So,

Got home from camping at the weekend to find, not for the first time, a delivery abandoned on my doorstep in full view of the street. Naturally, I did what anyone would do about this and whined quietly about it on Twitter.

Yesterday I was (not wholly unexpectedly) contacted by Yodel’s Twitter presence asking if they could help. After a morning of to-ing and fro-ing whilst they failed to find my address on their system or tell me what a tracking number should look like, I eventually got them the info they needed and they confirmed that the package had been delivered (film at 11) and asked if I wanted to make a formal complaint.

I said that I didn’t want to make a formal complaint so much as just ensure that it didn’t happen again, but if a complaint is what it would take to do that then that’s how we’d roll. I was then asked to email them, and they’d pass the mail on to the complaints department.

So I drafted an email summarising (again) the conversation on Twitter and expressing the view that this wasn’t good enough service. I’ll repost it here if anyone cares.

Not long after I got a boilerplate reply with an apology and an assurance that “this will be addressed to prevent a repeat of this recurring.”

The question to the STW collective is: now what? On the one hand, I’ve got what I wanted which is an apology and a promise that it’ll be sorted. On the other, it feels a bit like a fob off, here’s our stock apology letter now sod off. I can’t decide whether it’s worth pursuing exactly what they’re going to do about it, or whether I should just take it at face value and see what happens in the future.

What would STW do?

What would STW do?

wee or bombers according to taste?

[edit] worth sending yourself a test parcel to see if they have indeed changed anything?

Move on. Life’s too short. What do you want to get out of it, an assurance written in the MD’s blood?

The question to the STW collective is: now what?

Have you considered writing a letter to the Daily Telegraph in green ink?

Stop using retailers that use Yodel? Easier said than done I know.

What do you want to get out of it, an assurance written in the MD’s blood?

I guess some sort of meat on the bone. “We’ve passed your comments on to your local depot” or some such, maybe a promise of a follow-up email to let me know that their driver training has now been addressed, or something.

I dunno. Maybe it’s just me, I feel a bit cut & pasted. Like the empty promises that “your call is important to us” when you’re on hold, if it was important to them then they’d employ enough staff to answer the bloody phone.

Some people of lesser morals would just complain that the parcel hadn’t arrived. A few of those and they’ll soon stop leaving them on the doorstep.

Stop using retailers that use Yodel? Easier said than done I know.

Well, there is this, but as you say it’s not easy. Buying generic goods it’s simple to be choosy who you deal with, but if you’re buying items that are specific to a retailer your only choice is not to buy them at all.

Some people of lesser morals would just complain that the parcel hadn’t arrived. A few of those and they’ll soon stop leaving them on the doorstep.

Oh yeah, that’s the other thing. Their guidelines say that the drivers may leave parcels in a safe place, and they will post a card if they do this. I didn’t get a card so if it’d been stolen I’d have had no knowledge or proof that they’d ever been here.

Take it up with the retailer. Explain that their choice of delivery service is not up to the job. The receiver has no choice of who the courier is normally. The retailer does.

Doesn’t help when some places use multiple couriers (Amazon for example – and Yodel I think is one of them).

Gets worse too, when things go international. Seems Royal Mail now partner with GLS here, so instead of collecting from the post office 5 mins walk away, I have to collect from a bike shop which means bunking off work 30mins early or waiting until Saturday morning. And that GLS parcel shop loses important signed-for stuff down the back of the shelf, right by the trash cans, and seems to have no security at all.

Unless it’s DHL (who own/run the postal service here), there’s no way of knowing who’s going to deliver the parcel. Or not, as the case may be.

Least we don’t have Yodel here though. AFAIK.

This is the complaint I submitted:

Hi,

Further to my conversation earlier today with “Danny” on @YodelOnline,

My partner received a delivery with the above tracking number on Saturday.
Well, by “received” I mean “discovered it abandoned on our doorstep when we
got home after being away all weekend.”

According to your website at http://www.myyodel.co.uk/help a driver may
‘attempt to leave your parcel in a safe place. To protect the safety of your
goods, we have guidelines in place as to what counts as a “safe place”.’ If
being dumped on a doorstep in full view of the street is a “safe place” then
I would suggest that you need to review your guidelines.

Additionally, your website states that ‘If your parcel has been left in a
safe place , our driver will post a card through your door to let you know
where the parcel has been left.’ This would seem to be another policy of
which your driver is blissfully unaware, as no such card was present.
Perhaps it’s in another “safe place” somewhere? Had the parcel been stolen,
and I’m shocked that it wasn’t in the less than salubrious area in which I
have the misfortune to live, I would have had no knowledge (or more
importantly, proof) that the parcel had ever been there in the first place.

