It’s the busiest shopping time of the year.
Between the promised bargains of Black Friday, and Christmas looming on the horizon, the next few weeks will see huge sums spent by British shoppers.
For an awful lot of us the bulk of the shopping will take place online. It’s more convenient ‒ you can shop from your sofa, after all ‒ and it offers the chance to earn some free money on your spending too by going through a cashback website.
There is one significant drawback though. Shopping online means relying on delivery firms, which as one new study makes clear, is often a less than pleasant experience.
Even the best are mediocre
Citizens Advice has published its third annual breakdown of the performance of different delivery services, and it makes for pretty bleak reading.
Even the ‘best’ delivery firms have an awful lot of work to do, with not a single delivery firm managing to score three out of five, a shocking indictment of the entire industry.
The study judges delivery firms based on how they perform on customer service, delivery problems and accessibility needs.
|
Company |
Delivery problems |
Accessibility |
Customer service |
Trust |
Overall scores |
|
Amazon Logistics |
2.60 |
2.00 |
3.60 |
4.00 |
2.75 |
|
Royal Mail |
2.40 |
2.80 |
3.00 |
4.00 |
2.75 |
|
DPD |
2.00 |
2.00 |
2.30 |
3.80 |
2.25 |
|
Yodel |
1.80 |
2.00 |
2.30 |
2.20 |
2.00 |
|
Evri |
1.80 |
1.60 |
2.40 |
2.75 |
2.00 |
Make no mistake about it, the scores are dire virtually across the board.
To give Amazon and the Royal Mail some credit, both do well for trust, while they also outperform on customer service, albeit with unspectacular scores.
But that performance on accessibility ‒ essentially failing to support people with disabilities which may mean it takes them longer to get to the door ‒ is dreadful.
Even worse is the fact that problems with deliveries are just so prevalent.
Citizens Advice found that a third of shoppers experienced a problem with the last delivery they ordered.
This isn’t a case of isolated problems; it’s becoming a consistent pattern where there is almost an expectation that something will go wrong.
And that’s simply an unacceptable state of affairs, with problems ranging from simply late deliveries to parcels being left in unsecured locations.
The performance in dealing with our complaints when there is an issue is equally distressing.
Citizens Advice found that of those who had a problem with their delivery, almost half (43%) then experienced a further issue in trying to resolve the situation.
This included things like not being able to find the right contact details or simply not receiving a response to their complaint.
Forcing delivery firms to raise their game
Relying on delivery firms to simply do better clearly isn’t going to cut it.
Right now they seem to have little incentive to go the extra mile and deliver a half-decent level of service.
That’s why it’s so important for the regulator to be more proactive in forcing them to up their standards.
Delivery firms fall under the responsibility of Ofcom, and these results are a good indication that more needs to be done by the regulator.
For example, there needs to be a proper review into why there are so many consistent issues with deliveries, and why complaints are not being rectified properly.
Right now delivery firms seem to believe they can act with impunity, yet if the regulator shows its teeth then they should be pushed into cleaning up their act.
It would be useful for Ofcom to publish its own data into performance, too.
It already does this with the likes of broadband and mobile phones, publishing figures on which firms attract the most complaints and what is driving those issues.
There is no reason why we could not have something similar in place for delivery firms.
After all, if you were being picked out as the worst of the worst consistently by the regulator, then there’s a decent chance you might want to do something about it.
Currently, the lack of real transparency over delivery firms’ performance only benefits the firms themselves.
Sadly, shoppers have little direct say in the delivery firms utilised by our chosen retailers.
But we can vote with our feet ‒ and our money ‒ by avoiding shops that work with the worst offenders, making clear that their delivery partners were a factor in that decision.
Understanding our rights is also crucial. We’ve detailed them at length in this piece, including insight from the complaints experts at Resolver.