…shite. Waited in all day which was no big deal as today was a well earned sofa day but they had until 9pm to deliver a parcel and surprise surprise they have failed. 14 hours to deliver a parcel 7 miles from the depot. 🙄

Ho hum.

Perhaps an isolated incident?

Not just you; Yodel don’t have a good track record in my books either – I’ve cancelled orders when I’ve found out they use them to deliver.

Perhaps an isolated incident?

Unfortunately not.

Perhaps an isolated incident?

Nope I found out how crap they are a while ago.

In our case Yodel failed to find our address (London). 3 weeks later they delivered parcel. It supposed to be a present which was cancelled with vendor due to failed delivery. Had to rearrange pickup again. I bet, their stuff isn’t trained properly or poorly paid etc.

Interesting timing… between them and Tesco direct they seem to have lost two of the same order (lost the first, then lost the replacement second), which once Tesco cancelled the order it turns out one of them was nearly here anyway as suddenly the Yodel tracking worked, which up till that point was showing as having not left Tesco. But no way of ‘retrieving’ it as it’s going back to Tesco.

Bunch of numpties between em.

Once had a missed delivery note pushed through the door from Yodel. Phoned up the number on the card and given the reason for non-delivery was that they couldn’t find the address… 😐 🙄

We now avoid buying from anyone that uses them for delivery.

Perhaps an isolated incident?

Nope, they’re crap.

Yodel once abandoned a parcel outside our door that was for an address a few miles away. It was properly addressed. I gave up trying to get them to resolve the error and delivered it for them.

Delivered to a similar sounding street over a mile away, redelivery never showed despite them insisting they’d delivered it. Never found out where that one ended up but eventually found us on the 3rd attempt.

Bunch of clowns.
One time they left a note saying parcel left with neighbour,funny one was at work all day the other was spending time courtesy of her majesty. After knocking on a few doors with no joy i went home and found it thrown over the fence in to my back garden.

Then there was the time a parcel was left in the wheelie bin on collection day, thankfully I got it before the bin men.

Then there was the last minute present due for delivery on xmas eve, which wasn’t delivered as no one was in the office according to the driver, even with cctv footage showing the car park and the door to the office they wouldn’t let me have the parcel when I went to the office as the muppet on reception at yodels office wasn’t allowed to hand it to me without a calling card which the driver hadn’t left. Now the thing that really pissed me off was the driver had to go past our office at the start and finish of his route so would have seen the lights on and cars in the car park as we are the office next door to them!

As others I now won’t order if they use yodel.

We’ll kind of on topic…..waited in all day for a ParcelFarce delivery, checked online (this was going from Liverpool to Manchester 1 hour tops) left depot 04:45 turns up in……..yup you guessed it Aldershot…!!!!!

Guess it might turn up tomorrow after it’s 300 mile round trip…..thanks ParcelFarce!

I’ll say this again…. (Thread on Retrobike where a yodel driver drove over a nice retro frame and they just put some tape on the box which they thought would make the recipient not notice the frame was now mangled scrap):

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.”

I suspect Yodel might be branching out into taxi services, after the muppets we used last night. Rang the taxi company, asked for a pick-up, and asked specifically that driver comes down the drive to the house. It’s a long, steep drive and I’m wearing dress shoes, my wife’s in heels.
“No problem sir, there’s a driver on his way, he’ll be with you in five minutes”
“Great, thanks”… fifteen minutes later, ring them back:
“Hi, I ordered a taxi about fifteen minutes ago and was told it’d be here ten minutes ago”. They’ve got a number recognition system so he knows the details of the request already.
“Oh yep, [gives address]. He’s just dropping off a fare now, he’s 2.5km away, should be with you in five minutes”
“Last time you said he was on his way already, but never mind. And he knows to come right to the house, not wait at the kerb?”
“Yes, yes, we have that on the file – down the drive, plenty of room to turn around at the bottom.”
“That’s the one. And the driver has that information?”
“Yes, absolutely.”
Another 15 minutes later we go back into the house, and ask the babysitter to drop us off. My wife picks up her phone, which up to this point hasn’t been used (she had intended to leave it at home for the evening), and sees a missed call. Tries the number, no answer. So off we go, son in the back, babysitter driving. The wife’s phone rings, it’s the taxi driver.
“Hi, you weren’t there when I came to pick you up”
“Yes we were, we were standing outside of the house for the best part of half an hour”
“Oh. Well I didn’t see you. I tried ringing you”
“Did you ring the number that was used to order the taxi?”
“Yes”
“No you didn’t. The number you are calling right now is a different phone to the one used to make the order.”
“Oh. But you weren’t there when I came.”
“Did you come to the house?”
Starts getting a bit vague…”errr, yeah, I didn’t see you there”
“Did you actually come to the house or just wait on the road?”
“On the road”
“But we asked for you to come to the house”
“Yeah, I saw that. But your drive looks really long…”
At that point my wife hung up.

