Difficult to know how to respond to the courier thing, we used ParcelForce, then tried another courier for all UK parcel traffic (not mentioning any names) but they were really not working for us at all so back to ParcelForce who actually get the vast majority of parcels we send to their destination on time.
I have no doubts there are a lot of examples that could be levelled at us stating the opposite but the numbers we have speak for themselves.
You also have to be aware that there are limited options available to us and when we have companies come to us and state they want the business from us most of them are not heard from again when we tell them how much volume we ship.
Also we are at the otherside of the Irish Sea so that also limits the options we have.
All things being as they are though we are happy with the Royal Mail/ParcelForce combination we use.