TOT Frustrating few weeks

[alan_m]

For the past few weeks I've been trying to purchase Christmas presents and items for DIY maintenance on the house. The best part of £1000 in total with many single (on-line) orders being £150+

Royal Mail have been a right pain with delaying delivery and not being sure that the order will arrive or has been lost in transit. Two tracked

24 hour packages taking 8 days, and more (and I did pay extra for the faster delivery). Phoning the RM customer service line is a complete exercise in futility as the RM staff only look at the same web page as you can see and give you exactly the same information. Their standard response is wait 10 working days (excluding weekends) and then contact the retailer who will put in a claim for lost items. A check on local social media seems I am not alone with both lengthy delays with RM packages and having no luck with their customer services.

I've had one company that hadn't sent out the order although I had confirmation that they had dispatched the items. Now resolved after 5 phone calls and a refund for the item they claim to have previously dispatched from zero stock!

I've had email order confirmation for two purchases where both companies advertise same day dispatch and the confirmation emails state that a further email will arrive confirming dispatch and tracking number. After not receiving these dispatch confirmations after around 2/3 days phone calls have established that they didn't have stock. In one case they were not expecting stock for 3 weeks and in the other case couldn't guarantee delivery before Christmas. I guess that if I had not made the phone calls I still wouldn't be unaware that I wouldn't get the items for a month or more. Both orders cancelled and refunds made.

I've had more money returned to my credit card in the past two weeks than I have had for the past 20 years :) When buying on-line the money comes out of my CC account within seconds but when refunding the time span is given as 3 to 5 days! In fairness all refunds were actually made within a hour.

To make matters worse the long delays in obtaining items for the DIY means that I'm no longer in the mood to finish the jobs :)

[Theo]

YMMV but I had cause to visit the RM sorting office (on a Saturday morning) because of a local issue - I spoke to the manager who was aware of it and was very helpful. I understand that they put 'boots on the ground' to sort our issue, although legals may have been involved so you don't always hear the outcome.

Perhaps find a time the counter is open and speak to the people there, as they are probably more clueful than the call centre people who just have whatever info is on their screens.

Around here RM are good and Evri/Yodel/UPS are bad, but elsewhere it'll be different.

Amazon's delivery is (sadly, for a healthy market) pretty good as a JIT supplier for DIY things.

Theo

[sid]

Cancel everything and blame RM

[Peter Johnson]

For more than a month now my 'ordinary' post have been delivered once a week, might be after six or eight days. Tracked post is delivered, by van, when it should be. A couple of weeks ago I had to send an Amazon return that weighed just over 20k to an intermediary depot in Staffs. A few years ago I tried to use Hermes, as was, 'heavy parcel service' but they kept cancelling the collection [1] so I didn't trust Evri, the cheapest, and DHL was £5 more expensive than Parcelforce, so they got the job, and tried to deliver the next day, against a 4-5 day promise. Unfortunately, the recipient refused delivery and asked for delivery another day, which didn't happen for a week. PF's website isn't designed to cope with such peculiarities so I don't know why it was refused in the first instance and why re-delivery took so long. [1] Transferred it to TNT, as was, and delivered it to the depot less than a mile away myself to get on its way.

[Andy Burns]

It found the USA side same as DHL's own website, but it didn't find anything within the UK for the RM reference, but bookmarked for future.

[alan_m]

And today I get a email from RM saying that they are reducing the price of 24 and 48 hour* until the 7th January.

"Give yourself peace of mind that your parcels have got there on time and within budget."

I do wonder if they can be done for misleading advertising.

• "Excludes customers with an Online Business Account"

[Owain Lastname]

RM 24 and 48 aren't actually guaranteed delivery times.

RM 24 is "Next working day delivery aim" which is no different from First Class.

Owain

[alan_m]

If they are not delivery times then perhaps the 24hr/48hr descriptions should be removed. I've been told by the staff on the RM customer service line that 24 hours means up to 10 working days (which doesn't include weekends)

And, they have been fined millions for missing their 1st class delivery aims!

[Owain Lastname]

They don't actually describe "24 hour" do they?

Owain

[David Wade]

But they include additional services, so whilst the delivery target is the same as First Class, it includes tracking and collection, if required.

No they say "next working day" which does not roll off the tongue.

Dave