Am I allowed to slate DPD on here?

sunama said:
I would agree with this. Its all down to how good the individual driver who is dealing with your delivery, is. Some drivers are a little dim and don't give a damn about making deliveries. Others want to deliver the parcel no matter what and will go the extra mile to successfully deliver the item. As an example, my local Parcelforce driver, attempted to deliver the same parcel 3 times in a single day, to me. He succeeded the 3rd time.

I've not had any problems with DPD, but have had some serious issues with CityLink.

Bad Courier - CityLink
One example was when I ordered a projector screen from Germany. The seller sent the screen on time.

A week later, I still hadnt received anything. Not even a note through my letterbox.

I contacted the seller, who in turn contacted the German courier, who in turn contacted CityLink, UK. The seller sent me a phone number to find out what was going on. Upon phoning them, they said they attempted delivery twice (liers). At this point I said, can you deliver tomorrow? What now ensued were a series of phone-calls and excuses why they couldn't deliver it. In the end it transpired that they had ran over the screen with a truck. The package was so damaged that they too embarrassed to attempt to deliver it to me. Rather than tell me the truth they made up a lot of stories which cost me another week or so.

In the end the seller had to send me another screen which arrived within 2-3 days (as scheduled).

The Best Service - Royal Mail/Parcelforce
Once I was awaiting a package. The seller had inadvertantly forgotten to write down a postcode or door number - hey only wrote down my name and street name...nothing else.

The package arrived a day later than scheduled, with a note saying, "In future write down the full address". I was in awe, given that Royal Mail managed to track down my address and deliver the parcel to me, using only my name. I'm positive that had Citylink or DPD been dealing with this parcel, it would've either been sent back to sender OR ended up in the bin.
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Very valid points made out here. And I can certainly agree with you regarding CityLink. Royal Mail and Parcelforce certainly do their best. Another company I can give thanks to is TNT.

I ordered a set of speakers off a competitor last year. Along with a few other things. TNT arrived but only the speakers didn't. I asked the driver whether he had them with him, turns out they didn't even load it in the van.

Anyway, after ringing them and finding out what had happened, a week later i get a phonecall from the TNT driver. He had tracked my number down by ringing up my old workplace and told me he was in the area and wondered if I could take delivery of speakers. I rushed out of work in my lunch break and within 30min I was home and true to his word he arrived with the speakers. Now that's what I call service.
 
CK61938 said:
He had tracked my number down by ringing up my old workplace and told me he was in the area and wondered if I could take delivery of speakers. I rushed out of work in my lunch break and within 30min I was home and true to his word he arrived with the speakers. Now that's what I call service.
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Why can't all courier companies operate in this way? I know Lopez (on this forum) works for a courier firm, so maybe he could answer this?

TBH, a lot of it is about being honest with the customer. The biggest gripe I have with courier companies is when they say they visited your home, tried to deliver, nobody answered and so left a card. Yet, you know for a fact that you were in your home, all day, waiting for the delivery, no delivery was attempted and no card was left. These bare-faced lies is what really get to me.

If a company were honest and stated, that they forgot to load the item on their van and that they will deliver tomorrow, guaranteed, I wouldn't be at all angry at them. We all make errors and mistakes. But when they lie (to cover up their incompetence), that's what really gets me.
 
You get good drivers and you get bad drivers. Then you also get good drivers who are willing to pull out the stops, and good drivers who are not willing to pull out the stops, doing exactly what you ask of them but no more.

Drivers generally don't get company phones or anything like that so if they are ringing you etc they are doing it out of their own pockets. It's like any job I suppose, you get people who take pride in their work and people who don't. I've been into Tesco and asked for something and been given the equivalent of a personal shopper experience, and then there are times where I've been grunted at and largely ignored.
We failed a collection for one of my clients recently as the driver broke down. I couldn't source a replacement, the job was urgent and local to me - so I did it myself. Went to the guy's house, picked the item up, did the paperwork, dropped it in to the local depot to meet the next sortation. I don't know anyone in my office who would have even considered doing that. It's the same with some drivers.

In my own experience with our drivers - they prioritise business drops over residential drops, they like to do their deliveries in the morning and their collections in the afternoon, if they are struggling for time in the afternoon then daily collections will take priority over any deliveries left on. They knock doors etc because they would rather deliver your parcel than have to take it back out the next day. They gain *NOTHING* by doing the "knock and run" routine that some people think courier drivers are obsessed with. What you DO occasionally get is a driver who says he attempted when he didn't, this does nothing but cause me aggro and I wish they'd just be honest and admit that they ran out of time.

As a company we try to be honest at all times. It's easier for me to do this as I look after major clients not Joe Public so I speak to the same people all the time and we have a rapport. If we've loaded something to the wrong round, or an item has missed sort at the hub, I tell them that. I gain nothing by making up a cover story.

When I've had complaints about drivers in the past over the years, in 90% of the investigations I've had to do it's been the customer in the wrong, not the driver. You'd be surprised when push comes to shove how many "I WAS HOME ALL DAY!" stories eventually turn into "Well, I did nip out for half an hour, and I popped down the garden for a bit, so I suppose he might have come then..."
 
