Yodel - shockingly bad - email address anyone?

mwbrown

Gotta say we have just had the opposite experience with YODEL.... wife decided yesterday she wanted to upgrade her mobile and placed the order with talkmobile about 1.30pm, the phone has arrived today at 1.05pm.

Pursey

Each and every experience I have had with Yodel has been appalling. It has got to the point where I contact companies prior to purchasing and will not purchase if they are the courier.
The list of problems is literally too long for me to go in to, but I will say that my Mum has waited in today since 7 and on my insistence contacted Yodel to check that it is being delivered today (as arranged) and unsurprisingly they told her that it isn't as it has already been delivered on Saturday, which is completely untrue!

Evilm

brokenbetty wrote: »

Legislation? I doubt there's an issue since it's voluntary - if they don't want to be photographed they can refuse delivery. Make it part of T&Cs so the customer is aware before committing and they don't get delivery refunded if they refuse. And if it's not the customer and they are prepared to sign but not be photographed, is that not a great big red flashing light that you shouldn't be leaving it with them in the first place?

I'm NOT Yodels customer though. Amazon are. I've even asked them to NOT use Yodel and they can't mark an account with a request like that. So no.. for me its not voluntary. Its a case of wait and see who Amazon choose this week for my delivery!

I'm actually tempted to call Yodel tomorrow and enquire as to what their "blacklist" policy is so that they won't accept the parcel and Amazon will have to use someone else.

I don't see why it should be a case of "if you want to order stuff online you agree to delivery drivers taking photos of you on the doorstep". I don't know these people who turn up on my doorstep and a signature should either match mine or not** and why should I have to subject myself to anything further.

And in my case (which is not the OP in thread) they had delivered something the prior day. Now they left it in the porch (as I wasn't in - one of the reasons I want to mark my account Royal Mail or DHL only as they have local depots I can get to) but if I had been in and opened the door they could have tried to claim that that photo was for the second parcel "delivered" the next day. Yes, file timestamps on the image could disprove it but its just another ridiculous step to get through to actually sort out a non-delivery and would that information actually be made available upon request?

If they seriously have far more parcels than they actually can deliver they should stop accepting them from the retailers or tell the retailers that they can only deal with a maximum number of parcels per day*. In my job (fabrication/manufacturing area) if we can't produce the requested amount of parts in the time scale required we tell them and try to work out a new timescale or whether its worth us putting on overtime/more casual staff. We retain more clients by refusing an impossible order than taking the order without comment and having a furious client when we don't deliver on time.

Supermarkets/High Street retailers up their staff levels and working hours in early/mid November in order to get people relatively trained up for the end of November to cover the extra demand. I'm sure Amazon and their marketplace customers have extra overtime to cover the extra demand as well. Surely the delivery industry should do so too?

*I accept there will be a uneven regional split of which depots need to deal with stuff and it won't be easy to work out the correct cut off point.
** Leaving the issue of verification of signatures aside and stopping people scrawing "mickey mouse" instead. I would suggest asking for some ID to confirm a name but I do accept 1) not everybody will want to do that and 2) not everyone HAS photo ID.

custardy

Evilm wrote: »

I'm NOT Yodels customer though. Amazon are. I've even asked them to NOT use Yodel and they can't mark an account with a request like that. So no.. for me its not voluntary. Its a case of wait and see who Amazon choose this week for my delivery!

I'm actually tempted to call Yodel tomorrow and enquire as to what their "blacklist" policy is so that they won't accept the parcel and Amazon will have to use someone else.

I don't see why it should be a case of "if you want to order stuff online you agree to delivery drivers taking photos of you on the doorstep". I don't know these people who turn up on my doorstep and a signature should either match mine or not** and why should I have to subject myself to anything further.

And in my case (which is not the OP in thread) they had delivered something the prior day. Now they left it in the porch (as I wasn't in - one of the reasons I want to mark my account Royal Mail or DHL only as they have local depots I can get to) but if I had been in and opened the door they could have tried to claim that that photo was for the second parcel "delivered" the next day. Yes, file timestamps on the image could disprove it but its just another ridiculous step to get through to actually sort out a non-delivery and would that information actually be made available upon request?

If they seriously have far more parcels than they actually can deliver they should stop accepting them from the retailers or tell the retailers that they can only deal with a maximum number of parcels per day*. In my job (fabrication/manufacturing area) if we can't produce the requested amount of parts in the time scale required we tell them and try to work out a new timescale or whether its worth us putting on overtime/more casual staff. We retain more clients by refusing an impossible order than taking the order without comment and having a furious client when we don't deliver on time.

Supermarkets/High Street retailers up their staff levels and working hours in early/mid November in order to get people relatively trained up for the end of November to cover the extra demand. I'm sure Amazon and their marketplace customers have extra overtime to cover the extra demand as well. Surely the delivery industry should do so too?

