Totally different cases Hatti, you despatch goods, I'm a regularly receiving customer.
I'm genuinely pleased that Parcelforce give you a service that is satisfactory but know only too well how far short of that they consistently fall for this customer, and always have done.
When they are the courier, all too often I have no idea which day I'll get an item, let alone when in the day. The tracking facility often isn't available, and even when it supposedly is, it's no use due to very slow updating. I can't spend my life sitting indoors day after day on the offchance that something might arrive.
The rival couriers all give a better service, often infinitely better. With my preferred DPD for example, a recent sequence of three deliveries and a collection all followed this pattern. The day before an email from the supplier telling me the delivery would be next day, then very early the next morning an email from DPD advising the half hour slot, the delivery number and the driver's name, accompanied by an active tracking map so I could see all day long exactly where the driver was and if he's on schedule. They always have been. Almost immediately following that, an email from the supplier advises the same information, ensuring that I'd received it.
You'll see from that how the supplier plays a part, not only in choosing DPD but in being a reliable part of the information process. I've noticed that part of the Parcelforce problem has been that some ( you are excluded of course) of the companies using them fall short with their own part, often delaying despatch (but never delaying taking the payment). That combination of supplier shortfall and Parcelforce failings combine to make for delivery delays and not knowing when they'll take place. Of course as the customer I don't know or care who's to blame, I only know that unsatisfactory service is associated with Parcelforce, and as a result I try to avoid knowingly dealing with companies who use them.
There are differences in my area from most others nationally, since my largest of the London boroughs is a very high density delivery area. My last DPD delivery illustrates this. First thing in the morning the driver was shown as delivering a metaphorical stone's throw away from me in an estate alongside mine, but my number 83 delivery was scheduled for 3.30 PM. He spent the whole day delivering in an area no more than about one mile deep and under two miles wide and I had line of sight of the two delivery points before mine. His longest runs of the day would have been the five miles from the depot to the delivery area and five miles back again at the end of the day.
Of course in some ways that makes it easier to give a good service, but all the couriers have the same benefit and they are all based near each other in the same industrial/commercial zone of the borough. It follows that all should be able to give at least a similar service. As said, they don't, so from my point of view as a receiving customer, it is totally untrue that all couriers are the same, there are consistent differences, most obviously with Parcelforce.
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