I’m having a hilarious* time trying to get a parcel delivered by Yodel.

According to their website it’s been at my local depot since last Tuesday, but they haven’t attempted to deliver it yet.

I tried arranging to collect it through their website, but as it hasn’t had a failed delivery yet I can’t reorganize a delivery or arrange collection. Website says no.

I’ve tried ringing their main 0844 number, but it just goes through endless menus of options that don’t apply to me, and eventually hangs up on me.

I’ve tried ringing the local depot’s direct line, but it just rings and rings until I get a message saying ‘This mailbox is full’.

Their website says not to go to the depot without having arranged to collect first, as they will not be authorised to hand over the item.

Any other ideas?!

*it’s not actually hilarious

go to the depot.

Contact the sender, it’s their problem.

Its probably lost 🙁

Could be worse, I ordered some brewing kit from abroad, tracking just says “delivered to local courier”. No one actually know who that is………….

go to the depot

I probably will, but don’t want a wasted journey.

it’s their problem

Hmm, it’s Planet X, so it they may not see it that way 😆

Hah!

Let me reword that: It’s their responsibility. PX have a contract with Yodel, you do not.

Oh I had this from PX. Warning quite sweary blog about the whole thing

What we have here is a failure to communicate

Upshot was the day I decided I’d go to the depot, they delivered it. I’m not sure if that’s a representative experience.

Never assign to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence.

I’ve tried ringing their main 0844 number, but it just goes through endless menus of options that don’t apply to me, and eventually hangs up on me.

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBEmX0w6Hlg[/video]

Yodel – web site said “signed for” package had been delivered. Except it hadn’t. Called, spoke to someone who put me in touch with the “driver”. Package delivered, ok, but not to my house as I wasn’t in so where is it? Don’t know. What was the name of the person who signed for it? Don’t know. Were they male or female? Uhhhh. What was the number of the house you dumped the parcel on before forging a signature? Nope, no idea.
Clueless muppets doesn’t even come close

I hate them with every fibre of my being. If had a pound for every email I’ve sent them explaining that “delivered” and “abandoned somewhere in the same postcode” are not synonyms I’d have, well, a number of pounds.

Which is a point actually – I have their “executive complaints” email address somewhere if you want it.

EDIT: executive.complaints@vx.yodel.co.uk

Any other ideas?!

They monitor their twitter site pretty closely, try that

They monitor their twitter site pretty closely, try that

They do, but IME they’re pretty powerless beyond saying sorry (it was their Twitter account which told me to email them originally).

Well, I’ve emailed PX asking them to chase it up. We’ll see if they can be bothered.
Otherwise it’s a 20 mile drive to the depot.
They’d better let me have it if I turn up!

Take plenty of ID if you do. Photo ID & recent utility bill, say.

I used to work with a guy whose nickname was Yodel, because if he ever eventually delivered anything it was usually ****.

If you want a truly shite parcel experience, try 13ten.

I ordered something from the states. It went all across the US by fedex economy service, flew across the ocean, landed then through customs. All that in 5 days. I had about 15 tracking messages and knew where it was every step of the way.

It then took 13ten a further 6 days simply to acknowledge they had the bloody thing after that. Not a single update in that time. It simply sat there doing nothing with no information. Now they have updated the tracking info but they still have not actually passed it to local courier to deliver.

And guess what local courier they are going to use? THat’s right…bloody yodel!

I’m in a similar Yodel hole. Apparently it’s with a neighbour, just no one knows which one…including my neighbours. Ugh.

Someone told me YODEL stands for Your Order Delivered Early or Late. I said they should at least leave out the E, and maybe add some others, like C for example.

Must be the time.of the year, getting in practice for the speedy season.

DPD are going to deliver my parcel today except its now tomorrow except its in Aberdeen awaiting local delivery which is a fair treck of 300mile round trip. So probably not tomorrow but wwwsite says Def tomorrow.

My current Yodel delivery man is great – no qualms with him.

Previous chap was dreadful. He used to sign for the parcels himself then deliver. I did raise this with On One at the time but they didn’t really care.

Good luck!

Good news definitely delivered today. It’s in Birmingham so about 400mile roumd trip.

I could add in the time that Amazon failed to deliver a parcel to an Amazon locker. Everything went well right up to the point that it should have been delivered. So they had another go – and failed again. Apparently it was my fault because I had not bought it from Amazon, but from one of the shops that sell through Amazon. However the item was in an Amazon warehouse and Amazon were the delivery agent.

Third attempt to an real house rather than a locker was successful and happened to catch my then student son in the house. More surprising was the one that they delivered to my house which was never the delivery address. After much too’ing and fro’ing they only charged me for one of the items and gave me an additional 6 months of Amazon Prime.

