So, my blog is normally pretty focused on the various topics I post on, but I’ve been motivated enough today to write about ‘yodel’ (http://www.yodel.co.uk) who without doubt have to be the single worst courier company in existence today that I have ever had the displeasure of being on the receiving end of.
I can only suspect that their fees to companies must be really low as many large companies seem to use them, but I can hand on heart say that they have been a complete and utter disgrace, to the point where if I know a company now uses them as a courier, I’ll choose to avoid using that company and buy from somewhere else
Let me explain a little of my experience with yodel
Case 1: The first time
We ordered some shoes for my daughter from a large UK sports retailer who choose to use yodel.
The first paid for ‘next-day’ delivery date came and went, despite my wife waiting in the entire day for the delivery (7am to 6pm!). We called the courier company, and I begrudgingly arranged a re-delivery date.
Guess what – the redelivery date came and went and still no delivery – but this time I was watching the tracking data all day from the website. At 6pm in the evening, the status showed that it was out for delivery, then at around 6:30pm, the status changed, not to a failed delivery, but to a successful one, at around 3pm – with the comment that it was posted!
- It was shoes in a shoe box – my letter box isn’t that big!
- They needed a signature so they shouldn’t have posted them
- How/Why did the status change at 6:36pm to a 3pm delivery status!
I called yodel, but they wouldn’t talk to me, said it had been delivered, and that I’d have to take up any complaints with the sending company.
So I called them, explained the situation – they said they’d investigate, and would get back in-touch – I also personally contacted yodel through twitter to complain, and they initiated a separate investigation, but ultimately got back with a ‘your parcel was delivered’ … no it wasn’t!
Eventually, guess what – they found my parcel at the service centre and sure enough it hadn’t been delivered, but by then I’d already told the supplier that I wanted a full refund and wasn’t interested in entertaining yodel do yet another delivery that might get botched and didn’t like the insinuations that I was trying to pull a fast one! Sure enough, the supplier did refund, but only once the parcel had turned up, because as far as they were aware, they’d delivered it because Yodel had said so!
Case 2: The straw that broke the camel’s back
Order from Argos this time – I wasn’t aware they used yodel otherwise I’d have picked it up myself from the store, but as it was furniture, I figured it would be easier to get it delivered rather than try and squeeze it in the car.
Paid Argos extra for Saturday delivery, and waited in all day. I called Argos after 6pm come and went without a delivery in sight – guess what… apparently I was ‘carded’ just before 10am.
No way! I was in all day, and actually in the front room where you’d not only hear the delivery but also see it. I live in a small cul-de-sac and any lorry/van is easily noticeable. I noticed a Sainsbury’s home delivery around the time I was allegedly carded to one of my neighbours, but not the phantom yodel van.
On calling Argos, they mentioned the service depot it left from and I knew immediately that it was yodel and my heart sank. I’ve now had to arrange re-delivery and have got to wait around another day for a delivery.
—— Update 2nd October ——
The yodel woes continue – Argos rearranged the delivery for Wednesday and provided me with the tracking ID. You can imagine my surprise when I checked the tracking ID on Wednesday the 2nd October to find that it had been ‘successfully’ deliver on the 30th September. Wow… that’s great news, they just weren’t delivered to me.
Another call to argos, and some more information – they were left in my ‘Summer House’ in the back garden. Guess what – I don’t have a summer house..
So – yodel had successfully delivered the item to the wrong address – fantastic.
Argos arranged for them to recollect the items, and redeliver them. Sure enough, this happened on the same day… finally our package arrived from a courier who was less than ecstatic to be doing so (and that is putting it politely)
But it’s not the end! When I got home from work, I took a quick look and the boxes of the wardrobe were a complete mess, tears, crushes, polystyrene ruined, and low and behold, the wood was damaged where the box had been damaged and it was on a visible part of the wardrobe. This was probably cause by all the ‘messing’ around!
Now yodel are coming back again on Saturday with another new wardrobe, and to take the old one away…. maybe… lets wait and see, they’ve never managed a successful Saturday delivery yet!
