any good nationwide couriers?

izzzzythedog

I will declare im a courier

Never ceases to be a source of wonder in that people pay absolute pennys to ship a parcel and wonder why they never get the bespoke service they hoped for . There is a rather large reason you pay 3 quid to ship a parcel 200 miles and its because they get rammed in and treated with distane .
So if you pay budget do yourself a massive favour and wrap the items to the point you can stand on them or can drop them from 10 foot without damage because ,,, and theres no pride in this ,,,, the polish lads and lasses couldnt care less if you have fragile on the parcel and will bung it into an 8 foot cage sticking 200+ kilos on top of it . They will also throw your item into a van ( most literally ) and theres half a chance your item will have someone stand on it before the days out such is the way these things are set up .

Myself as an end user as it were and being the public face of the company suffers day after day as you cringe as you hand over miss shaped or damaged items in the hope you wont have to take them back . If i suspect an items damaged i 100% of the time will tell the customer , what then follows is a 10 minute argument as i cant allow the parcel to be opened to inspect it as if they open it its theres . I write on damaged to help people out and i always aim to never damage an item once its in my charge . However when you get retards sending photo frames wrapped in a plastic bag its no surprise when the glass has gone and im then ment to leave this item safe if there not in !!!! not gunna happen on my watch .

UKmail , good to work for unless its a main hub . one of the better companys to send with

FedEx you pay through the nose and get a quality service

Citylink gone now and sure enough i was there xmas eve/day

TNT , loved working for TNT and once again be assured of a decent service

DHL . not recently for me but in the past they were very professional

hermes , cheap , you get what you pay for

yodel , cheap and without the insurance

collect+ , this uses other carriers depending on whom collects but expect hermes treatment even if citysprint collect it

UPS , expensive to send but very good

Parcelforce , dont whatever you do get a job with them but there very good at getting items to you except when you have 3 postcodes not 1 and 140 drops and 10 collections etc etc , not happy but post with them myself ( small only , heavy go elsewhere )

Consider this , it cost 8 quid to send a tv through citylink , every day for a week i drove into work and up the back between the trailers was a TV which had somehow fallen off a truck , day 1 it lay on the ground , later that day a truck backed over it . Next day its still there but now its had at least 10 movements over the top of it and its rather ragged ( and flat ) . Over the next 3 days it disintegrated being ground into the general detritious of the place . Sad ? wrong ? last week at the company im working for ( sorry no names ) there were the remains of 2 items dropped between the wagons on the floor , just bits of packaging with a label on it ,,,,,,:( , it still goes on

sauvignon

In reply to Izzythedog

People pay what they are quoted. Whatever they pay, it still means they have a contract and should expect the service to be provided as described, i.e. the consignment should be delivered intact. If they are given a time slot, it should be kept. If you buy from a company that uses a rubbish courier you have no choice.

I wonder why UKMail is mentioned by you as one of the better ones. Just go on https://www.reviewcentre.com and read the 20 latest reviews, almost unanimously saying "terrible", "useless", "rubbish". These reviews are genuine as they describe customer experience in great detail - very similar to ours - unlike the ones that speak in superlatives and hardly mention anything else. Clearly fake in my opinion.

If staff in depos damage parcels when handling them you as the courier shouldn't deliver them red-faced but refuse to accept them for delivery and complain to the depo management. If you do, the ultimate resonsibility for their condition should lie with you. It's just passing the buck, inconveniencing the customer, who may then need to pay again for returning the parcel. More work for you then, isn't it.

bramble43

You are not using a courier, you are using a carrier and getting what you paid for.

If you pay £7 for a delivery, you are getting a £7 service, pay a courier £100 you'll get a £100 service but people won't go to the expense of using couriers so stick with the carriers at cut throat rates and complain about it, there is really no middle ground. Either pay very little for a bad service or a wedge of cash for a top service.

martindow

bramble43 wrote: »

You are not using a courier, you are using a carrier and getting what you paid for.

If you pay £7 for a delivery, you are getting a £7 service, pay a courier £100 you'll get a £100 service but people won't go to the expense of using couriers so stick with the carriers at cut throat rates and complain about it, there is really no middle ground. Either pay very little for a bad service or a wedge of cash for a top service.

I think there is something in between - for instance I would consider UPS and Fedex to be better than the cheapest carriers and not a great deal more expensive.