“Danny” asked if I’d like to make a formal complaint, and suggested that I
email this address. In honesty I’m less interested in making a “formal
complaint” and more interested in simply ensuring that in future any
deliveries entrusted to Yodel actually get delivered securely rather than
being dumped somewhere in the same postcode and hoping for the best.
However, if a formal complaint is the best way of making this happen then
that is how we shall proceed.

Incidentally, this isn’t an isolated incident; in the past I’ve just
shrugged it off but it’s happened once too often now and it’s simply not
good enough.

I look forward to hearing your comments.

And Yodel’s reply, ~90 minutes later. (Fair play to them for speed of response, incidentally.)

Dear [Cougar]

Thank you for contacting Yodel and advising us of the difficulties you have experienced with your order.

I am genuinely sorry that you have had cause to complain and I can assure you that this matter has been taken very seriously.

This particular parcel was despatched by the sender on a leave safe / non signature service which allows our courier to leave the parcel in a dry secure location when you are not at home to take the delivery.

Under no circumstances should this parcel have been left in this manner and left out to the elements.

The courier has clearly deviated from our policy in this instance and by failing to leave you any notification card and I can assure you the appropriate action will be taken as this is totally unacceptable and something we would not wish for any customer to receive.

It is very disappointing to hear that this has happened on more than once occasion and I can assure you this will be addressed to prevent a repeat of this recurring.

Please may I apologise on behalf of Yodel for the couriers poor method of delivery and extend my hope that we may at some point in the future be able to provide you with a more representative example of the level of service you should rightly expect from Yodel.

If you experience any further difficulties then please do not hesitate to contact me.

Kind Regards

[Name]

Yodel Executive Complaints

The line regarding it happening on more than one occasion is in a different font to everything else, so I assume this bit was hand-typed into the otherwise boilerplate email.

wee or bombers according to taste
You’ve tasted your own bombers 😯

I recently had a run in with Yodel. I told them that in future I’ll do what I can to avoid employing them and that they will suffer the inconvenience of collecting the package and returning it to their customer along with an explanation of how Yodel lost a sale for their customer.

I have also told Yodel’s customer that if they insist on using Yodel, I shall shop elsewhere.

😕

What would STW do?

Dunno, but personally i’d use another company.

There was a Yodel delivery driver in our reception trying to deliver a parcel intended for the block of flats opposite.

Unfortunately he could neither read nor speak any English so the whole conversation was becoming more farcical. Fortunately he had a chap assisting him with his deliveries, unfortunately, his grasp of the language was even worse.

I shouldn’t complain, he was, by a large margin, the most enthusiastic Yodel delivery driver I’ve seen, he actually wanted to deliver the parcel for a start…

The email is probably an automatic response – didn’t even require any human intervention, so don’t place too much emphasis on it.

Ask for a follow up specific to your request.

At least they replied promptly, you’ll have to try them again to see if it has made any difference. 🙂

Had 2 or 3 deliveries via them but have been in each time so good for me so far.

At least they delivered your item!!!

They lost my last order… And guess what… The item was then out of stock from the supplier, (end of line) .

my mates letter to yodel using supplier

Dear Customer Service,

Thank you for the delivery of my business cards, which arrived two weeks ago, while I was out. The parcel delivery agents – Yodel – had the bright idea of leaving the parcel in a ‘safe’ (according to their card) place. The ‘safe’ place on this occasion was a blue-topped wheelie-bin used for recycling rubbish. Most of Coventry has these bins now, and it is possible that the delivery-person is local and just might have recognised the blue bin as a recycling bin; certainly they would have recognised the wheelie-bin as a Place Into Which Rubbish Goes, not a Place Into Which Parcels Go.

The delivery-person improved on an already cunning plan, by omitting to provide both the time of delivery and parcel number, on the delivery-card posted through the door. Fortunately, two other parcels which have been in transit for a while have now arrived, so by a process of simple deduction, I have concluded that missing parcel was my consignment of business cards from you). These lovingly and time-consumingly designed cards are very likely to have sat, alone in the dark, for up to two days. Then they will have been removed by the recycling bin men, shredded by the recycling plant men, incinerated to generate a few hundred watts of power in the environmentally sensitive waste-to-power plant in Coventry, and then been emitted as a small cloud of environmentally stabilised, slightly warm exhaust gas, with a few molecules possibly finding their way 12 miles downwind, to where I live. Personally I feel this does not constitute an effective or complete delivery.