—— Update 05 October 2013 ——-
Guess what….. still no delivery! It goes from extremely bad to simply unacceptable.
I’ve wasted 2 whole Saturdays waiting around for Yodel to do the seemingly impossible and deliver a package – something they’re supposed to be the experts at!
This morning I called yodel to find out the tracking ID for the redelivery and got through to a very pleasant lady who was more than happy to help. She pulled out the tracking IDs and provided them to me and then I proceeded to track the item throughout the day checking pretty much every hour as I didn’t have any confidence in them being able to deliver (and my lack of confidence wasn’t wrong!)
Following on from my first experience above (Case 1), I decided to take screen shots of the tracking screen as I checked this time.
Their track events aren’t real time even though they appear to be that way.
(Note – I’ve had to edit these screen shots to protect identity as the yodel website is completely un-secure around tracking of orders. It prompts for an ID and postcode but proceeds to subsequently ignore the postcode. Any thieves out there take note, you can cycle through the number orders, find those that are left in a ‘safe’ location, and proceed to remove them from the ‘safe’ location before the owners return! – you just need to order something to know the format in the first instance)
Take the following example from today
The screenshot of their online tracking at 14:30 – all looks ok so far.
Then came the 15:30 check (or thereabouts!)
Hold on a minute, is that a 12:06 track even that appeared some time between 14:30 and 15:34, and oh look. It’s an address problem – guess what, yet another messed up delivery by yodel.
But wait, an address problem, this is the same address they’ve already managed to deliver the damaged item to on wednesday, and even more so, I’d even put special delivery instructions on the order so they could find the address (assuming the driver could read that is)…
So, I’m still the proud owner of one damaged wardrobe, yodel still have another wardrobe that they have allegedly sent out and now returned, and all as Argos can do is rearrange delivery yet again… who’s to say next time around, it won’t be damaged again now that it’s been loaded/unloaded and then subsequently loaded onto a van again.
This order was made on the 21st of September.
I never got the delivery from yodel… having been on the phone to argos for a while, I’ve cancelled the delivery and collected from store instead.
—— Update 07 October 2013 ——
Hahaha – guess what they turned up this morning to deliver even though they had an address problem, and even though I’d cancelled.
—— End 0f Update 07 October 2013 ——
I don’t know if it’s just contract staff, drivers, or the regional yodel service centre here that is terrible, or if it’s a national thing, but I suspect its more their processes (or lack of) rather than the people given the numbers of complaints on the internet and the fact that they’ve even managed to make the BBC Watchdog TV programme (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006mg74/features/yodel)
So if there are any ‘C level’ staff of large internet companies who happen to stumble on this – if you do use Yodel and want to retain customers, please think again. it might cost peanuts, but with peanuts you get ???????.
Alleging delivery when they haven’t, alleging ‘carding’/missed delivery when they haven’t, and to add to that now, an ‘address problem’ when they’ve already been just 3 days ago to deliver a damaged item!
A courier company has to do two things well:
- Courier items on time and schedule
- Track the status of these items accurately.
From what I can see yodel does neither of these!
I’ve worked with some very large and some smaller courier companies in my job as an IT consultant, all of who I know can track parcels, deliveries, and the vehicles/staff throughout the entire process all of which guarantees customer satisfaction – Yodel if you’re reading this I recommend you seriously take a look at your business processes, systems and staff if you want to turnaround the woeful financials assuming the numbers I’ve seen are to be believed!
I’m confident that yodel complete large numbers of successful deliveries every day and I know that many of the staff will be dedicated and excellent – the response I got from the twitter team was courteous and efficient, but couldn’t resolve the issue ultimately. I’ve never ever experienced such lies and poor service from a courier company – only once has one other courier company come close to being this bad in the last 10 years and they managed to redeem themselves.
Yodel you really are a disgrace.
Shout it from the hill tops, yodel it in the mountains – you certainly give people something to shout about – your shocking service!
Disclaimer just to add that these words are solely my own personal opinion, and also that the dates / times and events from case 1 are what I can recollect from memory as I can’t pull back much information on this now given it occurred a few months back. Case 2 is about as date/information perfect as I can get
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