EBay Packlink Hermes Royal Mail

[Silver Sidelines]

We have an excellent local courier for Hermes and during lockdown we have used Hermes Home Collection service.  All went well until September when Hermes tracking showed five attempts to deliver a parcel to a Click and Collect Shop.  The parcel was collected by the courier here on 21 September and was only finally delivered on 10 October two days after I had emailed the Hermes CEO.

 

This was an EBay parcel sent using Packlink.  EBay could not assist because I had bought the 'postage' from Packlink.  Hermes no longer have an email address for their Customer Service and their on line assistant 'Holly' instantly recognises the tracking number as a parcel via Packlink and requests that the enquiry is redirected to the 'retailer'.  Now because the postage has been bought from Packlink - Packlink are the retailer.

 

I had already contacted Packlink who were very prompt at offering assistance.  Yes they too could see that 'There was problem delivering to the address'.  However they seemed incapable of solving the issue and slow in providing updates.  They apologised explaining that they didn't actually deliver parcels and that they would have to contact the carrier..........yes.  The 'Village Shop' is open all hours and the buyer confirmed that he was picking up other parcels from the shop.  When finally delivered the parcel was undamaged and had a second seemingly identical address label stuck over my original label.  The Village Shop claimed not to have seen the parcel before.

 

Neither Hermes nor Packlink have answered my request for an explanation for the delay.

 

Life is too short for these long experiences and sadly I will not be using Packlink or Hermes in the foreseeable future.  Three parcels were taken to the Post Office this week and now I see that Royal Mail will collect!

 

Cheers Ray

 

 

Edited October 22, 2020 by Silver Sidelines

[cessna152towser]

I started using Packlink early in the lockdown when collection by Hermes was offered.  All went well the first week then the local courier left suddenly and despite several failed collection requests sent to eBay, Packlink and Hermes,  I eventually ended up with the expense of having to drive the next week's parcels to a petrol garage on the edge of town.  As I have a good post office within a short walk of my house I went back to using Royal Mail.

Edited October 22, 2020 by cessna152towser
typo

[Metr0Land]

I know some people detest Hermes, but as with most couriers it all depends on 'the last mile' or so I thought until recently.

 

We have an excellent local man here, and up until Apr 2014 I had excellent service in High Wycombe.  However, just lately our local man here in west Wales has been screwed by not receiving his daily load of deliveries until much later in the day, in one case not until 4pm with hundreds of parcels to deliver.

 

As it happens I think the same thing happened yesterday.  A parcel from Amazon (non urgent so I can wait a few more days if needed) was not delivered.  With the recent (non) deliveries I get a message saying 'there's been a problem delivering to my address, or couldn't find a safe space' or somesuch as presumably their system has nothing coded for 'we made a b@lls up with transhipments'.

[hayfield]

I was waiting for a delivery from Packlink, then all of a sudden a message arrived saying it was delivered, but when I looked at the Photo it clearly was not either my house or any in the street. I contracted both Hermes (being the courier and the company sending me delivery updates) and Packling

 

Hermies Bot would not recognise delivered at the wrong address, despite being contacted by Hermies several times, denied all responsibility of either the package or delivery. Packlink would not discuss the non delivery as I was not the sender. eBay was just as bad, was happy to refund my money but would not contact Hermes

 

From now on I will do all I can not to use eBay's Packlink service, simply because its customer service is nonexistent. Still several months later waiting for Hermes to respond. Likewise other than for oversize cheap Items I will continue with the Royal Mail via my local Post Office, both companies at least have customer service departments.

 

eBay were more than happy to refund me, but I wanted the items, which as it happens were delivered to a house of the same number in the next road, who's name is completely different from my road and several hundreds of yards away from my house, even the postcode is quite different. So no excuses on any of these fronts.

 

As an aside I have noticed Hermes deliveries now come later in the day, it seems our local agent no longer collects from the delivery hub but waits for it to be delivered to him

[Metr0Land]

As it happens I owe Hermes an apology.  Our reliable man has given up (part of?) the local route.  New lady seems relaible but her car broke down yesterday!

[jonny777]

I have had a leaflet through my door saying as from this month, the postman/woman will pick up parcels from the doorstep when paid for in advance. There is a collection fee (about 70p) on top of the usual Royal Mail postage cost.