I have called Yodel (6 times at least) over the last 11 days; I have spoken to a very pleasant series of people: Anna, Hayley, Nyasha, Karni, Alex(andra) and Lorraine; the case has been logged in at least two threads; the case has been escalated at least three times – which should make me feel as if Something Is Being Done but actually inspires little hope and no confidence.

However, this is not your battle. My sincere hope is that you will cease immediately to use Yodel as a carrier. The lack of competence in delivering the parcel (both the act itself and the sloppy delivery-card-filling) and especially the incredibly useless activity subsequently aimed at resolving the problem is enough to cause me to ask any future mail order companies whether they use Yodel. If the answer is a ‘Yes’, then I shall avoid them like a nasty smell. I hope you understand that this will be my reason for not dealing with you again, if you choose to persevere with that company.

On another related topic, please can you let me know the exact amount, including delivery (by Royal Mail / TNT / Fedex / anyoneotherthanYodel) required to make up a repeat order of business cards according to the invoice: Invoice ID: [redacted]

This would be hugely appreciated.

Many thanks,

They left a case of my wine in the high street. They have lied about a Nespresso delivery.

Yes. Complain to the retailer every time.

All you need to do is deliver an empty box from another address you yours and take out the insurance for say £2000. When it gets left on your doorstep again put in a claim and pocket the £2k, they will soon learn!

However knowing yodel, it will prob cost 3k to insure it so may not work

I have up on them a long time back, parcel force is better, has £200 insurance included and you often find discount codes online too for it!

I replied, anyway.

Hi [name],

Thanks for your prompt response albeit with a largely boilerplate reply. Sincerely, the apology is very much appreciated.

Could you advise me as to what “appropriate actions” will be taken in order to ensure that this matter is being resolved and won’t reoccur? Also, may I request a follow-up email once these actions have been taken, so as to keep me informed as to their outcome?

Ultimately, if we can’t guarantee safe delivery of future orders then unfortunately we’ll have no option but to cancel our monthly subscription with the sender and to inform them as to exactly why we’re doing so. Which is less than ideal, but I see little point in spending money on something that could readily disappear with little recourse before I ever see it.

Thanks,

[me]

Yodel once tried to deliver a parcel whilst we were at work. They left a card saying they’d try again the following day, unless other arrangements were made.

Mr Toast phoned them, and arranged to pick it up from the delivery depot the next day. The ‘courier’ who took the call was a bit abrupt, but never mind, the arrangements were made.

After work he cycled to the depot… no parcel. The lady on the desk phoned the courier… who admitted that he’d taken the call to re-arrange the delivery, but forgot to write it down, and tried to deliver it anyway. As we weren’t in, he’d left the parcel with a neighbour. But he wasn’t sure who – he thought it was ‘one of the houses opposite’. Unfortunately, he hadn’t left a card letting us know the details either, as evidently he hadn’t thought that we’d find the information useful.

So, Mr Toast had to go knocking on doors, trying to find his parcel. The ‘courier’ tried to excuse himself, saying that he’d phoned our house and ‘a woman’ had said it’d be OK to leave it with a neighbour.

Well, if ‘a woman’ had been in our house, she could have opened the bloody door and received the parcel. I’m not sure who strange mystery woman was supposed to be – I was at work, Benny’s a dog and incapable of human speech, and I’m pretty sure Mr Toast hasn’t got any secret ladies fritzled around the house.

But yeah, “Danny” from their Twitter account contacted me after my middle-class whinge on Twitter. More terrifyingly, so did a journalist from the Daily Mail, who was writing an article on Yodel’s poor service. Left that alone though, it was a bit too Alien Vs Predator (whoever wins, we lose).

A quote from a Retrobike member on a recent thread about Yodel on there. Makes me laugh every time I read it:

“DO NOT, EVER, WITHOUT EXCEPTION, USE YODEL

They are the single most inept, incapable, shower of sh*t excuse of a courier company I have ever had the misfortune to use.

Unless, of course, you count “good service” as physically running over a bike and then taping it all back up in the hope I won’t know, and then REFUSING to pay me a penny in compensation because I couldn’t prove it was them who ran it over…

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. You would have more luck putting your bike in a Trebuchet and launching it in the general direction of where you want it to end up. I would bet on it arriving quicker and in better condition than if you let the Yodel circus anywhere near it.”