Couriers - MiIdy OT

We use a local guy with an Astra for most things. He's done two runs this week and only charges us for one way, cheaper than us running up with the bigger van.

£63.20 for Luton - Nuneaton - Leighton Buzzard and most times it's a van load.

Probably someone local to you that can do the same. 'Smaller' operations/guys tend to be better and more reliable in our experience.

Peter

-- Peter & Rita Forbes Email: snipped-for-privacy@easynet.co.uk Web:

Amtrak Express charge us around £10 per consignment up to 10kgs and then about 65p per kg after that for a next day service.

For regular transport up to London/Southeast or local we use a company called AS Transport (in Claydon I think), I can dig out the contact details if you like.

Peter

Don't ever, ever, ever, ever ever, ever use postvan.com EVER!

Cheers

Peter

I had a delivery due today from CPC/Farnell via UPS "before 12:00" service.

At 13:30 I phoned CPC and asked if they could trace the delivery. The young lady did so and said that UPS had attempted delivery at 11:20 but could not find anyone to sign for delivery. I (somewhat firmly) pointed out that UPS were not telling the entire truth since I had been working outside the front of the house all morning and that no UPS van had stopped near my house. The lady promised to call UPS again.

The delivery arrived at 14:30.

Mark Rand RTFM

Two I've used for various UK & world-wide deliveries with no problems:

hth Guy

I get that regularly. We're a bit off the beaten track, drivers don't use any initiative or can't be bothered. The stock answer is always that they've 'attempted delivery' when I know full well they haven't. Last lot still hadn't appeared 3 days later (DHL) & showed no intention of doing anything about it, I ended up collecting from the depot.

Cheers Tim

Dutton Dry-Dock Traditional & Modern canal craft repairs Vintage diesel engine service

I'm off the beaten track too!

UPS are a shower of sh*t the same old story, "we tried to deliver but there was nobody home" on the tracking system.

Then tried phone the local depot......ex directory of course, when I phoned the contact number it's a national call center, they then got the local manager to call me, he didn't like it when I called his driver a liar.

Didn't get the parcel until the next day, the driver didn't have a lot to say for himself, he obviously knew the stink I had kicked up.

Now if I know that any supplier uses UPS in advance, I just won't order from them unless they are willing to change couriers or use the good old Royal Mail.

Amtrack are about the best around here.

Rich

City Link have depots everywhere and charge about =A315 for 30 kg then

32 pence per kilo after. Only snag is you have to take to local depot they will not pick up from a private address. If I remember rightly this not picking up from private address is common throughot the industry. Some carriers will not accept goods from a member of the public at a local depot. City Link however was no problem. Not a bad outfit.

I've had several bad experiences with Amtrack, next day delivery parcels not delivered but showing delivered on their website; in each case I had to ring the local depot and they had to contact the driver to find where it was delivered, it was a neighbour each time but the driver didn't bother to leave a card to mention this. Martin

You should have contacted whoever the parcel was from and told them you had not received it and that the site said it had.

I've just got to add my experience of Buisness Post to this-

Ordered some new parts from ireland last week. They collected said parts from the shop in ireland on wednesday (just before the holiday weekend), on a 24hr delivery, so they should of been here on thursday. I qeueried the shop on the firday,but they couldn't query it until the wednesday due to the holidays (Ireland have mon/tues off). On the wednesday, BP admit the parts were still in belfast, and said bad weather conditions were the problem (the shop owner had said on the friday the conditions had been pretty bad), and the Easter back log. Come Thursday, still no sign of the parts, so I leave an email for the shop around lunchtime, but I get no response. On Friday I email the shop again, and I get an immediate response from the owner. After sending my email on the thursday, he had checked the status and the parcel was shown as delivered, so he just thought I'd recieved them, and didn't bother replying, but on the friday, when I emailed him again he realised something was wrong. It turned out, BP had tried delivering the parts to an identical address in Carlisle, which wouldn't be so bad if I stayed in Carlisle, but considerig I stay just outside Edinburgh, they couldn't find the address (I wonder why), and the parts were now on the local van and heading my way. At least I did get the parcel in the end, despite the fact it was only 8 days late!

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Perhaps it is down to the individual drivers more than the companies as a whole then!

Funny how my local postie finds the place every morning, won't wake me up on a Sat morning for signature, and chucks any other parcels in the utility room if he can't find us around!

There's a lot to be said for that sort of local service.

Rich

My old firm had a sister company that despatched a lot of parcels... They changed carriers four times in 18 moths... four years later they still use TNT.

TNT would need to see a volume of at least 12 parcels a month to give you an account at a reasonable rate.

Absolutely. The usual postie, Parcelforce and DHL drivers are top notch (the DHL driver being exceptionally pretty). UPS are questionable as they wanted me to sign an agreement absolving them of all responsibility if they leave parcels round the back when I'm not in. But despite singing the praises of the post office that doesn't stop the occasional ar$ehole postie who just the other day thought that knocking on the door and waiting approximately 3 seconds for an answer was sufficient to determine no one was at home despite there being three cars being on the drive. Rather than attempt to take it back to the depot and write a card or leave it round the back he proceeded to try and fit a 4 foot long 10 inch wide 2 inch high parcel through the letterbox. He managed to fit about 6 inches through before the wrapping snagged and I shouted for him to stop. Luckily the sender had used a couple of layers of bubble wrap as well as brown paper and the item survived intact. If no one had been at home and it had stuck just beyond halfway there would have been no easy way into the house without breaking a window.

Our Postie and the delivery drivers are regulars, UPS, DHL City link etc You build up a relationship with them if you treat them as people. Too many treat them as servants or below them. Our Postie waits for a signature and if there is no reply at the house he comes to the workshop. Same for the delivery drivers, we very, very rarely get a card saying couldn't deliver.

When we had the garage we used to get about 5 or 6 bulk oil delivers per years, often different drivers. We used to back the tanker in to the garage and before the driver had got out the cab I'd go up and ask him what he wanted to drink and make him a tea or coffee.

Never got the lad to make it, I'd make it and take it to him and have a chat. Worked every time, because they saw you made the effort they took care on the delivery, didn't slosh oil all over the floor and mostly pumped anything from 10 to 30 gallon extra into the tank.

-- Regards,

John Stevenson Nottingham, England.

Visit the new Model Engineering adverts page at:-

And another warning. Don't use parcel2go.com either. Ever. Their customer service team are the biggest bunch of arrogant morons I've ever dealt with.

Chris