Angry: Courier short-shipped a box of my consignment

I got 3 boxes of plants this week, turns out it should have been 4.

I looked at the main box and it was clearly marked with 4 "items" fairly vigorously over-written with a "3", so I signed for them (on one of this little hand-held things), and bought the boxes in so they were out of the sun.

Opened them up the next morning, started ticking them off and then realised that about 1/4 were missing. It looked at that point as thought there ought to have been another box.

Contacted Supplier, they said should have been 4 boxes, Supplier contacted Courier ... Supplier asked me for information from the packaging labels, I took photographs of them all and emailed to Supplier - and then on closer examination of the numbers on the Courier's barcode labels it became obvious that there was 999999-1, 999999-3 and 999999-4 - so clearly box 2 was missing.

Supplier said they would refund me ... but of course 3/4 of the plants that I ordered is not much good for the display I was intending to make, so either the 4th box needs to turn up, or supplier needs to re-ship them ...

I have no idea what recourse Supplier has from the Courier?? Cost of re-shipping I would expect. Cost of the goods too, I would hope. Compensation for everyone's time and trouble would be reasonable ...

In general I hate Courier companies. They treat me like The Proverbial. They pretend I am out when I am in, or that they can't find me; boxes are delivered damaged and its "nothing to do with them" and so on. So I am not intending to let this one rest.

Today, dunno why I didn't do it before, I looked at the Courier's website for their Tracking Information.

Clearly 4 boxes left their depot near the Supplier, and at a point along the way 3 were logged, and next item in their listing shows "3 of 4 shortage(part of con[signment] missing)". I presume that is automatic when a barcode fails to be scanned etc.

So it begs the question:

• Why did delivery driver not tell me consignment was a box short?
• Why does courier not automatically tell the Supplier that they have shipped-short?
• What is courier doing about it?

The doctored "4" overwritten with a "3" suggests to me that someone is having a go, which in my book is theft and I am quite happy to go after them for the trouble they have, and are, causing me and the Supplier.

If it is an honest mistake (notwithstanding the seemingly deliberate label change) then surely a box will turn up in the corner of a warehouse and arrive here on Monday - assuming its barcode is intact, but not if the label is completely missing I suppose ...

If its just plain theft then someone getting a police record for their behaviour seems entirely reasonable to me.

Is there any point having a go at the courier? and is so how should I tackle them?

By the by, the little hand-held that you sign probably has the number of Boxes / Items indicated on it. I've never thought to check that before (in the old days of "paperwork" you could see exactly what you were signing for), and often the handhelds are so badly scratched, or the sun is shining brightly on my porch, that they are not readable anyway. I shall be quite happy to make the delivery drive waste his time showing me exactly what I am signing for in future ...

 

I quite often end up signing for deliveries at work.
It always says check contents before signing, but you cant do that, the bloke throws the signing gadget into your hand and says sign here.
It would take about 10 minutes to unwrap and check it, before signing.
By that time he'd be gone onto the next delivery.

 

Print off copies of the tracking info, they disappear quite quickly, then tell them, where in transit it went missing, and you expect answers, it is 1 part of a 4 part order the other 3 parts are useless until they fulfill their contract with the supplier, ditto supplier, who will be able to get their costs from courier.

 

Go for a minimum of a refund for the missing box + a free replacement including free next day delivery from the supplier who will have to sort out the courier. The missing package could have been put on the wrong van or accidentally delivered to somebody else in error, but not to advise you on delivery is inexcusable. The supplier should have all the hassle of sorting everything out, including the courier.

DPD tracking is normally very reliable plus they send an SMS with a 1 hour delivery slot. Yodel has to be the worst because they can deliver before the item(s) are marked as dispatched.

I carefully check everything. Once Tesco dot com tried to deliver 2 cardboard wine carriers with 6 bottles in each in lieu of 2 boxes with 12 bottles in each. If a parcel feels light I open it in front of postie/courier to ensure I'm not signing for an empty box.

 

Didn't know that, thanks. I've taken a Screen Shot too.

I would hope that that is the case, but IME it usually costs money to "insure" goods for more than "£X per kg" (i.e. Peanuts) so suppliers take the risk.

The supplier no longer has stock of several of the missing plants, so no chance of me getting replacement plants for all of them ... here's hoping they turn up (and if they do I still will not understand why, given all the tracking they have, they cannot tell me, and Supplier, BEFORE we even discover that they have shipped-short (particularly the Supplier so they can calm Customer's ruffled feathers, at the least)

 

In the days of paper I did used to write "Unchecked" on the paper. Hard pressed (Sic!) to write anything legible on their hand-helds.

Anyways, in this case the fact that an item was missing is shown by their tracking log, and in future I will check the Item Count on their handheld (and encourage others to do the same )

 

P.S. It leads me to think:

Supplier should tell Customer how many boxes to expect (simple first-line-of-defence check) in the "your shipment is on its way" email.

Each box should contain Delivery Note inside the box. If shipping label is lost, and package is opened, that would help reunite it with the recipient.

