Yodel nightmares

stuartroberts

if i were you i would get in touch with either TNT or Fedex direct, if you send more than 100 per month, you are likley to get a decent rate and good service

stuartroberts

what always gets me is everyone wants top service for nothing, i reccomend to put yourself in the middle and if u are sending goods out regular then anyone of the above

RFW

stuartroberts wrote: »

what always gets me is everyone wants top service for nothing, i reccomend to put yourself in the middle and if u are sending goods out regular then anyone of the above

When we started on Ebay (10 years +) we were using resellers for a while and then it took off so we had our own contracts, then when business dipped a bit and the couriers started adding on extra charges for anything they could think of (30p invoice charge from one of them!) I had a look at resellers again.

At the time we ended up with Yodel they were still DHL, and despite the odd scare story there was no reason to believe they gave a bad service.

If you do sell on Ebay, it is easy to get marked down on postage charges, the customer wants to pay as little as possible. As a supplier I'd be happy to use UPS all the time, but with their additional charges I'd have to charge between £8 and £10 for a 20kg parcel and long term my customers wouldn't like it.

Last time I looked FedEx were also a little bit too pricey, but had some good multiple consignment deals, we mostly send one parcel to one address. As far as I can recall I contacted TNT a few times and they never got back in touch.

I'm back with Parcelforce now with a rate I'm happy with, this isn't the busiest time of year for us so no point switching for a while.

Obviously_the_best

RFW, you ought to enquire with UKMail about your parcels, they seem to offer the best rates for smaller senders

Strapped

RFW wrote: »

When we started on Ebay (10 years +) we were using resellers for a while and then it took off so we had our own contracts, then when business dipped a bit and the couriers started adding on extra charges for anything they could think of (30p invoice charge from one of them!) I had a look at resellers again.

At the time we ended up with Yodel they were still DHL, and despite the odd scare story there was no reason to believe they gave a bad service.

If you do sell on Ebay, it is easy to get marked down on postage charges, the customer wants to pay as little as possible. As a supplier I'd be happy to use UPS all the time, but with their additional charges I'd have to charge between £8 and £10 for a 20kg parcel and long term my customers wouldn't like it.

Last time I looked FedEx were also a little bit too pricey, but had some good multiple consignment deals, we mostly send one parcel to one address. As far as I can recall I contacted TNT a few times and they never got back in touch.

I'm back with Parcelforce now with a rate I'm happy with, this isn't the busiest time of year for us so no point switching for a while.

Agree with this. I had someone complain recently about paying £5.95 for next day delivery. As a small business, I defy anyone to find next day delivery for less than that. But on eBay, it looks expensive. Yet I am reluctant to add to the price of the item and give eBay more fees.

RFW

Obviously_the_best wrote: »

RFW, you ought to enquire with UKMail about your parcels, they seem to offer the best rates for smaller senders

One of my business neighbours put me off them quite a bit, they had quite a lot of damaged items and couldn't get them to pay on claims, I'll have a look at a few when I'm ready to have a change. It seems like there will be a shake up when Christmas is over. I know a fairly big reseller is about to start some heavy marketing not sure how that will materialise yet.

In other news one of my Yodel claims has apparently been processed, I'll wait for the cheque to get excited but at least I got some contact.

scotone

richto wrote: »

Read the link above with over 1,000 reviews with an average score of 1.1/5 when the minimum rating is 1!

Other couriers dont come close to such awful ratings.

I had one awful experience with them a couple of weeks ago when I ordered an item from Amazon. It shipped in 1 day to my local depot and then sat there for over a week without moving. Phone calls to customer services were next to useless. They told me they had sent several emails to the branch but there was no reply. They repeatedly told me that it had been put out for delivery the next day, but wasnt. I asked them to escalate it, and I was told that this required a team leader and would take several days! I then asked them to deliver it on a Saturday as i had waited in most of the week. They told me that they don't deliver on weekends, but then the item was delivered on a Sunday!

Basically slow delivery and appalling customer service with no ability to actually speak to someone at your local branch, or even to someone who has a clue what is happening to your item.

I note that subsequent deliveries of the same item on the same service have come via Hermes, so maybe Amazon have had enough.

Amazon like a lot of companies use multi delivery companies

Obviously_the_best

RFW wrote: »

One of my business neighbours put me off them quite a bit, they had quite a lot of damaged items and couldn't get them to pay on claims, I'll have a look at a few when I'm ready to have a change. It seems like there will be a shake up when Christmas is over. I know a fairly big reseller is about to start some heavy marketing not sure how that will materialise yet.

In other news one of my Yodel claims has apparently been processed, I'll wait for the cheque to get excited but at least I got some contact.

Another one I've found good, but reasonably pricey, is city sprint, theyare a same day courier network who also offer next day, and when you request a collection they're often there within the hour, https://www.citysprint.co.uk

Faerie

I ordered an item from Amazon which according to the tracking was delivered on the 12th December. Amazon agreed to look into it and were told by Yodel that "It has been delivered and left in a safe place as you requested." Rubbish! They'd not left us with a failed delivery slip or told us where this "safe place" was. After another email from Yodel I decided to ring them direct only the number they gave me in their reply was a wrong number.

Once I found the right number the Yodel rep stated that my parcel had not actually left the local depot and had been left behind by the delivery drivers so therefore it was listed as 'delivered' on my tracking. She said that because it had been left for a few weeks I needed to contact Amazon to get another tracking number so she could dispatch the item! :rotfl:

Amazon have very kindly refunded the item, meanwhile I now have to go to town to get the present in time for Christmas! Grr!

Astuteboy

We trialled Yodel where I work. (we being a company that sends several thousand packages a month), the reason being they are dirt cheap.

They are terrible on every level. Customer complaints were high. Our customer service staff found it nigh on impossible to get through to them on the phone, so goodness only knows how frustrating it would be for our end users.

Our account manager went AWOL on a regular basis. And their technical staff (for the software integration etc) were also very slow and we often heard things like "in 2 months we'll be losing the licensing rights to this software, we're planning to write our own though".

In the end, we said no to them and they came back with an even lower rate but the damage had been done as it were.

They did admit problems and there was talk they were investing either in another call centre, or at least more staff, but it was much too little, too late for us to consider them.

So we stuck with Interlink Express (DPD) and were able to use the Yodel rate as a bit of leverage to get their price down further. Have previously used City Link, ANC and Fedex as well. We've never tried TNT as their prices have always been extortionate by comparison. We've found Interlink by far the best in terms of service versus value.