Recommend a reliable cheap business courier company?

Recommend a reliable cheap business courier company?

Author
Discussion

Maverick007

Original Poster:

128 posts

136 months

Wednesday 13th May 2015
quotequote all
We use parcelforce at the moment and the account is through a company called Atom Logistics.

send between 5 and 15 parcels a week and pay just under £6 for next day delivery (up to 30kg) and they collect from the office every afternoon.

Just been informed that the service is being stopped in a week so need to find another supplier. They suggested Yodel but we used to use them and had all sorts of problems.

Thanks


AndrewEH1

4,917 posts

153 months

Wednesday 13th May 2015
quotequote all
If you want happy customers avoid Yodel and UKMail.

Honestly I think most people don't mind paying an extra £1-2 to ensure what they have ordered arrives quickly and not left in the rain/chucked over a fence/carded when you were in waiting for the delivery.

VEIGHT

2,362 posts

228 months

Wednesday 13th May 2015
quotequote all
Interlink!

And they will currently send your first 100 parcels for free I heard on the radio!

I guess some T&C's will apply!

I use them and very happy.

jammy_basturd

29,778 posts

212 months

Wednesday 13th May 2015
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Cheap, reliable, fast. Pick two.

As a consumer I'd thoroughly recommend DPD.

zbc

851 posts

151 months

Wednesday 13th May 2015
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VEIGHT said:
Interlink!

And they will currently send your first 100 parcels for free I heard on the radio!

I guess some T&C's will apply!

I use them and very happy.
+1. We use them but ship more than you but our customers are very happy.

LordHaveMurci

12,042 posts

169 months

Wednesday 13th May 2015
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Another vote for Interlink/DPD, we've used them for years now.

Pay just over £7 up to 20kg, we've had to claim against them once in all those years & that was for an easily damaged 42" TV, no losses I know off & mis-routes are almost unheard of.

Edited by LordHaveMurci on Wednesday 13th May 14:59

Dr Interceptor

7,784 posts

196 months

Wednesday 13th May 2015
quotequote all
Interlink here... 20-40 parcels a day.

More than I used to pay with UK Mail, but the 1 hour delivery window avoids customers calling with "when will it arrive I need to go to the shops with my aunt Mildred"

leemanning

557 posts

152 months

Wednesday 13th May 2015
quotequote all
We use UPS and probably send around 30-40 items a day. We used to use Citylink but switched over about 2 years ago.

In the time we have used them they haven't lost or damaged a parcel once. Tracking system is good and quick too.

Think we pay about £7 or £8 per item upto 20kg. Can probably get cheaper out there but they have been excellent so far

95Aero

603 posts

194 months

Wednesday 13th May 2015
quotequote all
Have a look at Parcelhub - http://www.parcelhub.co.uk - If you're sending large volumes on a regular basis.

Economies of scale discounts from UK Mail, Yodel, TNT and a load of others.

Edited by 95Aero on Wednesday 13th May 17:24

Batfink

1,032 posts

258 months

Thursday 14th May 2015
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I'm in the same boat. Parcelhub need a minimum of 20 parcels per collection to consider you.

Willeh85

760 posts

143 months

Thursday 14th May 2015
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jammy_basturd said:
Cheap, reliable, fast. Pick two.

As a consumer I'd thoroughly recommend DPD.
I second that vote for DPD as a consumer, great service and I tend to shop again from places that use their services.

I'll also not use a business that use a select few companies that have been bad in my area, especially any company that uses Yodel. Yodel as a whole I've found are poor, but my local depot and drivers were worse than trained animals.

StarmistBlue400

3,029 posts

218 months

Friday 15th May 2015
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We have pretty much tried them all but since 1995 we have been using APC Couriers. Our local depot is a franchise and on the whole they are great.

We are probably a decent customer to them so we get good customer service.

We get good rates from DHL and TNT too but they cant collect as late.

Jakdaw

291 posts

210 months

Friday 15th May 2015
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No one ever says who they're shipping *to* with these questions, but I think it makes a huge difference.

As a consumer I might agree with the Yodel stigma if I'm having something delivered to my residential home, yet deliveries from Amazon in-house logistics are wonderful. That said - I work in a big office building that receives hundreds of deliveries each day from all and sundry, usually couriers will drop off a big mix of parcels to reception in one go. Nice and easy for them... and for packages delivered there it's Yodel who are great, and the others (Amazon, DPD even UPS) who will occasionally give you an "unforeseen circumstances" tracking status and deliver a day late.

Perhaps it's their spending time doing a much better job of the harder deliveries that means the easy deliveries suffer a little?


RickRolled

339 posts

177 months

Saturday 16th May 2015
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How big are the parcels size wise?

Do you send anything abroad?

DSLiverpool

14,741 posts

202 months

Saturday 16th May 2015
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Reliable and cheap dont exist, use reliable and save on a worker needed to sort the crap from the cheap courier.

addsvrs

582 posts

216 months

Monday 18th May 2015
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For next day deliveries / high value, I use Interlink (DPD) and pay just over £7 upto 30kg.
For customers that choose the free option I use Hermes which is 3 to 5 days.
Small parcels i use Royal Mail 2nd class recorded.

Booking and tracking is excellent with Interlink, Hermes and Royal Mail are fine.

All couriers will lose / damage something at some stage. My items are quite fragile thou.
Interlink make you jump through a million hoops, dont refund postage and only pay a certain amount per kilo.
Hermes are a pain to contact (normally a snotty Facebook message gets the ball rolling) but refund the full value and your postage cost.
Royal Mail is long winded process, normally dont bother claiming if low value.

They all have their pro's and con's, yet to find a courier that does everything well.

Batfink

1,032 posts

258 months

Monday 18th May 2015
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I'm applying for DX through Atom. Parcelforce were cheap but they've been too competitive and have too much demand for their services that they are choosing their customer base.


truck71

2,328 posts

172 months

Tuesday 30th June 2015
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leemanning said:
We use UPS and probably send around 30-40 items a day. We used to use Citylink but switched over about 2 years ago.

In the time we have used them they haven't lost or damaged a parcel once. Tracking system is good and quick too.

Think we pay about £7 or £8 per item upto 20kg. Can probably get cheaper out there but they have been excellent so far
Having ordered a high value electronic item from a supplier that uses UPS I can only disagree with this. Failed to deliver twice, hopeless website that doesn't allow contact with your local depot, incorrect information given and received leading to delivery on a day not requested. Now searching the 70 plus dwellings in my street to find where the numbskull driver has left it- first name only on the signature and no address given. Amateurs.