We had a customer order which was placed with our supplier in the normal way,  and on Thursday evening we got an email to say it had been despatched.

Friday morning the customer was in at 9am, and we said “whoa we don’t usually get deliveries until around lunchtime” we’ll call you when its here. After the customer had left I thought “actually this suppliers  courier normally comes about 3 or 4pm, but anyway they come on one of the DPD vans and we know the drivers and they are very reliable”.

It wasn’t until the customer called us around 4:30 that we noticed the delivery hadn’t arrived, then I thought that I hadn’t seen an email from DPD confirming expected delivery and we normally receive these during the morning… I checked the suppliers orders system and found that this order had been despatched via someone called HDNL, I tracked the order and came to a website called “Yodel”, eventually I got this message

Front porch ?? we don’t have a front porch, we are a shop we are open all day, the delivery address was correct, we are easy to find , just use the postcode and Google Maps, or whatever

 

I phoned the number for Yodel shown and got a message saying that the driver would have left a card and could I enter that number, now I didn’t have that card so I ignored this message, assuming the system would then re-direct to a human being, the message was repeated and then I was told that as I hadn’t entered a number they couldn’t help goodbye!

I phoned our supplier who agreed to send a replacement, and would despatch for next day, promising an emailed confirmation.

I rapidly ended that conversation hoping to get Yodel to get their driver to possibly pick-up and deliver the parcel, or at least find out where it had been left, so we could get it.

It gets even more unreal from here…

As I couldn’t get through to Yodel on the phone I had to do an “online chat”, here is a transcript of that “conversation”:

  

Yodel

Yodel: 16:55:26 Hi cbits, my name is Yodel How can I help?

cbits: 16:56:36 My order say delivered at 12 something “Left at Front Porch” – We are a shop we dont have a front porch – where is it?

Yodel: 16:56:59 I’m just checking the system for you now, one moment please.

16:59:18 Thanks for waiting. The only information we have on this delivery is that this was delivered today at 1:30pm and left in a secure location around the front of the property. I’m sorry to hear if this is not the case but you will need to raise an investigation – To do this you will need to contact your Supplier and they can look into this delivery for you cbits. We cannot raise an investigation into one of their deliveries as the contract lies with them and their customer unfortunately.

cbits: Hang on – your the courier aren’t you?

Yodel: 17:02:14 Yes – But we cannot raise an investigation into one of their parcels, as they will not allow us to do so. You will need to take this investigation up with your supplier.

cbits: 17:03:22 I will, and I will not use them again if they use you as the carrier for any of my goods This situation is totally unacceptable!!!

Yodel: 17:05:34 That’s completely fine if you wish to do that. However, I am sorry to hear that this has happened to you today cbits.
17:05:39 Is there anything else I can help you with today?

cbits: 17:08:31 What do you mean anything else ? you have done the complete opposite of “helping me”

Yodel: Goodbye

(Names etc have been edited to protect the guilty)

Now clearly I was harassed at this point and not putting the right questions!

• This carrier cant “Investigate” (Phone THEIR Employee and ask what has happened?)…
• Or even better get the driver to pop back collect the parcel and get it to us?
• Or not quite as good, but at least advise us where it has been left and see if we could recover it?

No one here seems to be questioning the suitability of the driver who cannot find a shop at an address that is clear and unambiguous and that has a big sign with its name over the door ?, should this person be employed in this job?, and even more important is a Company that employs him (and hence cannot “deliver the goods” ), that cannot answer a phone enquiry, that has such ludicrous chat support, and that is unable to find out what happened when things go wrong   suitable to transport my goods?

Coming soon on top of the Ebuyer, Parcel Force  debacle I recently wrote about there are questions here that all of us who use Courier Companies need to ask about the ones we use, as we are building them into our service offering and if they perform badly we have dissatisfied customers who may not use us again.

With regard to Yodel it is particularly interesting, that when we phoned to advise our Customer and explain the problem, completely unprompted they said “is it Yodel” and when asked where that came from the reply was “Oh we’e heard loads of bad things about them”

Also it seems they have a “track record” for this, they are part of the “Shop Direct Group” and if you read here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shop_Direct_Group  under “Structure and Brands” you will see more information about their useless performance including a BBC Watchdog investigation.

We are advising all our suppliers that we will not accept deliveries via HDNL/Yodel, any such deliveries will be refused until such time that they can prove to us they will not let us and our customers down.