Only choose a shipping company that notifies YOU (and customer too, where possible) as soon as it is known that part of the shipment has not been delivered or has come back to warehouse at the end of the delivery round.

 

Can you register for deliveries as Mr/Mrs/Ms U.N. Checked? and sign for delivery as such?

 

I hate couriers! With a passion!

Worst ever was a two and a half grand windscreen that was thrown from one end of the van to the other. The (big) box had both "glass" and "fragile" tape all over it for christs sake!

Create merry hell with the courier yourself if possible Kristen. And I do mean rant!

 

OK, Got It!

 

Have you? I'm talking veins popping level. Do away with the phone, you should be so livid tha they can here you twenty miles away!

On a serious level, an angry recipient will (in my experience) get better results with these total numbnuts than a rather stressed vendor.

 

@Kristen - would this be FedEx? They're gonna get a phone call tomorrow, a loud phone call. The t0$$er of a driver couldn't be arsed to fill in the form completely, actually barely at all. As I now have no tracking number I cannot arrange redelivery. As FedEx can't be arsed to wait for people to get home before shutting their offices I can't talk to anyone. And all this could have been avoided if the illiterate git had read the note on the door asking them to leave it next door (as per the special instructions when the deal was done anyway).
It's gonna be a loud call - I'm livid! Without a shadow of a doubt the worst of a bad bunch - we have constant hassle with them at work. From now on I will not buy from anyone who uses FedEx. Thankfully, our main supplier now sends our almost daily parcels via UPS who are competent, professional and on time.

 

I had an interesting call from one of our suppliers today.

They have finally figured it out, that employing their own drivers, and making deliveries to certain areas on certain days, WILL, save them money, as the goods will reach there destination undamaged, therefore eliminating the free remakes that are claimed from them. Of course other advantages are there too, including, employment for 2 people, better customer (me) satisfaction.

So another Courier will lose a contract, will not say who, as I am not sure they know yet.

It will mean we only have 1 delivery a week, but that suits our schedules anyway, win, win for us and our supplier

Now I have to admit, that I have done courier work (needs must sometimes), and a lot of the time, the damage is caused, not by the drivers, but the warehouses, and loaders. However, there is no excuse for bad customer service from the drivers, and they should make every attempt to deliver, promptly and courteously. I always left a correctly completed calling card if I could not deliver, and IF delivery instructions allowed, always tried to find a safe place or neighbour (not just next door but up and across a few as well).

Customer Service skills are sadly lacking in some, unfortunately, (our driver being one ).

 

Yes.

Pleased to say that the missing package turned up. Contents were battered, but I expect that the plants should survive. Tracking showed that missing box was located on Saturday ... but it wasn't delivered until Tuesday - how can that be? I would have thought, following their loss of a parcel, that an urgent exceptional delivery (particularly given that I paid for Next Day Delivery and the contents were perishable) would have been made ...

When it arrived there was clearly a label that had been removed (might be fair enough, the original label's barcode might have confused the system at that point? or been defaced / ripped etc). There was NO printed label / barcode on the outside of the box at all, just a hand written address on the box. INSIDE the box (which had clearly been opened and re-taped) was a barcoded label I KID YOU NOT!. That new label had the original tracking ID number, and the original shipping date, but also a "Printed on" date which was the date the box was re-found, so clearly FedEx had printed that - fair enough, but why was it INSIDE the taped box?



So: goods shipped on 25th, 4 items. On 26th their system detected that one item was mislaid, but delivery driver didn't tell me, and FedEx didn't tell my supplier (I got the impression that the supplier spent some considerable time sorting it out with FedEx).


On 28th it appears that the goods were located - but did not make it to my local depot that day (probably fair enough, but they could have been there by 30th surely?)



Still not delivered on the 30th ... Supplier told me they were still chasing FedEx - why was that even necessary?

On the 1st the goods were delivered.


I checked the tracking system again the next day and got this mess!!! - having put the missing box back into their system there now appear to have been 8 boxes shipped from supplier, or is that 8 + 4 = 12?

and 6, or is that 6 + 3 = 9? got to the hub ... the UID department found 1, or 2, or even 1 + 2 = 3 missing boxes, and magically they combined them all so that I received 4 - apparently all of them delivered on the 2nd.

What a flaming joke ...

You've got me thinking ... I would hate to rule out a supplier because of the Courier they use ... but maybe I could get myself a better deal on carriage by choosing my own courier company, and having them COLLECT.

I could email a PDF file to the supplier for them to print with barcodes etc. (MyHermes works like this, I fill in a form online to arrange From / To and Weight etc. and I get a PDF to print with barcode etc. and I stick that to the box and MyHermes collect, or I take it to their nearest outlet and drop it off)

Anyway, MY Courier would pick up from the Supplier, and bring it to me, and I can control the whole process along the way.

Given that the Supplier is tooled up for Mail order, all they have to do is box-up the goods, in their normal way, attach my PDF label, and wait for My Agent to pick them up. I expect that will be more hassle for them than using a single courier, but they will save time because they won't get any complaint for mis-delivery, because from the moment that My Agent picks it up its no longer the Supplier's problem