 

Maybe the service is being trialled in a few areas, and has not been rolled out nationwide due to Tier 2/3 restrictions?  

[Crosland]

4 hours ago, Metr0Land said:

I know some people detest Hermes, but as with most couriers it all depends on 'the last mile' or so I thought until recently.

 

Unfortunately, with Hermes, the whole system is borked. Parcels too often do not veen make it to the local agent.

 

1 hour ago, jonny777 said:

Maybe the service is being trialled in a few areas, and has not been rolled out nationwide due to Tier 2/3 restrictions?  

 

It was trialled in the west country and is now going national. I don't think it has really bee thought through and it's going to cause chaos, you mark my words. According to our friendly postmistress too many people are incapable of buying the correct postage when buying on line and printing their own labels, so there will be a lot of excess postage charges for recipients. Maybe that's the new business model

 

[Jonboy]

Our local Royal Mail delivery office are struggling to deliver more than once a week, twice a week on a really good week at the moment (this is in a medium size town, not a rural hamlet). I have a first class post weekly magazine on subscription regularly turning up a week late.
 

How they have the capacity to add an extra service I have to wonder....

[Bucoops]

4 hours ago, hayfield said:

I was waiting for a delivery from Packlink, then all of a sudden a message arrived saying it was delivered, but when I looked at the Photo it clearly was not either my house or any in the street. I contracted both Hermes (being the courier and the company sending me delivery updates) and Packling

 

Hermies Bot would not recognise delivered at the wrong address, despite being contacted by Hermies several times, denied all responsibility of either the package or delivery. Packlink would not discuss the non delivery as I was not the sender. eBay was just as bad, was happy to refund my money but would not contact Hermes

 

From now on I will do all I can not to use eBay's Packlink service, simply because its customer service is nonexistent. Still several months later waiting for Hermes to respond. Likewise other than for oversize cheap Items I will continue with the Royal Mail via my local Post Office, both companies at least have customer service departments.

 

eBay were more than happy to refund me, but I wanted the items, which as it happens were delivered to a house of the same number in the next road, who's name is completely different from my road and several hundreds of yards away from my house, even the postcode is quite different. So no excuses on any of these fronts.

 

As an aside I have noticed Hermes deliveries now come later in the day, it seems our local agent no longer collects from the delivery hub but waits for it to be delivered to him

 

There are plenty of videos of the passing of parcels from a lorry to the local courier. Best way to describe it is 52 card pickup.

[hayfield]

1 hour ago, Bucoops said:

 

There are plenty of videos of the passing of parcels from a lorry to the local courier. Best way to describe it is 52 card pickup.

 

 

For a while I recieved messages that the parcel had been picked up from the delivery hub by the courier. 

[Silver Sidelines]

9 hours ago, Silver Sidelines said:

    Three parcels were taken to the Post Office this week and now I see that Royal Mail will collect!

 

Cheers Ray

 

 

 

As said at the start of this thread Royal Mail are ready and willing.  I spoke with one of our Posties here on Wednesday and he showed me on his tablet a key for collections.  He said that the sytem had been trialled in the West of England and had been up and runing nationaly since Monday (19th October).   He even produced a red paper ticket from his pocket which he would scan and leave as a receipt.  So far he thought the office had received only one request for a collection.  He was very positive about the venture.

 

Ray

 

 

[hayfield]

14 hours ago, Bucoops said:

 

There are plenty of videos of the passing of parcels from a lorry to the local courier. Best way to describe it is 52 card pickup.

 

 

Latest reports from the media is that the decline of letters being sent during the lock down has increased even further with more communications being made electronically. Whilst online sales have increased. Certainly at my local post office packets and parcels seem to be the largest volume of business now with the behind the counter being very full between Royal Mail collections.

 

What I have noticed is an increase of Posties using vans, OK I live in a very rural village but I guess packages are making an ever increasing part of the work load.

 

Seems a logical step to diversify its business when one part of its revenue stream is declining and tapping into another area which is growing at quite a rate. Plus they have a very large active workforce in place to take advantage of this opportunity. Thankfully seemingly the staff and their unions see this as job preservation/creation.

