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The postal strike – how to use your courier

October 12, 2009 By

With the Royal Mail set to strike, small businesses across the country will be affected. Here at Arrow Light Haulage we have been thinking up some solutions as to how to continue business as best as possible and where a courier is essential.

Firstly and perhaps most importantly, Parcel Force is not going to strike. That means the cheapest option for sending out parcels and packages under 5kgs is still available.

Parcel delivery Essex

So if you are a business that sends out one or two parcels a day, and send your invoices by email and pay your customers by Bacs, you will be in a strong position to carry on business as usual.

Until the 14th of October, if you click the link above to book your parcel delivery through Parcel Force and type ‘new’ at the checkout, you will receive a 15% discount.

Secondly, as mentioned above. Use bacs to pay suppliers instead of posting cheques, it’s greener and far more efficient. If you are sending invoices, send them by email too. If like us you have to send additional documentation, scan and email that too. Again it’s greener, faster and far more efficient than the Royal Mail.

For companies that use direct mail for their marketing campaigns, have a look at other methods such as an email mailshots – think of the benefits to your carbon footprint as well as the traffic to your website and the ways to reach customers that may not respond to direct mail. If you need support for this we recommend business consultant Jeff Nutbeem, he can be found via his website – Small Business Consultant

You could be really old fashioned and pick up the phone and call the customers direct and send them a tailored email afterwards. More time consuming perhaps, but may have better results. If the Phone isn’t your thing then talk to an expert, we recommend Shaun Gisbourne at Phone for Business

More importantly, when to use your courier.

Use them when you usually do -  for same day deliveries, for urgent items, for fragile items. You may think you need to use one for your every day mail service but the truth is, you can do a lot of it now via email, fax and instant messenger. These are often secure and safe, and if it really is that confidential you will already be using a courier to deliver it.

Sarah

Same day couriers in Essex

PS if you need to send birthday cards either send them with a present, arrange friend to do it if they live nearby, send a video via email – think a bit creatively! The chances are this won’t be the last strike and we can find ways not to let it affect our businesses or personal lives.

Please note, we have used an affiliate service to obtain the codes and links for the Parcel Force discount.

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Getting the right delivery service

July 26, 2009 By

I have taken to following a new blogger, a gentleman I call the Gordon Ramsey of Change Management, Gerald Price. To make matters worse I can never recall whether he is called Gerard or Gerald, so I have christened him Big G as he is tall. It has been pointed out that at 5′ 2″ tall and most of the adult population is taller than me but the irony was lost ;-)

I asked why I would need this service; no amount of insurance payout could ever replace a lost passport – I’m not even sure what its monetary value is – but she insisted that it would offer ‘peace of mind’ considering that the contents of the envelope; the passport and the information on the application form would be of huge benefit to an identity thief, apparently.

Maybe.

The Royal Mail is a courier. We pay them to take our letters and parcels form one place to another. Now we may choose to pay a premium for our missives to be delivered more or less promptly but I utterly fail to understand why we should have to pay extra to ensure that the people we entrust our letters to don’t steal them and use the contents against us and to our detriment.

Protection Racket by Gerald Price

Well, Royal Mail is a postal service primarily and a courier service secondly. When an item is priceless the best option is a same day courier. This is considerably more expensive than ‘Special Delivery‘ but the plus points to the Courier service are

  • The courier that collects it, will be the one that delivers it
  • Its delivered directly to the correct department and not the reception area
  • If it gets ‘lost’ you will know about it that day. Royal Mail says you have to wait for 15 days before a item of mail is officially lost
  • Have you ever tried to claim on their insurance?
  • Passport / Identity theft is virtually nil when delivered by a professional courier

When an item is priceless or the loss of it would cause a great deal of aggro then don’t take a chance with it, send it with someone who cares and has the systems in place to deal with an item of value.

If you have the time to sort out a duplicate form, an insurance claim and don’t mind the hassle then £4.95 is a small price to pay and if next day delivery isn’t essential, then 39p is an even smaller price to pay!

Hope it was delivered safely for you Gerald.

Sarah

Passport collections and deliveries – for when it’s urgent

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Christmas Posting Dates for the Royal Mail

December 3, 2008 By

The last dates for Christmas posting (UK) and hopefully Christmas arrival are as follows and updated for 2009 :-

Thursday 18th December – Second Class

Saturday 19th December – First Class

Friday 18th December – Special Delivery service Saturday Guarantee – via Royal Mail

Wednesday 23rd December – Special Delivery

International dates for Christmas posting are as follows:-

Friday 4th December – South & Central America, Caribbean, Africa, Middle East, Asia, Far East, Australia and New Zealand

Wednesday 10th December – USA, Canada, Japan, Eastern Europe

Friday 12th December – Western Europe

A same day express courier like ourselves will even deliver on Christmas Day, but thats an incredibly expensive services to request.

At Christmas the workload of the parcels companies can treble, and we are already starting to hear reports back from various depots about drivers returning with their work incomplete, and having to take them out the next day as well.

