OT: Courier madness.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Just hoping SOMEONE has the answer to this problem.

WE want a courier, who can ,on being phoned, on a *non* premium rate number (and without a ten minutes on hold to hears some precorderd bullshit), and without using a complicated web site that takes 10 minutes to load a single page, down a 48k modem, which is all we have and can get, pick up parcels from a rural Norfolk location and deliver them in the UK, in a reasonable time, undamaged, and at reasonable costs.

So far the ONLY courier who fits the bill was UKmail (Business post) but they have taken to randomly routing packages to any location in the UK, and then stamping on them hard, just to emphasises how much they don't care. And then forcing a huge amount of paperwork on you to refund merely the carriage charge.

Anyine no a company that

- has a local depot phone number not at premium rate?

- will have a Yuman Bean on the other end who can actually do something useful, like organise collections and drops

- who doesnnt destroy 70% of everything you give them.

- and can actually be bothered to deliver the packages when and where indicated in a reasonable time?

It doesn't sound like a lot to ask, but apparently, it is.

[Dave Baker]

Try

use them for my race cylinder head deliveries. You can do everything online, they collect within a couple of hours, have never lost or damaged anything that was properly packed and are cheap.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Assuming you can GET on-line.

Which is not good enough, since we cant: not for bloated websites.

I just got off the phone to Interlink, who seem to be what may work for us.

they collect within a couple of hours, have never lost or damaged

[John Rumm]

Any chance of 3G/GPRS etc with an external antenna?

I have found parcel2go.com quite good. Not tried it on a modem though so it may or may not fit your requirement in that respect, although it seems to match the other bits.

[NT]

I sincerely hope some couriers go bust soon.

Is dialup upload satellite download sanely priced yet?

NT

[The Natural Philosopher]

None whatsoever. Even mobile phones dont work.

we do use them, but the website is too ponderous to do from the factory: which involves more delay and out of hours work. etc.

[The Natural Philosopher]

currently best price performance is a modem. Its OK for internal stuff since I wrote the internal site with efficiency in mind. It cant cope with seriously bloated web sites though.

[js.b1]

Can you have a second telephone line? I ask because you can bond two dialup lines.

I understand the frustration, I used dialup since 1986 and actually only went Broadband because the dialup service I used was withdrawn. Soon after moving to broadband I noticed things went slower - not re shared bandwidth, but websites "stuffing the channel" with flashy drivel when all you wanted as fast zip-zip service. Stupid web development failing to properly benchmark sites for different pipes.

[Tim Watts]

Another modem/line and bond the lines? Proxy cache at your end with aggressive caching - a lot of the crap on their websites could be large quantities of stupid images? Just a thought...

I do feel for you though. Have iPhone but no 3G here, and stuff is pitiful on a link of similar speed to yours.

[Andy Burns]

Tried turning off images and style sheets within the browser? or adding a local caching proxy server?

[Owain]

There are a few services which strip and compress web data for faster download speeds on dial-up. If you can host your own proxy at an intermediate location you could try running something like Betsie for a text-only version of websites.

run lynx / links / elinks / w3m on your own intermediate server and telnet / ssh in. And if their websites aren't usable find a friendly blind person to put in a DDA complaint.

Owain

[The Natural Philosopher]

Good points. I'll think about both.

[John Rumm]

Have you thought about sticking a copy of squid or similar in as a proxy server to eliminate fetching all the static stuff over and over?

[The Natural Philosopher]

BUT the machine with the modem is a PeeCee.

I'd have to do a dial and drop linux box with squid on it. Yuk.

Also, Internet exploder does cache a bit anyway.

[geoff]

In message , The Natural Philosopher writes

You haven't said how much business you might be putting their way

My local sales manager for APC lives out your way, email me at [e-mail] and I'll send you her mobile number

[John Rumm]

Or use the windows version of squid:

[Nightjar]

One of the problems is that they are franchises and the quality of the service is only as good as the local franchisee. Having said that, I've used APC for years and they have always been very reliable. Telephone contact is good - we even have the number of our local delivery driver and he will phone if he is likely to be later than usual. I have no idea what the online booking is like, as I don't do that, but, while we are not on dial up, our broadband connection is very slow.

Colin Bignell

[geoff]

I've just emailed the number of his local sales manager

the website is fairly simple and straightforward

[Tim Watts]

Dial on demand with linux isn't too hard. Squid's straightforward too.

[dennis]

Linux users often forget to mention that (nearly?) all the good open source software also runs on windows so there is no need for a linux box for squid (or anything else useful), just run the windows version on the same PC and save energy.