Jock's Place - Web commerce and delivery companies - Comments

It's very awkward,

Jock — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 22:56:44 +0000

It's very awkward, especially for retail customers. Yes, you can get some great deals, people know that, but at least if you walk into town with a bundle of cash you can walk out again with the goods in your hands and not have to worry about having shelled out hundreds of pounds to find it goes astray or you simply don't quite know when you will get it.

Most couriers are awful, especially in london

Aaron Trevena — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 10:00:19 +0000

My wife handles the courier for her dad's website, which does retail and wholesale plants, and we've had no luck at all. In the past month we've had east/south london deliveries being carded, sometimes twice, when it's clear that nobody even tried to deliver (one was a gated estate with a security guard, one was our own family), they also lied about when it was supposed to be delivered with excuses like 'oh its a consumer delivery so that can be delivered any time up to 8:30pm' ( it never is, and never does ) or that the driver is running late ( inevitably the driver gave up and went to the pub ). Parcel Force are pretty awful, but Initial CityLink are appalling both for customer and business - for customers they don't deliver, lie about attempting to deliver and fail to follow instructions, for businesses they change prices without warning, give conflicting advice on refunds that take months to get, and generally make the simple job of delivering one box incredibly hard. I don't think there is a good courier out there, and that's probably why Tesco does it itself. I would guess that Tesco is prepared to take make a loss on the delivery in order to get the extra trade. I don't think courier companies could profitably provide the same level of service, primarily because they are so shockingly bad at what they do, rather than it being hard.

Web commerce and delivery companies

Jock — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 18:51:49 +0000

So, I've just once again put my trust in delivery companies to get an address right and follow fairly simple instructions about what to do because I'll be out when they arrive. But I do want them tomorrow, or I would not have paid the premium to get it delivered quickly rather than wait a week.

But if that had been Tesco I would have been able to sign up for a particular time slot when hopefully it would have been convenient for me to be around to take delivery personally, even in the evenings or at weekends. If this is the way of commerce in the future, mainstream delivery firms, whose main business is shipment and delivery rather than grocery sales of course, need to do something similar.