Yodel Couriers

aliaslotte

Just a bit of a moan about Yodel...

I ordered a top from Dorothy Perkins, paying an extra £6 for next day delivery. The website for Yodel states delivery is any time between 7am and 9pm, so I kept my fingers crossed that I would be lucky and they would come before or after I had finished work. I had also said it was okay to leave with a neighbour or to leave in my specified "safe place", in case I was out.

I returned from work yesterday to find they had taken the parcel away with them again. According to Yodel, the green card that was left meant it was some sort of secondary courier working on their behalf rather than a standard Yodel delivery driver. The information on the website (and on the card) said to call the phone number on the card to rearrange delivery. However, on my card, the phone number section was blank.

Today, I popped home from work in my lunchtime and found another missed delivery card waiting (the day before they had attempted to deliver at 12.30pm - hence my popping home to check). Again, there was no number left.

I called Yodel directly. The lady said the second card hadn't even been registered on their system (and it was no showing up on the online tracking either), so they hadn't bothered to put it through the system properly, as well as not putting their number on it. She was able to provide a number by tracking my name and address, thankfully.

I called the courier directly and the lady was very blunt, borderline rude and incredibly unhelpful. I explained the situation and that I can be home between 12.30pm and 1pm, or after 4pm. She said that was "too late" for her to deliver, but before 8am was too early. She said she was just going to attempt delivery again tomorrow, when she knew I was going to be out, and then send it back to the sender. How crackers is that?! She also said they no longer leave things in safe places or with neighbours - that is their policy.

Needless to say, I will be firing off an angry email regarding the situation. I appreciate that the sender is the customer, rather than me, but why on earth would they waste their time attempting to deliver when they know there will be no one in, rather than trying to come to some arrangement? (Heck, I even offered to meet her somewhere convenient for her if that was helpful, but that was a no go either.)

So much for next day delivery.

19lottie82

Firstly, all couriers have a planned route of drop offs, they can't divert just because a certain time suits a customer, if they did, their service would be even worse! You agreed to a delivery time of 7-9, the next day, when you placed the order. Yodel did, in fairness, stick to their end of the bargain, you just weren't in. So you can't really complain bout this I'm afraid.

HOWEVER, yes Yodel are SH!TT, BUT if you knew how much their couriers got paid, then you'd appreciate this. I think it's something like 43p a drop off (no mater if they have to go back 2 or 3 times), hence why they throw parcels over fences, don't fill in the "sorry we missed you" cards, and the like!

If you (well, not you, Dorothy Perkins!) pay peanuts , then you get monkeys. That's a simple fact.

All we can do to avoid the terrible service by Yodel is boycott online companies who use them.

Yodel_representative

aliaslotte wrote: »

Just a bit of a moan about Yodel...

I ordered a top from Dorothy Perkins, paying an extra £6 for next day delivery. The website for Yodel states delivery is any time between 7am and 9pm, so I kept my fingers crossed that I would be lucky and they would come before or after I had finished work. I had also said it was okay to leave with a neighbour or to leave in my specified "safe place", in case I was out.

I returned from work yesterday to find they had taken the parcel away with them again. According to Yodel, the green card that was left meant it was some sort of secondary courier working on their behalf rather than a standard Yodel delivery driver. The information on the website (and on the card) said to call the phone number on the card to rearrange delivery. However, on my card, the phone number section was blank.

Today, I popped home from work in my lunchtime and found another missed delivery card waiting (the day before they had attempted to deliver at 12.30pm - hence my popping home to check). Again, there was no number left.

I called Yodel directly. The lady said the second card hadn't even been registered on their system (and it was no showing up on the online tracking either), so they hadn't bothered to put it through the system properly, as well as not putting their number on it. She was able to provide a number by tracking my name and address, thankfully.

I called the courier directly and the lady was very blunt, borderline rude and incredibly unhelpful. I explained the situation and that I can be home between 12.30pm and 1pm, or after 4pm. She said that was "too late" for her to deliver, but before 8am was too early. She said she was just going to attempt delivery again tomorrow, when she knew I was going to be out, and then send it back to the sender. How crackers is that?! She also said they no longer leave things in safe places or with neighbours - that is their policy.

Needless to say, I will be firing off an angry email regarding the situation. I appreciate that the sender is the customer, rather than me, but why on earth would they waste their time attempting to deliver when they know there will be no one in, rather than trying to come to some arrangement? (Heck, I even offered to meet her somewhere convenient for her if that was helpful, but that was a no go either.)

So much for next day delivery.