The reason for using the locker is that should have all been so easy.

Oh I had this from PX. Warning quite sweary blog about the whole thing

Just about sums up my experience. Here’s a typical email I sent them a few years back:

“Disappointingly, but not entirely unsurprisingly, I’m finding myself writing to you again in the vain hope that I can persuade you to prevent your “delivery” drivers from abandoning my packages somewhere in public and hoping for the best. A copy of our previous discussion should be attached to this email, assuming Google’s webmail service is better at delivering things than Yodel, which wouldn’t be difficult.

As you may recall, you assured me previously that “the courier has been advised of the acceptable and unacceptable method of delivery and what the Yodel standards are.” I’ve had sufficient dealings with your company to believe that you and I both know exactly what Yodel’s standards are, and we are simply at a disagreement as to their degree of acceptability.

On [date] we received a delivery via Yodel, your ref [reference]. As your driver managed to turn up during the half hour I’d had to go out that day, the package was once again dumped outside my house, exposed to both the elements and the local scrotes. In one way this was actually an improvement on the previous incident in that he / she had actually managed to put a card through the letterbox this time, however any hopes of redemption was cruelly dashed by whoever decided that “fragile” and “please kick the shit out of me” were synonyms. I’ve attached a picture for your records, no doubt to add to your collection from other customers who were also foolish enough to draw attention to which packages were the best to play football with.

I’m starting to feel as though we’re at an impasse here. I expect what will happen next is you’re going to reply with a cut-and-paste apology and empty assurances that it won’t happen again, though of course you won’t be at liberty to tell me what you’re going to do about it (presumably because “sod all” isn’t likely to placate many people). And round and round we go. So it would seem that I’m not going to be forced to check every time we place an order, asking the retailers which courier they’re planning to use, and then if the answer is “Yodel” to take our business elsewhere. And of course, to be sure to tell them exactly what I’m doing and why. Because ultimately there’s little point in ordering something if it’s going to be a lottery as to whether it ever arrives safely.”

My PX bike was delivered by Yodel to the wrong address (billing not shipping), where it was left outside the house in clear view from the street. The box made it quite clear that it was a bike, I’ve got no idea how it wasn’t taken.

Has anyone ever had any success with the Cougar-style ^^ sarcastic smart-arse complaint letter?

I always picture the complaints team opening their post, one colleague nudging another and saying “another missive from the office of Professor Tosspot” and putting them straight to the bottom of the “never going to get a response this century” pile.

So Planet X promised to look into it a couple of days ago, but no response yet.

I’ve just managed to connect to a person on Yodel’s live chat (first time this has worked in about 10 attempts) – so now Uzair is looking into it as I type!

So they can’t find it, but they’re going to have a look down the back of the metaphorical sofa.
At what point were they going to inform me of this!

The thing is that Yodel can’t get any better as they have set themselves up as the cheapest there is. They don’t have the money to make their service any better and I reckon they know a certain percentage will end up lost/broken etc which they budget for (but try to wriggle out of accepting any sort of blame anyway).

They simply do not care about their standard of service, and that’s what you take the gamble with when you use them.

I thought Hermes was the cheapest and Ive not had any problems with them either sending or receiving.

Has anyone ever had any success with the Cougar-style ^^ sarcastic smart-arse complaint letter?

In case it’s not clear, that was far from my first email. I didn’t start out sarcastic, I was pushed. I always* start out nice and polite.

The thing is – I know it does work. I once worked in tech support for a company whose Tech and Customer Services departments collectively numbered over a hundred staff. Day in, day out, you deal with customers frankly justifiably pissed off with the shitty products we sold, and they blame you. It’s soul destroying. Every now and again we’d get a letter like mine, and it’d get photocopied multiple times and passed round the department. It was the highlight of our miserable existences. I still have copies of some of them to this day (I should probably scan them in and put them online at some point). The customers who were nice to us, or who made us laugh, we’d go to the ends of the earth for. The ones full of vitriol would go to the bottom of the pile, we’d do the absolute minimum for them when we eventually had to get round to dealing with them.

Now, I don’t know if this is true of all Tech / CS departments as I have a sample pool of “one,” and TBH I don’t know whether anyone other than me finds my sarcasm-laden shitograms funny or they just think I’m a whinging nobber, but I have had a reasonably high success rate with them. For example, I once got a free phone upgrade brand new out of O2 with one – the CS rep rang me back inside of an hour and was lovely at me. [EDIT: Just checked back and it wasn’t new, it was a refurb, but as close to perfect as made no odds.]

(* – Usually.

Well, sometimes. 🙂 )