And then on the way home we had to use the same shower of muppets. The driver stopped at the wrong building for the pick-up – we could see a taxi coming down the road, and he stopped outside a bar about 300 yards away for a few minutes before starting up again and coming to the right place. And then he went the long way round a particular section of the route home, missing a short cut which would have taken a mile or so off the journey. Claimed he didn’t know about it. I could even see that his sat-nav had directed him on it, but he said he was driving the way he knows, and doesn’t follow the sat-nav because it can send you the wrong way…

Just experienced how crap they are, one parcel lost (led tv) and second attempt took two days to deliver, despite it being put on the van to deliver!

Must be just our local Yodel driver who is good then!
Rather than leave a card or put n a safe place, he recognised the liveried vehicles at home and at the office so he brought the parcel to work. Top bloke and really friendly and helpful.

Awful company – 3 week saga trying to get a parcel delivered – to then be informed by company we ordered it from that we had refused delivery. Dreadful customer service.

My On-One was sent by Yodel. Arrived safe and sound when it was supposed to. I returned the forks to On-One by Yodel and again arrived safe and sound. The replacements were sent back to me again by Yodel and guess what… No issues. But I have seen the retrobike thread and the mess they made. I guess its a case of you pays your money you takes your chances. Every courier has their faults. Hermes I’ve got to know the local delivery person so she knows where to leave stuff or collect stuff if I’m not in. But Royal Fail and Parcelfarce always go to the wrong address if they even bother trying to deliver. I had a set of Carbon riser bars crammed through the letter box last week and they got jammed in there. Took me 20 minutes to get them back out.

They use a network of “local” drivers
Cue people carrier literally jammed to the roof with parcels.
I had an On-one delivery arrive at the depot, apparently put on the vehicle for delivery, and then off out for delivery.
6hrs later it was “delivered”
35mins after that it was “unable to be delivered – card left”
Then the following day it was back out for delivery!
Turns out that the woman went to get it, scanned it but it wasn’t actually there!
How can she scan it then?
It never left the depot.
They couldn’t find it.
On-one sent another one out by a different courier which was with me 19hrs after collection.
The Yodel knock my door 5 days later to say “we have a delivery for you…….”

WillH driveway yesterday.

On several occasions Yodel have delivered parcels prompt and perfectly in tact to me, I’ve never had any bad experiences with them.

On several occasions I’ve sent and received parcels with Yodel, and they’ve been late and battered. I’ve never had a good experience with them.

In our case Yodel failed to find our address (London)

To be fair, as addresses go, that is a bit vague.

I’d guess the wide variation is down to Yodel operating franchises leading to locally inconsistent performance.

Just a guess admittedly.

I knew there would be a recent thread on this.

Complete and utter shower of useless bar stewards. Quite frankly they deserve to go out of business and it will be no loss.

Ordered animal feeds on the 30th Nov. Showed up on tracking at our local depot on the 3rd with a “possible delay”. Yesterday was out for delivery…at 7.30 I contact their online help and am assured that it will be here before 9…hmm I even asked if there was a note about it being damaged as had this before.

At 8.30 I check again and the tracking now updated to “delivered” at 12.55, then returned to depot at 7pm (before I contacted their CS).

Check again this morning and sure enough, note on the system saying package damaged, please contact sender. OH checks on the tracking link she was sent (brings up a Yodel site, not MyYodel) and it says it’s been repackaged by Yodel.

Complete and utter shambles of a company. Will be telling our supplier that unless they find a new courier we will have to use someone else from now on as we’ve had to go and source food elsewhere until this gets sorted.

All of my Yodel deliveries have ended launched over my fence into the back garden, including some clothes that were in a very ripped plastic delivery bag that proceeded to get soaked for two days as no card was left and another that contained four coffee cups. Luckily three were intact but the fourth was destroyed. Yodel responded to my complaint to tell me I dont have a suitable location to leave parcels in. Despite having a meter cupboard and a large storage cupboard under this. I got no response when I asked why they simply didnt ring the bell.