Hi, we’d like to help you with this. If you send me an email with further details I’ll take a look and be in touch shortly :-) You can find the email address on our profile page. Chloe.

aliaslotte

Oh, I understand that they cannot specify delivery times. I appreciate that. It is just frustrating to have the lady openly admit she will bring it when she knows I am not in (following our conversation) and then send it back to the retailer as an undelivered item. I go above and beyond in my own job, because you want what you are doing to be worthwhile. It just struck me as a strange approach to take - to do something you know is futile.

Thankfully, I called her a second time and spoke to who I assume is her husband. He was more agreeable and agreed with me that it would be pointless for them to drive around again knowing full well that they'd be unable to deliver. He has since agreed to pop it round after 4pm today - I am very grateful for his change of heart and was sure to tell him as much on the phone.

On the plus side, the lady I spoke to at Yodel itself was helpful and I wasn't kept waiting on the phone for long.

mossstitchmama

I worked for Yodel for over twelve months. It is lovely that you are told that you can have a delivery between 7am and 9pm.

Originally, Yodel delivered the parcels to my home address, usually about 10am, so by the time I had routed them and put them in my car it was about 10.45am. So it would have been physically impossible to deliver any earlier.

After two months, I then had to collect my parcels from a location over five miles away. If I was lucky, they were ready for me to pick up when I got there at 9.30am. Again, I then had to sort and load before driving back to start delivering by about 10am. Impossible to deliver any earlier.

Some days, we were waiting (unpaid) for hours for the van to arrive. After midday was probably the worst. I believe that now I would have to travel to the main Yodel depot in the area, a 30 min drive.

I was allowed to accept customers coming to my house to pick up parcels, which I allowed as long as it was before dark (later if my husband was home). This was very helpful to customers like yourself who work during the day. I believe that Yodel put a stop to this (I may be wrong), shortly after they introduced GPS tracking to the courier handsets.

Add to this that the pay was 50p per parcel regardless of the number of attempts, you might get some idea of why I gave up.

TBeckett100

The whole postal system is greared up for the unemployed who stay at home all day, it's silly. Having said that I have everything delivered to my office. Enployers should be flexible in allowing this.

Hedgehog99

I've been caught in the "delivering the same time tomorrow" trap too. Did the same as you - went home at lunchtime because that was the time the previous day, only to find a SYWO card timed at 10.30 am instead. Grrr.

The whole delivery system (all companies) needs a shake-up and the companies we order from need to help too.

I'd like to see:

The companies I order from:
1) Clear info up front, before ordering on:
whether a signature is needed
whether a "safe place" can be specified
whether delivery to another address is permitted (e.g. work)

2) the chance to write instructions for the delivery driver

3) The option to be put in contact with the courier before they try to deliver - saves me time & them a wasted trip. This would enable me to plan time off for home delivery if the item is too big to get it home from work.

The delivery companies:
1) SYWO cards: if someone gets one of these, they're unlikely to be able to book time off for the next day. Let them be able to cancel the next day's attempt so that it doesn't count towards their "three tries, the return to sender"

2) Offer delivery hours when people are, shock horror, actually home!

EssexExile

At least they found your house, in my case they threw the parcel over the fence of a house somewhere near mine.

dodger1

aliaslotte wrote: »

Just a bit of a moan about Yodel...

I returned from work yesterday to find they had taken the parcel away with them again. According to Yodel, the green card that was left meant it was some sort of secondary courier working on their behalf rather than a standard Yodel delivery driver. The information on the website (and on the card) said to call the phone number on the card to rearrange delivery. However, on my card, the phone number section was blank.

Wow, you had a card left, even that's an improvement. I didn't even get that, just a text saying delivery had been attempted and if I wanted to collect then I had to bring the (non existent) card with me. I had also been in all day so nobody came to the door.

This saga went on for a few days until I had to collect, found out that the card wasn't necessary for collection. This was the third similar problem with Yodel so now I check first with online retailers if they use Yodel, if they do, then I go elsewhere.

aliaslotte

We had fun with Yodel on Mon/Tue of this week but that was for a parcel that wasn't even ours.

A card left with just the date written on it, saying they'd missed us. No one had ordered anything, so we called the central call centre. They claimed the card wasn't for us (expected, given we had called them for that exact reason), but they wouldn't say where it was for (again, understandable to an extent). We asked if it was meant to be for a house on the next road along, as our post is always getting mixed up, and they said it wasn't... (I don't understand why, as the roads are clearly different and they have their road name written with their house number on the front of their house).

Got home the next day to another "missed you" card, saying they'd left it at a house on yet another street nearby. I walked around after work to pick it up and, sure enough, it was for our house number on the street we had mentioned on the phone. It has since taken me three trips with the parcel down to the actual recipient's house to finally get rid of it. What a faff for something that was nothing to do with me!