Do you trust your courier?

A New York art courier, James Haggerty, was recently entrusted with a painting worth £800k, and he delivered it to it’s destination, only to find the deal had fell through. So he took it with him when he went to a bar that evening… and the worst happened – he lost it.

He is currently being sued by the paintings owner for the loss of the painting.

Trust is very important when dealing with your courier, you have to trust that they will do as they say and you have to trust that they will deliver your consignments and they know what to do if the consignment is not accepted at the point of delivery.

So how do you know if your courier is trustworthy?

• How visible are they?
• How easily contactable are they?
• Do they have testimonials?
• Can you contact customers who have used them?
• Do they communicate effectively with their customers and listen to feed back?
• Do they have insurance and can you see the documents?

You may have noticed to the right of this post we have a few trucks with names on – LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. You can contact us in a number of ways and join us on these sites as well as emailing or calling us. We are highly visible couriers who are dead easy to contact. That’s not to say your courier isn’t trustworthy because they are not on these sites; the more time and effort a courier puts into their presence online and offline will give you a clear indication of how long they are staying in business, how big their business is and who in their company you can contact.

We are open and transparent, as much as a business can be. We even sell guides to becoming a courier, so our business ‘secrets’ are in the public domain. You can see on sites like LinkedIn who has endorsed our services as well as testimonials on this blog. It’s all there if you do your research.

Ask around on forums, twitter and Facebook and get people to tell you who they use and who they value – often they are different companies.

Now here is the crux of the matter – what research did you do when booking your courier service? How did you select them? How do you know they are trustworthy? or did you just book and hope?

You can cut corners in business, but as the owner of the painting found, couriers are not an area in which to do that. Without research and conversations, you will never know how trustworthy your courier is. That can cost you dearly.

Sarah