Tracking

Do you track your parcels and does it work?

Order placed 16th, despached 17th. Perfectly acceptable.

Parcel was 45 miles from delivery point (less as the crow flies) yet travelled as much as 350 mies before delivery.

Distance was excessive, but that may all to be about overall efficiency. Problem was the tracking info from UPS.

Parcel went from Nottingham to Preston initially, then to Northampton to get to me. Last information, checked this around 08:00h, said the item was still at Northampton (still about 40 miles away) with expected delivery on the 21st.

Arrived this morning at 09:00h. UPS tracking updated shortly afterwards, but I also received an email from epay at 09:15h telling me my parcel was delivered - at 15:56 this afternoon. Yes, in 7 hours time, not yesterday!

What a load of row locks - both on the part of epay and UPS! Better to have arrived a day early rather than a day late, I suppose. The last Hermes delivery was eight minutes late, after they provided a delivery time slot (acceptable), but this example of parcel tracking is just farcical.🙂

Edited By not done it yet on 20/12/2020 09:51:53

To be fair the parcels tracking systems are generally very good. I find it rare for a quoted delivery slot to be missed. Usually a few minutes early if anything. 3 pm to 4 pm ones being most likely to go wrong due to school runs. There are 4 schools quite close carefully arranged to completely mess up traffic flow anywhere within the circle around them. I don't go anywhere between 8.30 am and 9.30 am or 3 pm and 4 pm in term time!

Sometimes they do have a meltdown as in your case but its rare. Hafta say the the time I thought the system was quite wrong and trying to cover up a lost parcel, very slow E-Bay Global Shipping delivery from the USA it actaully was right on the money all the time. Just didn't understand how the system worked.

Hub and spoke systems are always inefficient in miles travelled for short distance deliveries. Ievitable given the way they work.

Clive

This years xmas post has become a disaster, I've been waiting over 2 weeks for half a dozen things which should have taken 1 week tops

I think the post office may be stuck with almost no extra staff this year, so the system has fallen over

Some tracking systems work very well some of the time. I can sometimes see exactly where the deliverer is at any time on the day, Amazon. Other times although having a tracking number, Post Office, it does not report anything on the tracking web site.

Recently have had really good deliveries, the best was ordering off Amazon Saturday afternoon and arrived at 6:45am Sunday, and Post Office delivered from Glasgow to Leicester in three days. No complaints here.

There is another aspect of modern delivery which is 100% frustrating. You pick up your mail from the mat, four parcels and a printed card. The card says 'Yodel: I'm sorry you were out, and ...' there are boxes to be ticked saying 'I've left it in the porch / left it with your neighbour / taken it back to the depot.'

None of the boxes is ticked, and there is no contact number or name filled in either. So perhaps it was one of the parcels? No, none of them says anything about Yodel. Onto the Yodel web-site for a contact number, and ring. The automatic voice says 'If you want to send a parcel press 1 ...' and so it goes on.

In my case, it turns out (I think) to be one of the parcels, but I have no way of knowing (and neither do Yodel). All designed by a university graduate, no doubt, whose contact with the real world is not part of his CV. Ho hum

And a merry lock-down cock-up for yuletide to you all.

Tim

I sent an expensive bit of test kit to France. The tracking number was entered into the on-line tracker and I saw the package moving through the system to almost it's destination when it suddenly popped up in Belguim! It then seemed to visit Italy, France, Germany then Bulgaria (all in the same day!).

I queried what was going on as I had paid over £150 for the delivery. I was told it was a PNP tracking and that meant "Package Not Present" and two days later my customer received the paperwork but no package!

The company agreed something had gone wrong and the insurance paid up several thousand pounds. I managed to build up another test kit and get it delivered to my customer. About six months later the local depot phoned me up and said "we have found a parcel in our warehouse that was supposed to go to France but it is still here!" They delivered it back to me with no real explanation. The documentation on the package was absolutely correct so I have no idea what went wrong!

I now have a spare bit of kit but as it was a special build I haven't got another customer for it. I may offer it to my French customer at a bargain price.

From a trusted friend on the inside;
Royal Mail has a record number of temp staff this year; in the order of 33k, compared to a more normal 15-20K (ish). From by own perspective, maybe they could do with more, but training and workplace facilities etc must be taken into account.

Parcels are at a pretty much unprecedented level, due to home shopping.
According to my friend, his mail centre is the fullest he's ever seen it in many years, and this year they've even taken on a large extra warehouse, which is also bursting at the seams.

High absence rate of permanent and temp staff, both due directly to Covid illness and preventative isolation. (I'm also aware, from other sources, of stress related absence increases )
Add into all that, due to Covid, van sharing is largely suspended, and vans should really be cleaned before drivers swap-over, potentially causing further delays.
Van rentals into RM are also well up this year.

Covid secure workplaces, whilst obviously required, don't help efficiency either.

An article I read elsewhere suggested that, quite understandably, tracked items take distribution priority, both internally and the last leg to the recipient.

Bill

Edited By peak4 on 20/12/2020 13:12:10

HERMES under my ' Where do the parcels go ' heading, total disaster.

Finally managed to get through the Autobot to receive another 'query number' but then, nothing.

Found the email address, sent email , nothing.

These parcels do not defy the laws of physics, they still exist, somewhere.

HERMES, a big zero.

Found a 'we'll be back tomorrow' card from dpd on the doorstep this morning. Checked yes my doorbell does work and my letterbox is not sealed. I guess they knew I was only ten feet away listening to the streamed church service and didn't want to disturb me. So considerate. The reference number on the card does not seem to be recognised on the dpd website.

And DHL how does my postcode in Cannock equate to an address in Pietermaritzberg please?

Got it in the end but how can a driver give a 1 hour delivery slot when the thing is actually in the Orange Free State.

Ah well in our dumbed down education system they dont teach geography.

My perception of the above must be where you live, in the last six weeks I've ordered from several sources including a small open crank engine from China, due to arrive in January, I've now had it a week, various items from Arc Euro ordered last Sunday and received it Tuesday via postman, I use the tracking they all offer and invariably, particularly Amazon, can watch the van truddle towards me on the computer so I can be at the door when it arrives, nothing is arriving late.

Martin P

My daughter in law works in the HR department of royal mail and tells me they have taken on over 33,000 extra people this year. Can't get much closer to the horses mouth.

From a personal point of view all the things we have recently posted have arrived at their destinations promptly, possibly quicker than the rest of the year. And no, we don't get any preferential treatment.

Peter

I related my bizarre delivery info to my daughter, later this am. She told me they had to go shopping because the prezzies ordered by her partner, for his Mum and Dad, had ‘vanished into thin air’ according to the tracking info from hermes.

I suggested they buy something different, this time, as these items would likely mysteriously reappear as soon as they replaced them (with identical items) and filed an insurance claim.

Seems like most of the delivery companies are nowhere near efficient.

My daughter recently ordered some earphones from Amazon, the parcel followed its tracked route and time and arrived precisely at the appointed hour. When received the parcel was delivered by Hermes, apparently Amazon had contracted them for some deliveries because of the volume that they had for delivery. When received the box had Hermes logo tape sealing on top of the Amazon trademark tape, on opening the box it was evident that the parcel had been opened and then resealed with the Hermes tape, the product packaging inside was empty, the earphones had been removed. Daughter contacted Amazon who without question replaced the missing item. So it appears that it is possible for parcels to arrive bang on schedule whether they are empty or full.!
Dave W