Yes, it's a right pain, isn't it? I ordered a Mockmill from Germany on January 20th. Pre-Brexit delivery time were 7 days, It eventually arrived with me on 24th Feb. The vendor said it was down to insufficient UK customs officers to check shipments.

It took Royal Mail 59 days to deliver a tracked parcel to me. Thankfully it eventually arrived complete with its valuable contents. Conversely I received an Ebay order from Taiwan in 12 days!

Up in this neck of the woods were used to deliveries taking longer, no issues at all with royal mail, the staff are first class😉

What I do take issue with are the courier companies that charge an additional premium because we are in the Highlands. Were NOT, we have a AB postcode. I've cancelled many orders at the checkout when they add to the delivery charges, can be as much as £35!

Gordon D .... totally agree ... delivery times are stretched up here but both the Royal Mail and courier services are good ..... I've also cancelled due to unacceptable excess delivery charges ..... and even for a while had a stock email I fired off to the seller informing them that their choice of a greedy delivery company had cost them money .... perhaps if we all did that they'd move to the better ones and the greedy ones would have to mend their ways or lose business. If it's a phone sale I always tell them not to pay for next day delivery .... the couriers take the seller's extra cash while knowing they're not going to honour the delivery time .... just cashing in on the seller's desire to give good customer servce.

K

That's not fair fellas.

I know one of the logistics companies, fortunately one of the ones less often vilified than heavens.

When they bid for the contracts the price cutting is shocking to watch as they all underbid each other and climb over the dead bodies in order to get it. Soon the Royal Mail is going to have to be doing this as well and it might comes as a shock to a few of them.

I raised this with them having been shocked the difference when sending a parcel to Inverness. They now have to find ways to make the pricing as effective as possible and it is worked out against the driven mile as petrol and tyres cost cash alongside the driver hours. So the way they can make their overall pricing better is to make it more accurate and more honest, this results in the pricing issue for the more distant parts. This is all driven by everyone wanting deliveries cheaper due to the pandemic. Of course now everyone is using them they are pissed because it means they are overworked and not making much of a profit out of it.

The other options is a fixed price for all and they then make everyone pay (that was the previous model and they lost the contracts based on it)

Not necessarily defending it but just wanted to level the playing field a bit. Anyway you get the benefit of midges, clear air and thistles up your kilt so what have you got to complain about? I miss home.

Alistair ..... and yet some companies still deliver without the loaded surcharges .... I'd just nudge my money towards those ones .... or maybe some sellers adjust their pricing to allow an average between their customers to smooth out the peaks in delivery charges. I just know I scroll past anyone surcharging delivery (to their loss of trade) .... It's disproportionately annoying to get a 50p lightbulb free delivery from China and have someone a few hours down the road try and charge £25 to deliver a small car part based on the geographical falacy that Aberdeenshire is in the Highlands.

Maybe a 'standard' average delivery quote should be compulsory and added to the price like VAT ... level playing field for all sellers and buyers then.

K

We are very fortunate down here with their service, the only lean period with sporadic deliveries was late last year when the local sorting office was severely compromised with over half the staff isolating due to Covid.
It helps knowing the people involved + a Christmas Box keeps things lubricated.

What I don't understand is why covid has lead to more missing and opened items.

Late deliveries I understand, although our local post office is so bad now we dont use it.

Christmas cards posted 3 weeks before arriving after.
Next working day delivery to Aberdeen taking exactly one month, and so on.

No amount of tipping is going to fix that.

We have a brilliant postman here - he is the regular postie and knows everyone and takes great care. What happens further down the line is maybe another matter. The only problems we have had is with Herpes.(sorry - that may be a miss-spelling. -sorry could not find a postie icon

We have an ongoing issue. Despite having a local sorting office less than half a mile away we never get post before 16:30 on a weekday despite the post office saying they deliver by 15:30. Might seem unimportant but when it’s letters asking for confirmation of hospital treatments and the hospital admin go gone at 16:00 it does cause some upset!

The biggest problem is the standard of the mail that’s delivered, whenever it’s raining we get mush delivered. I have photographed and sent copies of magazines with pages soaked and turned to pulp and the post office response (took 6 weeks) was they would ‘speak to’ the postman. 2 months later I emailed them I photograph of the postman putting a fistful of Deliveries onto the floor in the pouring rain whilst he stood talking on his phone, again a long wait and nothing done. I tried to speak to someone in authority, no one available, when I threatened to go to the press with the photos they responded to this by saying how sorry they were but it was ‘operationally beyond their control’ in other words ‘we can’t be arsed’......

The sooner they go bust the better, 75% of what they deliver is unsolicited dross anyway.

BR
Colin