We will take parcels right up until 21nd of December, but can offer no guarantees that parcels collected that day will arrive in time for Christmas. Please plan your gift deliveries carefully, or your loved ones will not receive their gifts on time.

Kevin

Parcel delivery Essex

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Delivering your works of art

November 13, 2008 By

Today I have been chatting to Niall Fairhead, an art dealer about some items and pieces of art he has had  delivered, and the problems he has had when things have gone wrong…

The Royal Mail – Losing your art with little compensation:

There is an interesting story in the news which I find somewhat apropos for my own business. I often sell things and send them in the post to various clients both overseas and in the UK.

At the centre of this dispute there is a definition of the words “market value” : what the Royal Mail promises to pay for cover for losses for Special 9.00 am next day delivery service.

Evidently a dealer in coins and bank notes understood “market value” to mean what he had sold the goods to his clients for before he was posting them off. The Royal Mail considered “market value” to be what he had paid for them. Ask yourselves: why should the Dealer lose his hard earned profit?

Good Old Royal Mail lost some works and the redoubtable dealer, when he was not properly paid out, sued the Royal Mail in Rhyl County Court. The Learned Judge, I am glad to say, found in favour of the Dealer and awarded him costs and compensation. Bravo!

The Royal Mail, however, considered that County Court rulings do not always make precedents for other Courts and, no doubt, will hit other dealers with insufficient compensations in the future despite losing this particular case.

I myself have 2 cases running at the moment where 2 consignments sent to France, to different clients on different days, have been lost. The losing of these goods has caused me immense aggravation and problems with my clients who seem to want to blame me for the loss of their goods. The Royal Mail really seems little interested in my plight: I have filled in a gargantuan form and am told that I must wait 90 days while they investigate the problem. What happens then ? Well I guess they will offer me a cheese roll and a cup of tea compensation if they cannot find them.

I wholly support the Dealer who stood up against a monolith and won! Here’s applauding you sir!

Thanks Niall, that’s very eloquently put!

The service you use for delivery has to be adequate for the items you are sending. In this area Couriers excell. Yes, there is an alternative and that is to use a dedicated courier service.

Royal Mail don’t cover a lot of things with their insurances, they often only cover up to £2,500 and that leaves a client under insured if they want to make a claim, and in many cases they only get a proportional payout sad

The Royal Mail are best for items under 5kgs, but I wouldn’t send anything valuable by them, but that’s just me smile

For some of Niall’s extraordinary pieces, please check out his website, the Picasso print at the end of this post is also available.

Niall “Art Dealer” Fairhead
www.images-art.co.uk
nfairhead@gmail.com
+442084552700
M: +447976967216
em: nc.images@btconnect.com

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Help with mail order deliveries and couriers

September 18, 2008 By

Another little gem on the internet, this time from a website that deals with consumer issues. It’s a very good read, the link is at the end of the quote. The article goes on to make some suggestions on what a same day courier can do to make things easier for the consumer when expecting delivery..

* Companies that offer “delivery within 2-3 days” – Well, which is it? And does that include the weekend?

* Companies that say “your order has been dispatched”, but not how it’s being delivered (Royal Mail, Courier, 24 hours?)

* Companies that let you order when there’s no stock, but don’t tell you that it’s back in stock and they shipped it – the first you know is when you get the “we tried to deliver but…” card

* Failed deliveries where the little boxes aren’t ticked so there’s no clues – so you drive to the sorting office to get a bit of junk mail that the kind postie didn’t want to fold or leave outside, when you were expecting to be picking up your hi-fi.

* Couriers that aren’t flexible. “We can’t deliver to your work address. We don’t deliver on Saturdays. You can’t collect from our depot”

* Couriers websites that let you view online tracking… that’s a day out of date

We all have to work, and it’s not always possible to take a day off work waiting for the knock on the door. I’ve lost count of the number of days I’ve either:

* Waited in for a courier that didn’t show

* Faffed about with parcel-tracking websites and “we called but…” cards

* Spoken to a courier’s head office to arrange redelivery – and got very frustrated

* Tried to get a number for the courier’s depot (not the call centre)

* Driven to a depot on a Saturday to collect something a courier wouldn’t send out at a weekend

Help with mail order deliveries and couriers.

As a courier company, we are happy to delivery out of hours and on a Saturday, or even a Sunday. Parcel deliveries we do Monday to Friday, and any delivery estimates do not include Saturday or Sunday when it comes to the parcels.

Parcels we will try and deliver three times, and always leave a card with contact details on.

Same day or Express Courier deliveries, we can tell you within 15 minutes what time your items will arrive, and we call our customers an hour prior to delivery, so if they have to nip up the shops for a pint of milk, they can do so without worry.

When looking for a courier service that understands what customer service means, look for someone local. Bigger is not always better when it comes to delivering your goods.

Sarah
Parcel delivery Essex
Basildon, Chelmsford & West Thurrock Same Day and Parcel courier

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