[Derekstuart]

Sorry, but why would anyone use hermes or yodel when for a very small amount more you can use Royal Mail or DPD?

hermes is breaking the law by not having contact details on their website. The only way you can deal with these people is to write a formal letter, by recorded delivery, follow up with a second if you feel generous, then a 7 day warning then finally go for a Court summons. In my case they suddenly found the missing parcel on the last day before submitting their reply to Court. Others have claimed that they (hermes) ignore the Court summons, get judgement against them by default and get bailiffs sent in.

 

Sorry, it might sound harsh but they deserve it. I've heard all excuses imaginable and now I will not buy from any vendor- business or personal- who uses hermes or yodel. Life is too short.

[jonny777]

I suppose that is a logical response where the Hermes service is unreliable, but for me the local courier is a very friendly chap and will wait a few metres from the door, until I open it and take the parcel inside.  I get a text or an email in advance to give the approximate time of delivery and can reschedule if I am not going to be at home. 

 

I realise he is on slave labour wages and has little time to deliver each item and may well be struggling to make ends meet; therefore until the service falls below my expectations I will not discriminate against any particular company. 

Edited October 23, 2020 by jonny777

[hayfield]

10 minutes ago, jonny777 said:

I suppose that is a logical response where the Hermes service is unreliable, but for me the local courier is a very friendly chap and will wait a few metres from the door, until I open it and take the parcel inside.  I get a text or an email in advance to give the approximate time of delivery and can reschedule if I am not going to be at home. 

 

I realise he is on slave labour wages and has little time to deliver each item and may well be struggling to make ends meet; therefore until the service falls below my expectations I will not discriminate against any particular company. 

 

Jonny

 

In many ways I agree with you, it does have the basic elements of being a good service. All delivery services put a great deal of pressure on their drivers to work as efficiently as possible (even all the supermarkets) but we should not expect these staff to work as modern day slaves (Its against the law!!!) we should stop using all services where these practices occur. 

 

But there is one fundamental item here, customer service. These companies should be easily accessible when things go wrong not only by the originator but the end user as well.

 

As I said in my case, they kept me informed me all along the way including showing me they had delivered to the wrong address. Then totally ignored me !!!  Whilst I was the person who provided the funds to use their totally inefficient service, initially they denied they were involved in the delivery (despite several emails from them) then refused to even accept they had incorrectly delivered the packet, despite their own photographic (and I guess telemetry) evidence.

 

I have previously said I will only use them in rare occasions for cheap heavy oversize  (by Royal Mail's standards) items, which must cost them more to handle than they charge  

[jonny777]

Sorry John, I was not trying to belittle your reasons for not using Hermes; in fact if I had had a similar experience I would adopt the same attitude. 

 

I was just trying to make the point that until I have a disaster, I tend to keep an open mind.  Probably a rather naive way of doing things, I know. 

 

 

[hayfield]

13 minutes ago, jonny777 said:

Sorry John, I was not trying to belittle your reasons for not using Hermes; in fact if I had had a similar experience I would adopt the same attitude. 

 

I was just trying to make the point that until I have a disaster, I tend to keep an open mind.  Probably a rather naive way of doing things, I know. 

 

 

 

Jonny

 

I never took it that way and as I said I agree with most of what you said. Its sad that Hermes has gone this way, they were getting so much better. But now they seem to have automated their customer service which now seems non existent

 

The proof of how good a company is, is decided not on what they do well but how they react when things go wrong. In my case initially to deny they had any involvement, then to apportion blame to another company, finally just ignore the situation.

 

Its a great pity no one from Hermes is willing to stand up and defend the company. Perhaps this is how things are done on mainland Europe ? As I can see parallels in another area. Ignore the problem and it will go away !!

[Ruffnut Thorston]

Hi all.

 

Hermes App not updating package status!

 

This may be useful?

 

We have a package coming via Hermes....

 

Not ideal, but the size is possibly the reason.

 

Anyway, the Hermes App is still shewing the package as "expected"...

 

eBay tracking however, shews it as "on its way to the courier"...

 

The Hermes website tracking also shews the package as "on its way".

 

So, if you are using the app, consider checking on the other options, as you may otherwise get caught out by a delivery....

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited October 27, 2020 by Sarahagain
typo

[friscopete]

I had a parcel coming from Japan with duty due .It stuck in the parcel office two weeks with no notification and when I complained they sent in it back to Japan the next day  saying they had sent two letters which were certainly not received.

Edited October 27, 2020 by friscopete