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said:
You get good drivers and you get bad drivers. Then you also get good drivers who are willing to pull out the stops, and good drivers who are not willing to pull out the stops, doing exactly what you ask of them but no more.

Drivers generally don't get company phones or anything like that so if they are ringing you etc they are doing it out of their own pockets. It's like any job I suppose, you get people who take pride in their work and people who don't. I've been into Tesco and asked for something and been given the equivalent of a personal shopper experience, and then there are times where I've been grunted at and largely ignored.
We failed a collection for one of my clients recently as the driver broke down. I couldn't source a replacement, the job was urgent and local to me - so I did it myself. Went to the guy's house, picked the item up, did the paperwork, dropped it in to the local depot to meet the next sortation. I don't know anyone in my office who would have even considered doing that. It's the same with some drivers.

In my own experience with our drivers - they prioritise business drops over residential drops, they like to do their deliveries in the morning and their collections in the afternoon, if they are struggling for time in the afternoon then daily collections will take priority over any deliveries left on. They knock doors etc because they would rather deliver your parcel than have to take it back out the next day. They gain *NOTHING* by doing the "knock and run" routine that some people think courier drivers are obsessed with. What you DO occasionally get is a driver who says he attempted when he didn't, this does nothing but cause me aggro and I wish they'd just be honest and admit that they ran out of time.

As a company we try to be honest at all times. It's easier for me to do this as I look after major clients not Joe Public so I speak to the same people all the time and we have a rapport. If we've loaded something to the wrong round, or an item has missed sort at the hub, I tell them that. I gain nothing by making up a cover story.

When I've had complaints about drivers in the past over the years, in 90% of the investigations I've had to do it's been the customer in the wrong, not the driver. You'd be surprised when push comes to shove how many "I WAS HOME ALL DAY!" stories eventually turn into "Well, I did nip out for half an hour, and I popped down the garden for a bit, so I suppose he might have come then..."
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So very very true.

I started my driving career as a courier (ANC - Now Fed-Ex , DHL, City Link and a fair few others) Lopéz is bang on the money.

I'm un-decided which category I fell into back then mind you.... :D
 
Ah thank you Lopéz. Very much appreciated and thanks for clearing that up. Like you say, it is the same in any profession, it's down to the individual.
 
Lopéz said:
I've been into Tesco and asked for something and been given the equivalent of a personal shopper experience, and then there are times where I've been grunted at and largely ignored.
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Anybody that gets bad service in Tesco should find the Manager & report the individual, Nothing boils my **** more than people working with the public who are quite obviously unsociable & ignorant.
Our induction is based around Customer service, Safety & doing the job properly. Customer service comes before anything else & we are encouraged to spend as much time as necessary to satisfy our customers, We Pride ourselves on it.
One example is taking the customer to the requested item rather than just telling them where abouts it may be.
Personally I like it & wouldn't have it any other way, If a customer approaches me I am more than happy to stop working & have a chat & a wander with them making there shopping experience less stressful.
Probably my favourite part to be honest but then I work nights so am not Swamped. :)

Good effort Lopez, You sound like you are in a job that you enjoy being good at. :cool:
 
Nothing like kicking a gift horse in the mouth - they even tried to deliver it on saturday ffs most carriers wouldn't have even bothered.
 
I've now started having everything delivered to me at work. Business address so all the local courier depots know us (most just whack on the company name, no postcode or anything) and business addresses sometime gets priority, and reception is [wo]manned from 07:30 to 17:30. WIN.
 
thankfully around here the drivers are by and large very good, some are a bit grumpy but still do a very good job, admitedly this is mostly dealing with the drivers assigned to business drops and collections rather than the pour souls who get sent on the home drops writing out 1001 "you weren't in" cards
 
DPD have been much better for overclockers than DHL, to be fair its decemeber, busiest time of year, a couple of days delay wont kill you!
 
DPD are a tad annoying. When i wasn't in once they gave my new GTX285 to my neighbour 3 doors away but didn't tell me (like a note in the door or anything) i had to phone up and ask who has signed for my package.
 
I wonder if the driver that covers your area has read this thread and is now going to give your parcel the "Ace Ventura" treatment? ;)
:D
 
I'm annoyed too. My Titan Sabre was supposed to turn up on Friday but I've heard nothing about it. Just hope it turns up on Monday or I might cancel it (if I can?). I just checked my account and I'm lower than I thought!

I hate, hate, hate staying in for someone that doesn't turn up.
 
Might aswell put in my story about them.

DPD have been excellent and the only problem iv'e had was down to human error on the drivers part, he couldnt find our address for some reason or another and wasted a day by carding the wrong address. Checking out the DPD website alerted me to the mistake so I rescheduled the delivery and waited in all day again... then saw the van go right past us and never came back, sure enougth he carded the wrong address again lol. Because it was fairly early in the day I was able to sort this mess out by contacting the excellent guys at ocuk who gave me direct contact with dpd. Was able to get the parcel delivered correctly the same day :)

Not to be put off by a snag or two I went ahead and ordered a new lcd screen and this time it arrived no problems. I will say this about dpd, they are far superior to citylink! Everytime I ordered stuff from ocuk citylink would try and crush or damage it in some way!
 
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