Yodel – have had a frame delivered, without problem.

However, have recently had stuff ordered from Tesco direct, which went via Yodel. No sign of package – phone up Tesco, who confirm it was delivered at 1000 on said day (but not to us) and signed for by Drummond (not us, or neighbours). They’d look into it..

Couple days later get call from local Tesco — turns out they’d delivered the Tesco direct parcel to Tesco themselves – interesting!

Two weeks and 3 attempts (of which, 2 I was home all day) to deliver my parcel and even then it was delivered to my neighbour as ‘The addressee wasn’t in on account that their car wasn’t there’. I was in and the car was there – I was even stood at the gate while they flew past besides which how does the courior know I own a car!?

Highclimber – I had this the other day with another delivery company. Courier delivered while I was at work, the Missus was in and was expecting the parcel. She was washing up and saw them arrive and head straight for next door, she waited, nothing, so opened the door and called them over. They said they didnt even attempt to deliver as there was no car, and she said she doesnt have a car and I had taken mine to work. They then asked us why we bothered having a driveway. Er, whats it to you. Also it took two men to deliver a parcel about half the size of a microwave.

They once delivered me a smashed up crate with nothing in it, and seemed confused why I wouldn’t sign for it.
“For all you know it was like that when it was posted! Maybe it’s supposed to be like that eh?”
“There’s supposed to be half a motorbike engine in it”
“Your shipper must have forgotten to put it in”
“Your receipt says 30kg. Is this a 30kg crate you’re holding with 2 fingers?”
“That’s probably just wrong. Anyway, sign here”

got home about this time last year to find the above on my door step in the rain.

I shouldn’t be, but quite amused by these stories .. 🙂

Here’s a transcript of a recent conversation with Yodel’s “executive complaints”, for your viewing pleasure. executive.complaints@vx.yodel.co.uk if you want to talk to them.

Further to my conversation earlier today with [name] 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.

[Cougar.]

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

[Yodel]

Yodel Executive Complaints

Hi [Yodel],

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,

[Cougar.]

…

Hi [Yodel],

Please note that I have not as yet received a reply to my email, a copy of which is attached below for your convenience.

Could you let me know what is actually being done to address this issue?

[Sender], I’ve CC:ed you into this email trail for your information. My partner enjoys your service, but we aren’t prepared to pay for a subscription that might get delivered if we’re lucky; that’s not good enough I’m afraid.

[Cougar]

Dear [Cougar]

I can assure you that the courier has been advised of the acceptable and unacceptable method of delivery and what the Yodel standards are and this has been addressed in line with our internal procedures.

I hope you can appreciate that this is an internal matter and I am not a liberty to discuss in depth action taken with our employees.

Kind Regards,
[Yodel]

Yodel Executive Complaints

Citylink are also on my “do not use” list. Useless shower of idiots.

I think it’s Yodel that operate out of the same huge building as us. Well, I say out of the building – a truck empties it’s contents into the outdoor loading area, dozens of cars then try to pile into the same space and then once enough packages have been thrown around and the cars filled to their headlinings, they all drive off. I’ve even see one driving up the road with the hatch opening and a stream of parcels tumbling out onto the tarmac. If it isn’t Yodel, it’s a similar shower who deliver from private cars rather than vans.

I know they are infuriating but I find their level of pure ineptitude quite dazzling – Trail rat’s photo is just priceless.

That said, DPD are equally shit at time. They emailed last week to say a delivery was due, link to “deliver to neighbour” included, which I clicked. Confirmation of “authorisation to leave with neighbour” received so imagine my delight when I got in to find a card through the door saying the parcel hadn’t been delivered as I was out – no attempt had been made to leave with neighbour (who works from home and was in all day).

Had a van just pull up…passenger with a courier handset looks out of the window and then they drove off before we had a chance to open the door…

So I hunt around for a number for the Bristol branch – nothing.

Speak (eventually) to their online help who said they don’t have a contact number for their depots and that my parcel was still sitting at the depot due to damage.

We call their head office up north and were told it was out for delivery and hadn’t been out at all yesterday.

We recheck the tracking and it has just been updated to say it was out for delivery at 11.55.

They do not seem to have a clue what they are doing.

CityLink up here hand off to local couriers who, to be fair, are really good, know where to leave parcels, and are perfectly efficient..

Inspired by this thread, I’ve just written to them again.

Dear Yodel,

(CC:ed [Sender], order number [x].)
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 27/11/13 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 now 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.