Hermes warning - They don't always track your parcel

chrispy108

Hi,
I wanted to write this thread as a warning to people who are considering using Hermes Parcelshop service to post a personal parcel. My Mum posted my Daughter's birthday presents about a month ago at one of their Parcelshops, it was a bundle of gifts purchased over time, and lots cannot be bought anymore. It reached the depot about 10 miles from my house in a few days (Having started 200 miles away), and then the tracking just stopped updating.
They advertise this as a PREMIUM service with "regular tracking updates".
We both tried to get in touch repeatedly, which is difficult as e-mails take days to respond to, their online chat is a useless robot, and the phone lines take forever to get through.
They have lost my parcel (although they use wiggle words like "become misplaced" to try and not take any blame).
I have been e-mailing, tried Twitter to no response, and also had a LinkedIn discussion was they responded quickly to, but was pointless.

Don't use Hermes unless you are a retailer who can turn round to a shelf and post another item out. They just don't care enough to carry personal. They have openly admitted to me in e-mail that they don't track parcels that leave their depots to 'major retailers' as returns.
They also tried to blame me, saying they are a 'self service' company and need the sender and/or receiver to track the parcel and alert them if it get's lost! As you can see from the last screenshot, I certainly tried my best!

cymruchris

That sounds normal -- so if there are 1000 parcels ready to dispatch to a big retailers return department - they'll all be on pallets or in roll cages - if your parcel happened to drop into one of those piles - when the packages were transferred to the retailer - your parcel would no longer be tracked, as they would obviously not know where it is. The only way you'd find it again, is if the retailer that received your parcel as part of their gigantic shipment, noticed, and sent it back to Hermes. This however would be unlikely, as many retailers sell on pallets of returned goods to companies that sell stuff off on ebay, so the likelihood of ever seeing your parcel again would be immensely low.

chrispy108

It might be 'normal', but I don't think that's acceptable at all.

If you can't track a parcel, then don't claim that you offer a tracked service and advertise yourself to people (as opposed to businesses)

cymruchris

If a parcel is lost - whoever loses it - wherever it's lost - the tracking would stop - no matter which company it was. Yes - they'd know that it was last seen in 'X depot' - but if a parcel got accidentally added to a pile being sent off to ABC retailer, but on that day there were deliveries going to ABC, CVD, RJD, RGD and TCR (all random names obvs) - then no company would know where it went, no matter what they say about tracking. No parcel company is infallible.

hollydays

Parcels do get lost. It happens.Sometimes they turn up much later.But you can claim on the insurance .Ive posted hundreds with them and lost maybe two, but I Put a claim in.