My wife and I sell various items online, one of those being glow sticks to the UK market only, although we’re closing that side of the business down and are currently running out our stock.
We normally ship larger orders by DHL via our local Staples office supplies store, it’s very convenient for us (less than a mile away) and has been very reasonably priced as it’s an official DHL pick up point. On the 21st July, they introduced a new pricing structure which effectively trebled our shipping costs every time we used them
There were all sorts of other inconveniences too, such as *they* had to pack our orders in special cartons.
So we stopped using them.
Our local DHL driver paid us a visit yesterday to explain it’s all been “a bit of a cock-up” as the new prices were only supposed to apply to international deliveries! So he’s advised us to give it another couple of days, and go back and the prices should be back to normal.
We don’t quite think that’s exactly right, however.
We know that this has hit a lot of small businesses like ours, and en masse they have switched to Parcels4Deliveries who use ParcelForce for their deliveries. P4D have recently re-negotiated their charges with them, and are offering an unbeatable deal. We only discovered P4D on the 25th and we were still in the process of checking them out when our DHL driver turned up.
What we think has really happened is that DHL and Staples senior management have decided to put their prices up as more and more people were using them. It was a success story all round until the price hike.
You see, we were shown their marketing material by one of the ladies at Staples, so we know it was fully intended to be for the UK delivery market, not international deliveries as we were told yesterday. She said that she had been on the roll-out course and spoken to DHLs marketing director and that he had insisted it was a good idea even though she told him they would lose business.
We then believe it has all blown up in their face as everyone has moved to P4D, and there’s been a mad scramble to get their customers back!
Probably too late for a lot of their business.
Of course we could be totally wrong on all of this, but I guess we’ll never know the full truth. If I find out any more from Staples, I’ll post it here.
Okay, it’s been over a week now, plenty of time for them to sort it all out, so I went in to Staples to find out what was going on.
Far from it being sorted, it’s even worse. The ladies responsible for DHL packages notified Staples head office about the issue. Head office agreed that things needed to be sorted out quickly, and so they should again use the "Pick Up Manifest" yellow book for domestic deliveries.
But. They still have to charge the new till prices.
Obviously, the ladies at Staples, and their customers, and the DHL drivers think this is all completely ludicrous. I asked if it had affected the DHL business at Staples. "We haven’t done one in two weeks."
To make it even more farcical, I can order a delivery at Parcels2Go.co.uk for a third of the current Staples price, and have the same driver that used to pick up all the parcels for the area in one place (at Staples), come to my premises and do the pick up instead. He’s furious about it as it’s added to his workload.
So yesterday, I signed up with Parcels4Delivery (p4d.co.uk) and placed my first order to be picked up between 9.00am and 5.30pm. The driver (ParcelForce, yeah!) turned up at 8.45am, leaving me the rest of the day free. And it only cost me £8.00 + tax.
What can I say? It was easy to order online, and there’s every chance that the package got there today as it wasn’t too far away.
According to the eBay forums, it seems like the whole of the UK eBay sellers have switched to P4D.
If any DHL or Staples senior management are reading this, you have lost yourself a lot of business you are going to find very difficult to get back.