Cheap Parcel Delivery Official Discussion

rich130867

parcelmonkey_company_representative wrote: »

Afternoon everyone,

I am also known as TuftyMatt but have had my status changed to company representative so I can post about specific questions relating to my business.

I am not on here to plug Parcelmonkey 20 times a day and will not be quoting our prices etc but just want to assure customers that if they have issues or ideas then I am around to talk with and try to help.

Thanks.:)

Perhaps I might get an answer here then?
For the 2nd time in a week my parcels have not been collected, with no explanation. I try calling your companies number, but it just puts you on hold forever then cuts you off. I try e-mailing, but the response is that you will rebook collections tomorrow, and I should relabel all my parcels with new numbers.
When I check with Citylink the 6 items due out yesterday, they show as cancelled by yourselves this morning???
This is bad service, bad customer relations, and leads me to believe that your service promises much more than it can deliver.

parcelmonkey_company_representative

Hi rich130867 and welcome to MSE.

Some details would help me look into your case please.

rich130867

parcelmonkey_company_representative wrote: »

Hi rich130867 and welcome to MSE.

Some details would help me look into your case please.

My account with yourselves is under the name TMPapers
If you look back at that account you will find the 2 days of missed collections I have suffered over the past week.
Todays parcels have just been picked up. I spoke to the driver (always the same person) and he advises they never had any parcels to collect from me yesterday. Having checked the tracking numbers for Citylink it shows Parcel Monkey cancelled all 6 early this morning?? It has been resolved by the re-issue of 6 new bookings and labels, and the goods will now go tomorrow.
But can you answer the following for mine and probably other prospective customers;
1/ How can collections be completely missed?
2/ When a problem happens, why does it take me (the customer) to chase you (the supplier) for resolution. Pro-active advice of an issue is so much easier to swallow, and solidifies a business relationship.
3/ Why is your phone (0203 0516748) never answered, except for the awful recorded hold message?
4/ Can you provide an option to print delivery labels without the monkey and associated advertising jargon that currently gets printed out?
5/ I never had a reply to my email with regards to becoming a business user
6/ Are there any plans to start competing against RM on the 1-2kg parcels - surely a massive market?
7/ Is there an option to have daily collections. For customers like myself who have switched allegiances from another courier, I send parcels daily and having a 'reserved' slot would make sense.
8/ How do i claim for compensation, I have had to mail my customers and advise there has been a delivery !!!!-up, and compensated them out of my own pocket for the late arrival of their purchases. How can I claim these non-collections back?

Hope you can spend the time to answer the above, this is a popular forum and direct correspondence here will show very good intentions to other users.
And of course I fully accept that no courier service is perfect. I switched companies due to missing parcels with last courier company, I really hope you guys sort out your communications and tweak the services as there is an ever-growing market to exploit for an economic parcel service in the UK.
Richard.

pufferfish_2

rich130867 wrote: »

4/ Can you provide an option to print delivery labels without the monkey and associated advertising jargon that currently gets printed out?

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showpost.html?p=30647927&postcount=789

parcelmonkey_company_representative

Hi Rich130867,

I see the time of 08:47 today for the shipments being stopped but will need to pass this over to the IT team to find out why this happened or who made it happen. I will get back to you though.

Did you try our live chat for help or advice? This is open during the working day and should make most issues much quicker to resolve.

I am not based in our call centre so don't know the details regarding the phone number. As I have said though the "Live chat" form of contact is the most used method since we have launched it and is free.

In terms of advertising our business on the labels printed can you really blame us and in our shoes would you not do the same?
We want your parcel to arrive on time with no issues and have a success rate of 98.5% so as you can imagine we want people to see who provided the booking service so they may also use us.

I will look into the business user option for you.

1-2 kg market is massive as you say but difficult to beat the Royal Mail. This is not on our list of future projects currently.

We are working on projects with our couriers to cover slot times etc but as you must understand this could be a big problem for us if you have an hour slot and the driver is 5 minutes late. Watch this space is all I can say at the moment.

We pay compensation if we make mistakes and if our courier companies do then we claim from them and pay the customer. Others who have posted on this forum may wish to confirm this for you and your case will be looked into and I will get back to you when I know more.

I hope this helps for now and thanks for your custom.

cyberbob

parcelmonkey_company_representative wrote: »

In terms of advertising our business on the labels printed can you really blame us and in our shoes would you not do the same?

I don't think anyone has issues with you advertising its the size of the logo's etc you use which are much larger than your competitors. Its also the fact that your logo and ape obsession can make parcels look very unprofessional and not the sort of image I wish to convey to my customers

anon_ymous

Right guys, currently Im (going to) use PM for mainland UK deliveries for PC's up to 10kg in weight and you can guess the dimensions(Just the desktop)
They are cheap for UK mainland deliveries, however not so cheap abroad or even to the channel Islands.

Admittedly, I havent sold a PC out of Europe, and admittedly the only two countries Ive sent to in Europe are Ireland and Malta, but would be nice to know:
the cheapest parcel delivery companies to use when sending parcels abroad, so that I can amend my listings

I highly doubt Id get any US buyers, because the goods are a lot cheaper over there than here! And theyll have to pay customs fees etc...

pufferfish_2

parcelmonkey_company_representative wrote: »

We pay compensation if we make mistakes and if our courier companies do then we claim from them and pay the customer. Others who have posted on this forum may wish to confirm this

I can confirm that I was promised a refund for a shipment in early January and am still waiting for this.

The latest is that ParcelMonkey claim they aren't able to process PayPal refunds - I'm sure they continue to take payments ok though.

Good luck with your refund.

burnsguitarman

Any ideas on the cheapest way to send a 8kg guitar (hard case 108x39x13cms £300 value) to Dubai, every where Ive looked seems to be very expensive.

Kayster

I had a missed collection with Parcelmonkey using city link on Monday. This was squarely the fault of Citylink driver who failed to collect and this is a recurrence of the same problem that in the past caused me to swear never to use Citylink again.
I spoke to citylink local depot who did genuinely seem to care and I told them I had i stopped using them before because of this very problem and they took some time to explain to me that they used to be a franchise but were now a proper business who did care and would investigate why the driver never made it . It was too late in the day to arrange another collection but they would collect the next day. I declined the offer and instead I decided to jump in the car that Monday evening and take the parcels to the Citylink depot as i do not like letting people down. Both parcels arrived OK the next day .
I sent an email to PM explaining what had happened and they offered me a refund of the charges for the parcels. There isn’t much more PM could have done on this occasion other than apologise on behalf of Citylink and my refund has arrived as promised. I’ve had missed collections before with other parcel bookers and not received a refund only a rearrangement so PM went the extra mile on this occasion.

All carriers will let you down eventually but my experience is Citylink will let you down more often than DHL and DHL let you down more often than UPS. UPS are the tops in my book but this depends on the drivers in your area and may well vary from area to area.

I hope Citylink succeed in their efforts to improve as competition is a good thing.