Hopeless. Worthless. Pointless. (Parcelforce)

Member Name: Flup

Product:	Parcelforce
Date:	22/11/04 (657 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: You don't have to wait in for deliveries, because...

Disadvantages: ...they never deliver anything!, Unpleasant and ill-trained call centre staff

Our experiences with Parcel Force have driven us to the point where we won't use suppliers who ship with them. They stand in stark contrast to every other courier service I've ever used. The following list of calamities should be enough to help you decide for yourself:

- They are completely incapable of finding my house. Now I live in a rural area, and there are many properties to which directions would read "turn right at the wheelie-bin", none of which any other courier has a problem with. Not so Parcel Force: we've sent maps and given verbal directions more times than I'd care to count, but none of it makes any difference.

- Their procedures don't work. Or at least they never get followed. If we're unfortunate enough to be sent something, after a fortnight we'll get a card in the post saying "we couldn't find your house". Phone calls to the call centre meet with surly responses of "it's out for delivery today", day after day after day. Worse, sometimes the card will say "it's been delivered to the post office of your choice". Now which Post Office would that be, seeing as this is the first I've heard of it?

- Their tracking system is just dreadful. The cards we receive never have tracking numbers and their website provides precisely zero useful information. The call centre always thinks the package is on the van and is deaf to suggestions that maybe, just maybe, this isn't actually the case. Once, I did request that a package be sent to a specific Post Office, but it arrived two days late. Presumably it was "on the van" for those two days.

UPS, FedEx, Citylink: I love you. You've never let me down.
Parcel Force: Never darken my door (not that there's any danger of that!).

I should say that these experiences have accumulated over around ten deliveries, none of which has been incident-free.

Summary: