am/pm specification.

If you think you can do better, you have spotted a serious niche in the market and could make your fortune - get planning your business.

Think about the practicalities of this. For me, your expectations are utterly unrealistic.

I comment on this and I just tell that the processes courier companies have in place can (and will) improve. I am not in the business of driving/delivering, but I can ensure you that a company can fit today a GPS with a GSM modem which will do real-time tracking of position of the van and report to station automatically with less than 100 pounds. This should be a wise investment for them!

The only necessary change in procedure they follow today would be to record which parcel goes in which van. Then the system could automatically show you where the parcel is. If an operator at CityLink controls the map history he could then immediately see the rough route that driver is following and even predict the time it should take approximately (again +- 2 hours) to get to a particular customer calling. Of course the uncertainties would still be there because of traffic, little variations in routes, road condition etc. But roughly you cannot go that far if you know where your guy is and which route he will be following!

This is basic very old (10+ years) and extremly simple low-cost technology that would improve productivity of courier (and customer happiness) a lot!
And that's JUST to tell you what can be done with technology.

The exact same thing can be achieved today just calling the driver and asking him where he is now and what route he is taking! that will give indications...

Hebejebe_3

lister wrote:

I am frankly in awe of companies who manage to give even an am/pm specification.

.

It's funny how they manage to give you a set time if you cough up £20 though isn't it?

And as for Citylink leaving cards... I was blatently lied to over this issue. They insisted they had carded me at 17.15. I had not seen them - I was loading my car up at the time and only the invisible man or an ace commando could have got past me. After many frustrated phone calls was told that the address label had been damaged. Then the manager had the nerve to phone me up and say "I BELIEVE (you mean you don't actually know??) we have a parcel of yours, can my colleague who lives on your street drop it in after work?"

I told him no because I had cancelled the order. 10 am next morning up trundles a Citylink van and delivers the parcel. And guess what, the address label was perfect.:mad: I have dreamt of going over to neighbours delivery van with big tin of black paint and rechristening it Sh*ttyLink. :money: :rotfl:

chalky_bertie

Been there and done that and now a manager within a well-known courier company and i'm afraid to say that people on here who think the driver can phone up and tell you when your parcel is coming are talking a load of rubbish. And for giving the mobile number out then you are living in a dream world - just what I would have wanted, some tom, !!!!!! and harry phoning me up every 5 mins to see where the parcel is, they would have just got on my bloody nerves and I would have tried less hard to deliver there parcel (ie if not in it would go straight back and not try to get someone to keep it for them!).

The person who thinks that the driver may know there route the night before - hello, do you know how parcel delivery works? All of our parcels come in during the afternoon / night but the driver will not see them until they come to work the next day and once they have sorted out the parcels will they then know their running order and that is probably not 100% dependant on alot of other factors mentioned above. In our depot I can just see how that will work - "driver comes back PM, can I just butt in the sort operation and check on the parcels for tomorrow while they are sorting about 10000 parcels a day / night" - oh yes I can see the answer now - 4 + 3 letters and it's rude!!
Alot of the companies do have Tracking systems to see where / who has the parcel on the van and can then tell where it is. If someone phones the depot to ask them what time it will be and the parcel went out the day before then the office staff will usually tell them the time from the previous day but won't be able to promise anything but usually ut is around the same time, give or take an hour. If it's the first day out then theres probably little chance of them being given a time.

I shall give you an example - some of our drivers go out with upwards of 170 parcels on the van per day for a route which dependant on the area can be very large. Now to get them all delivered that day is an achievement but if people started ringing them up and asking for their parcel NOW then there is a very high chance that quite a few of them wouldn't get delivered which would then leave people with no parcel at all. Take your choice?

I have got to admit Citylink could have done better but asking for the drivers phone number has just really got my back-up, what a bloody redicolous request.

CalleyW - not a job you would want to do - people think it is a doddle and I can assure you, it ain't!!

codetown

Bertie,
your experience is appreciated. In your words I read exactly what I already thought, i.e. that with a knowledge of where the driver is and the route the delivery company should give rough indications to customers who query about the delivery.

Maybe the phone number thing has been misinterpreted. I absolutely do not care to have the phone number of the driver! but if you call the company and get told no to everything and don't know to everything else, you might thing: ok if they don't want to call him or can't care to do their job, let's try to find out myself roughly where it is!
But if the depot had indicated any rough time I would certainly not have asked it!
As previously said, I disagree with the vision that a call 'disturbs' the driver. Yes he might be quicker if he does not get any call, but should this be his goal? This also connects with the problem of running away without even knocking to the door.

It seems like drivers/couriers are interested in moving stock and not actually delivering! And at the end if you have to deliver a second time, isn't that extra work wasted? Why run so much and avoid calls that could save you a second visit alltogether??

I am sure that with an indication of +-2 hours I would ALWAYS be able to get home/find someone to get delivery and that applies to many more persons!

Bertie: which delivery companies already have the live tracking system installed and can give rough indications today? (just to know for the future! I happily pay 2-3 pounds more to have a better service)

trickytrolleys

I also (having worked for citylink) find the idea of giving out the drivers number ridiculous - if each person who he had a parcel for called him once!!............... On the other hand if you had called the branch i worked in then we WOULD have found out for you and let you know a rough time, BUT we were a small branch and most of our deliveries were done by around midday - but some drivers will have hundreds of parcels on his van and simply do not have the time to go giving ETA's on next day parcels - some branches wouldnt even give us an ETA for a next day parcels until at least the afternoon - these drivers are under immense pressure and could really do without people whining about them - as I said before if you want it by a certain time then pay for that service!

hjb123

If I was expecting a parcel to be delivered on a certain day I wouldnt be ringing the courier to find out what time it was going to be delivered. I think the OP is being totally unreasonable in their expectations and demands! If they had been told a certain day I would just wait on that day or ask a neighbour to keep a look out if it was something important.

codetown

Well, it is clear that everyone has different standards in mind.
If I had a choice from the seller I would go for a different package with a more precise delivery time but they don't give it!

As for my expectations being 'unreasonable', bertie itself, who is working in this field, said that already today some companies with real-time tracking and data from routes on the previous date can give you rough estimates of +-1 hour!!! I am sure this will become the norm sooner or later and people will soon say it was ridicolous having to wait all day home and not knowing when the courier was expected!

Few years ago people might have said that asking a date in which a parcel was arriving was unreasonable.... Nowadays every delivery company does a day estimate. Given the technology to do the tracking is there and low-cost I am sure it is just a question of time and we will see it applied everywhere.

In the meatime, City Link bye-bye.... Next time I buy something I will explicitly ask for Royal Mail delivery even if I have to pay double!

trickytrolleys

I may be abit out of date in relation to parcel tracking as I havent woked in the industry for a few years but when I was it was merely a way of seeing when the parcel was scanned into the delivery depot - once it was on the van the tracking was worthless (in relation to the delivery) - im pretty sure the tracking will not say "you parcel is five miles from your house" - its merely a security thing that the parcel companies decided to put on the internet to stop people calling them to see if they had received the parcel to be delivered !!