*I accept there will be a uneven regional split of which depots need to deal with stuff and it won't be easy to work out the correct cut off point.
** Leaving the issue of verification of signatures aside and stopping people scrawing "mickey mouse" instead. I would suggest asking for some ID to confirm a name but I do accept 1) not everybody will want to do that and 2) not everyone HAS photo ID.

you realise Amazon has a massive fulfilment network?
its not as simple as select X item from shelve and pass to X carrier.
The delivery industry does have overtie but as with any business there is a balance on costs/practicality and resources

Delivery_Driver

brokenbetty wrote: »

Why would you manually select each hour? You'd stop, and taking that schedule that you yourself put together in the morning, look at the next few on the list, work out how many you expect to get done in the next hour, select and auto-text 'em so they know you are coming.

Are you having a laugh?It was your idea about once an hour"4. drivers work out their schedule. Through the day, once an hour they select the deliveries they expect to make in the next hour and press a button that sends an automatic "we expect to be with you in the next hour" text. A response is not expected or necessary- the purpose of this text is so that the customer knows it's not a good time to nip out for a pint of milk"
Also, I don't put together a schedule, I put the parcels in order and work off that.The schedule is in my head.Or do you want me to waste more time making a schedule up and get even less parcels delivered?
A more sensible idea would be for me to input timeslots for whole postcodes as it would cover all the parcels in one swoop but this still isn't practical as the company would then have to pay for 200 texts sent winging out.Sure, they'd get a bulk discount but it would still cost extra money.

In other words, you do all that skilled stuff you do today then you take advantage of technology to minimise the number of failed deliveries.


Problem is the recipient doesn't get to make that choice. Would I choose to get a £350 phone delivered by a bargain basement outfit? No. But that's what happened.

Yes you do, many online firms offer different delivery options.There is also the freedom of choice of using a different website.

Delivery_Driver

Doc_N wrote: »

Sorry, but there's a bit of a difference between someone delivering parcels and someone with the business sense, vision and drive to change Yodel into something that works - which it very clearly doesn't now.

Thats obvious, but I am speaking from having seen many different systems come and go and a darn sight more clue about how the business works than people just reading a bit on the internet, guessing a bit more then thinking they know how to make a perfect system that is not applicable to the service bought and paid for by Yodel's customers ie the firms who use us, not the individuals.

On the whole it does work, the vast majority of parcels are delivered as expected and we meet customers service level targets or they would take their business elsewhere.These companies want to keep their customers happy, but they also want to make a profit.

Delivery_Driver

Evilm wrote: »

Supermarkets/High Street retailers up their staff levels and working hours in early/mid November in order to get people relatively trained up for the end of November to cover the extra demand. I'm sure Amazon and their marketplace customers have extra overtime to cover the extra demand as well. Surely the delivery industry should do so too?

We are currently working 11 hours+ a day mon-fri and then saturdays and sundays too.How much extra can we do?We are also governed by driving laws.
I agree though, the extra staff should be there but managers are scared stiff of getting too much cover and having idle hands as it makes them look bad to their bosses.
Extra workers are brought in but they cannot do the same work as regular drivers.It could easily take 4-5 inexperienced drivers to do the work of just 1 route driver and numbers like this are not viable when there are dozens of rounds in each depot.

Gothicfairy

Delivery_Driver wrote: »

Yes you do, many online firms offer different delivery options.There is also the freedom of choice of using a different website.

But that only works if you know the delivery company that company / website uses.
I didn't know Boots used Yodel until my order was processed and there was no option of delivery either.

It is just not that simple and although there are plenty of good delivery companies out there Yodel don't seem to be one and if I am not given a choice how am I mean to avoid them ? I have already started asking every ebay seller I am thinking of buying from what company they use and half have replied Yodel so lost my custom but that is hardly fair on anyone just because this company can not manage to deliver the parcels they are paid to deliver.

[Deleted User]

I have to speak as I find and am very happy with yodel (sw) I get a lot of internet deliveries and they have never let me down. Driver is always very pleasant too

brokenbetty

Delivery_Driver wrote: »

Are you having a laugh?It was your idea about once an hour"4. drivers work out their schedule. Through the day, once an hour they select the deliveries they expect to make in the next hour and press a button that sends an automatic "

I hope you are better at reading addresses then you are at reading English. I'll spell it out for you.

1. Drivers work out their schedule at the start of the day, as you do already
2. You enter the order you expect to deliver them into a computer. You say you do this by stacking the van? That's great, you can scan them in as you load them so about 0.1 s extra work per parcel
3. Once an hour, look at your ordered list and select the deliveries you expect to make in the next hour. In fact just select the last one you expect to make and let the system do the rest.

If it saves you a single failed delivery you have made back more than the time it took to set it op.

Or you could just keep failing your customers and claiming anyone who complains doesn't understand how hard you have it