Best courier?

ive never had any bother with parcel force.. and they are great for sending multiple box items (i sent a computer and two monitors)

however parcel 2 go are cheaper for oen item.

if you dont care about time scale go into your local post office and use standard parcels service... its waaay cheaper.... only £10.76 for up to 20kg

 

I nearly always use Royal Mail or Parcelforce for sending my own personal e-bay parcels, etc. The only problems I have ever encountered wity recieved parcels has always been down to inadequate packing by people sending stuff to me. Royal Mail have also always settled the insurance claim in a timely manner, so nothing but good vibes about RM/PF from me.

At work we often have to courier aircraft avionic computers, flight instruments, etc to other stations and always use DHL. Some of these items have silly replacement value price tags of upto $500,000. Although our storeman does most of our receipt and dispatch of such items , i sometimes have to sort it out myself. we have never had any go missing or damaged by DHL .

The key to happy parcelling is more than adequate packing. Always assume that your parcel will be mis-handled and pack accordingly whichever courier service you use.

 

Pumaman

Your rant was absolute rubbish.

The CEO you are referring to is Alan Leighton who successfully merged Asda and Walmart which has helped it increase its market share due to good service and low prices.

His current salary on taking over Royal Mail is just £28,000 pa but he will make several million, only if he meets certain business objectives set by the Government.

When he took over, RM was losing £1.5m per working day. It is now making a profit of £400m pa.

I have to add that unless the RM is privatised (I think that is 90% likely), losses are projected to run at £1bn pa by 2008 due to competition with the RM being compelled by law to handle unprofitable deliveries and the competitors being able to cherry pick the lucrative direct mail contracts.

To take your point on second delivery, it was rightly scrapped because it accounted for only 3% of volume and yet represented 40% of operational costs which was plain ludicrous. Holding posties back to do a second round is plain ineffective.

Up until a few months ago, most mail was delivered by 9.30am which was a legal requirement imposed by statute.

The regulator (an independant overseer appointed by HMG) agreed that the 9.30 am deadline is irrelevant in modern society as most people leave home around 8.00am in order to go to work.

By relaxing that deadline, the cost of 29p (lowest in Europe) could be held.

The postal market may appear simple but infact it is extremely complex with all players doing deals and shifting each others mail.

The volume of mail is now in excess of 82m deliveries per day despite emails, so it obviously still has its uses. This BTW is an all time record.

Regards

Mick

 

MIck,

Parcel farce are just that sorry mate pants is very apt, nothing but aggro with them, hence why they lost the Farnell account.
Royal mail better, but not by much all ceo in public companies should be limited to £50k INC bonuses

 

WM

If you limited the pay of CEO's to £50k, you would be paying peanuts and attracting monkies.

If you want large organisations turned around, you need to attract the right calibre of people.

My own view (purely personal) is that with there being over 4000 couriers in the UK alone, there is bound to be rationalisation and several big names will disappear.

The internet helped save the day because more people are deserting the shops and buying online ( all my CD's are bought via Ebay) that pushes up postal and parcel volumes.

In your position as a business, really hammer the price, you have clout whereas the private individual does not.

Regards

Mick

 

Mick,

BTW happy Birthday
We still use special delivery for small stuff that works.
Preformance related pay is ok till the the board start cutting costs to improve cash flow and rationalise, therefor the shareholds see good returns, fat cat gets his £250K bonus (min) but the work force suffer and customer service drops through the floor. Inforstructure needs to be kept well oiled and efficent, not paired to the bone so targets are met and the board are 'Wedged up' Wm

 

In defence of Royal Mail

I get parcels within 3-5 working days which are sent as "small packet" from the UK. This is as good as it gets and easily as good as Deutche Bundepost, La Poste and Swiss postal service, and is equivalent in speed to parcels sent *fedex* from the US.
For really bad postal service, you would be hard-pressed to beat (?) US Post or Canada Post. 6 weeks or never is not uncommon.
The downside is that Royal Mail looks rather more expensive than Japan Post, although both are waay cheaper than Fedex (even with the corporate discount ;-) ).

 

Wm

The CEO will only receive his bonus if certain customer focussed targets are met as well as the normal business ones.

For instance, 93% of First Class mail must be delivered by the next day. That BTW is measured not by RM but a totally independent auditor. They do it by posting thousands of letters, noting time and place of posting and time of delivery.

Also how the public are treated when complaints are being made are measured, so a motivated work force is esential.

Overall, the RM is a good customer focussed organisation but the Government needs to make up its mind in what direction the mail industry is to go. Uncertainty is delaying investment and that is not good.

Regards

Mick

 

Sorry but as a customer and in my experience, all I see is a declining and shoddy service. I dont think I'm alone in feeling that way. You can put all the spin on it you like, I dont see it as an end result.

 

Try senditquick.com - £10.49 for guaranteed next day delivery for up to 30Kgs. Beware that the compensation is limited to £150 though!