Today's rant - couriers

[bruce1530]

Bought some items from a well known cycling retailer. Mentioning no names, but they also sell lots of car stuff. I had a voucher to use.

Free Next Day Delivery.

Message on thursday saying "Your package is with DHL for next day delivery"
Supposed to arrive Friday.

Friday: email saying package delayed, will be with you Monday

Monday. email saying "sorry, courier could not get access to your house, will retry Wednesday". Admittedly, there are road works at one end of our street, but cars can still get past, and the other end of the street is clear. No other courier has had issues.

Wednesday. No parcel, and no contact.

Thursday. No parcel, DHL website says "parcel back at depot"

Complain to Halfords (yes, I wasn't going to mention the name) about issues with their "next day delivery". Their response was "We'll get back to you within 72 hours".

A 72 hour response time for queries on a "next day service" seems a little odd....

Rant over. Will probably continue at a future date.

 

[Dogtrousers]

To be fair to the retailer, it sounds like it was the courier who stuffed up.

 

[Drago]

They didn't say which next day!

 

[mustang1]

The worst one is when you get an email from the courier saying "customer has re-arranged delivery date".

Eh what? I never re-arranged anything! (Ranting about another store and a different courier).

 

[gbb]

It's all gone for a ball of chalk (whatever that means, not sure if I just made it up even) in my opinion.
It seems to me many online retailer offer next day by default, irrespective of whether the item is available or not.
My wife uses Amazon a fair bit and it's entirely hit and miss, even if you pay for same day/ next day delivery...whether you will actually get it within the proscribed period.
It's just a free for all basically.

 

[Dogtrousers]

I ordered a thing last week and it was £5 for next day, or free otherwise. I took the free option. It came next day

 

[presta]

I ordered this on the 24th August, it was due on 1st Sept:

 

[bruce1530]

To be fair to the retailer, it sounds like it was the courier who stuffed up.

True. But I didn't pay my money to the courier, I paid it to the retailer.

And the retailer is the one that has a 3 day response when investigating problems with next-day delivery.

 

[bruce1530]

Rant over. Will probably continue at a future date.

The saga continues:

Summary so far: Order for some cycling clothing placed evening of 30 August, "next day" delivery, so was scheduled to arrive 1 Sep.

31 Aug: "Your order has been dispatched, delivery 1 Sep"
1 Sep: "Your Halfords parcel is with your DHL Parcel UK driver for delivery today"
1 Sep: "Your Halfords parcel is delayed"
4 Sep: "Your Halfords parcel is with your DHL Parcel UK driver for delivery today"

No further email updates, but
5 Sep: Tracking site says "Your parcel is at the delivery depot". That's the last entry on DHL tracking site.

6 Sep: Contacted Halfords via online chat (they hide their phone and email details well). "We'll check it out and get back to you in no more than 72 hours, but probably much quicker.
8 Sep. Contacted Halfords via online chat. "72 hours has not yet passed, but we are investigating"
9 Sep. Contacted Halfords via online chat. "Yes we know 72 hours has passed, please give us a further 24 hours"
10 Sep "Give us more time". I ask for an urgent return call.
11 Sep "Can I escalate this?" "We are investigating, we will call you before close of play today". They didn't. They also gave me a phone number to call (I did, similar response we will escalate and call you back" and a web form to fill in.

I point out that the web form is for their autocentres, and it asks for my car registration number and which garageI had dealt with. They said "don't worry about that, just fill the form in anyway and they'll get bak to you.

12 Sep. At last I get an email from Halfords. "Firstly we would like to sincerely apologise for your need to contact us in regards to this.
We pride ourselves on delivering excellent customer service and we are disappointed to hear that this has not been the case on this occasion.
In order for us to investigate this further please can you provide the vehicle registration by reply?"

 

[oldwheels]

I ordered something from a firm in Edinburgh and they duly sent it by courier. It travelled from Edinburgh to Derby and then did a tour of various English depots before being sent to Glasgow and onwards to me.
You could not make it up.

 

[bruce1530]

Well, I got an email from Halfrauds today. Apparently they have my package back at their warehouse, and will issue me a refund in 3-4 days.

Apparently DHL attempted to deliver it twice WITHOUT SETTING FOOT IN MY STREET. Then returned it to sender because I didn't contact them about the package that they hadn't told me I needed to contact them about.....