postal problems

[Michael D]

May I put in my 2 cents (even though it's in euro's)? as my other hobbies besides vintage cars involve electric guitars and antiquities I do quite some Ebay-buying and often in the UK.... in my experience: small parcels sent with Royal Mail take some 3 to 4 weeks to reach their destination when sent from anywhere in the UK to the Netherlands where I live......So ask for UPS they're amongst the best. German dispatchers seem to love Hermes....as they are cheapest and have a very dense network of drop off locations. However: Whenever you buy something from Germany: pay the vendor al little more in order to get things sent by DHL or DPD.. every time I received a parcel sent with Hermes it took weeks to arrive (where DHL and DPD only need a few days..), their track and trace reporting crazy things happening (like a parcel going to-and-fro between hubs..) sometimes with a part of a multi colli shipment missing, sometimes mistreated thus that the item inside the box was damaged in transit (having the pictures of the eBay listing to prove that the item was sent undamaged by vendor). So 'choose wisely'....

[Tony Betts]

i prefer useing DHL.

DHL through parcel2go for 5kg is around £7.50 but the parcel cant be over 50cm long.

DHL through there own website is around £28.00 for the same service.

i spoke to DHL a few years ago, as a small business. for what my farty little company is worth. they would only give me a small discount as im just to small for anything sugnificant. they didnt even leave me with quotes.

paul N-M do remember my farty little company doesnt even hit the V.A.T limit.

and i dont even have one shop let alone others around the country. and definatly dont have starff to chase up postage quotes.

tony

[Tony Griffiths]

i prefer useing DHL.

DHL through parcel2go for 5kg is around £7.50 but the parcel cant be over 50cm long.

DHL through there own website is around £28.00 for the same service.

i spoke to DHL a few years ago, as a small business. for what my farty little company is worth. they would only give me a small discount as im just to small for anything sugnificant. they didnt even leave me with quotes.

paul N-M do remember my farty little company doesnt even hit the V.A.T limit.

and i dont even have one shop let alone others around the country. and definatly dont have starff to chase up postage quotes.

tony

I know a company owner who, when asked by DHL how many packages he was going to send, estimated that it would be around 5000 - a received a well-discounted rate. At the end of the year, having sent just 700, DHL told him that they'd have to put him on a higher rate. He replied that in the coming year business would improve and he'd definitely by doing the 5000 - and managed to retain the better rate. This was 12 years ago and he still gets the discounted rate and still sends no more than 700 packages....

[Paul N-M]

All I can say Tony is that having sold on my business I still use DHL for the few parcels I need to send out and get a much better rate than £28. I wont quote exact prices but under £10 for a box 120 x 20 x 20cm/10kg for example.
I may have to pay £28 for sending a similar parcel to Holland for example.
Obviously deals can be done.

[Duncan Grimmond]

My experience with Hermes put me off. I had been using them regularly for over a year but they let me down very badly.
Their on-line booking system took three separate payments for the same collection and didn't turn up to get .
It took weeks to get my money back through a PayPal claim. I have closed my account.