The sh** show that is Royal mail / ParcelForce

[leschirons]

Sold two items here,

 

1; EBS Session combo. Service Xpress 48. Currently resting in Chorley, Lancs PFW hub, where it's been for 10 days with no further movement (assuming it is actually there and not in the local cash converters or a bin, in pieces) Just refunded the buyer having initiated a claim.

 

2;  P.bass. Service Xpress 24, dropped off at local Post office, tracking had no movement at all. Popped back to local post office yesterday and guess what? it was still there after 5 days. Apparently, ParcelForce hadn't been to collect anything for nearly a week !! At what point was I actually going to find out or be told?   After much wrangling and proof providing, they gave it back to me and I took it to a main office yesterday afternoon. Tracking now says "Delivery today"

 

Luckily, I'd sold on BC where folks are understanding but it's still embarrassing.

 

You really can't make this shit up.

[Pow_22]

I'm not a million miles away from Chorley.  If there's anything I can do to help....

[leschirons]

15 minutes ago, Pow_22 said:

I'm not a million miles away from Chorley.  If there's anything I can do to help....

That's very kind of you to offer. I guess I'd have to somehow find out if it's actually there. I'll investigate.

 

Thank you.

[cetera]

I always use tracked 24 and collected from my house, that way I know it's gone.... and I'm 95% sure it won't sit in a hub/store for days. I also never send at the end of the week to avoid weekend immobilisation...

[RAY AGAINST THE MACHINE]

Sorry to hear this . 

I haven’t used parcelforce , but used. Royal Mail many times over .  Nothing is perfect as we know , and EVRI is my enemy .

However what does infuriate me with Royal Mail , is proving that they need to compensate you when they lose or damage things ! That is when I hate them with a passion .

 

When they delivered rare vinyl damaged . The process of uploading the jpegs , quoting the size/ depth/ width of the item is soul destroying!

Then they have a cheek to tell me I am not being compensated after providing them with all the proof required . 

That is when they are a p.o.s !

When as you say , you see your item in the post office and you have to prove it is yours when they should have collected it is extracting the urine !

 

There are a couple of occasions where I purchased vinyl on eBay for it to go missing  via Royal Mail , and I got refunded in a pleasant manner on both occasions from the eBay sellers .

I made sure of course to leave great feedback . 
Regarding the damaged item , the vinyl want rare , but the 12” gatefold cover was. I refunded the postal charge where I was ripped off from Royal Mail , and the buyer thankfully left good feedback explaining that I resolved the issue . 
 

Hopefully I can stop buying and selling stuff eventually 🙂

Edited October 3 by RAY AGAINST THE MACHINE

[Lozz196]

Since the separation and privatisation of Royal Mail & Parcelforce from The Post Office there can’t be much disagreement that they’ve both gone downhill. Thankfully The Post Office was retained under Govt ownership.

[leschirons]

P.bass now delivered and apparently in one piece. Buyer happy. That's the important bit.

 

Now on hold to Royal mail to see if they can confirm the combo is actually where they say it is (and has been for 10 days)

 

No doubt I'll be cut off before they answer.

[stevie]

I've used Royal Mail a fair bit and the service has been perfectly acceptable - fingers crossed. Sometimes the next-day delivery takes two days, but otherwise no problems.

 

If you think Royal Mail is bad, you should experience La Poste. Unbelievably awful. I've never heard of a British postie trying to scam you for cash and refusing to deliver unless you pay up. And that's the tip of the iceberg. 

[walshy]

Parcelforce are dreadful and I won't use them unless theres no option. Just done a deal with @itsmedunc on a Barefaced cab and he waited in for 2 days for Parcelforce to collect, which of course they didn't. I then reverted back to UPS and I have it within 24 hours.  

[leschirons]

4 minutes ago, stevie said:

I've used Royal Mail a fair bit and the service has been perfectly acceptable - fingers crossed. Sometimes the next-day delivery takes two days, but otherwise no problems.

 

If you think Royal Mail is bad, you should experience La Poste. Unbelievably awful. I've never heard of a British postie trying to scam you for cash and refusing to deliver unless you pay up. And that's the tip of the iceberg. 

We lived in France for 17 years and never had a problem with La Poste. Great compared to the cowboys we have to use here. I guess that's a geographical issue though. We were in the Limousin, an agricole heavy region so probably far less problems than in the big cities. Our french postie used to fetch and drop off medical prescriptions, collect an elderly neighbour's shopping and even stopped and changed a wheel for my wife.

[stevie]

The problems I'm currently having are with La Poste in Paris. The litany of cretinous actions is really hard to believe. So, I guess this could be a large city problem, as you say. 

 

Edit: I take that back. Royal Mail has 25% single star reviews on Trustpilot. La Post has 92% single star reviews, many of them complaining about the same things I'm currently having to go through. 

Edited October 4 by stevie

[Dad3353]

Living in rural France for the past half century, never an issue with La Poste (nor, to be fair, any other delivery service, from any country in the world...), either sending or receiving. Just lucky, I suppose. 

[pst62]

I've never had a problem with either Royal Mail or ParcelForce.

I find DHL are the ones who tend to @rse about, especially with deliveries.

I bought a P Bass from Andertons, DHL brought it as far as Bristol,

where they let it sit at their depot for three days, then they returned it to Andertons.

I've just recently bought another P Bass, this time from Glasgow, again DHL,  

it took them 9 days to get it here. I phoned them after 5 days and asked them if it was being delivered by pedal bike.

Edited October 3 by pst62

[ead]

I live in Chorley so more than happy to help if I can.

[Paul S]

I've had extreme experiences with Royal Mail/Parcel force in September.

 

I have a lot of rare plants in my garden.  When I say rare, I mean some are growing nowhere else within these isles.  I collect the seed, give it to a lady who runs a nursery and she then lets me have the pick of her stock for my garden.  A nice arrangement.  I posted off all this year's seed and, after one failed attempt at delivery, Royal Mail say they have lost it.

 

I posted something to Texas, it arrived inside of a week.

 

[stevie]

On 03/10/2025 at 09:44, leschirons said:

Sold two items here,

 

1; EBS Session combo. Service Xpress 48. Currently resting in Chorley, Lancs PFW hub, where it's been for 10 days with no further movement (assuming it is actually there and not in the local cash converters or a bin, in pieces) Just refunded the buyer having initiated a claim.

 

2;  P.bass. Service Xpress 24, dropped off at local Post office, tracking had no movement at all. Popped back to local post office yesterday and guess what? it was still there after 5 days. Apparently, ParcelForce hadn't been to collect anything for nearly a week !! At what point was I actually going to find out or be told?   After much wrangling and proof providing, they gave it back to me and I took it to a main office yesterday afternoon. Tracking now says "Delivery today"

 

Luckily, I'd sold on BC where folks are understanding but it's still embarrassing.

 

You really can't make this shit up.

 

The lesson to take from this is to monitor what's happening to your parcel. If the package is time-sensitive, you need to be proactive if there's a delay. If your parcel hasn't left the Post Office, it should be obvious almost immediately from the tracking info. Also, the Chorley depot has a phone number you can use. I once sent a cabinet off to a customer who wanted it for a gig on the Saturday. It was supposed to be delivered on the Friday but wasn't. So, I called the depot and persuaded them to deliver that day rather than waiting until Monday. It think it might well have been the Chorley depot. 

[binky_bass]

These things do seem to be happening more and more with companies saving costs everywhere which inevitably means tasking workers with more targets or lowering wages, both lead to mishandling of parcels. I had DPD somehow managed to send a Mesa 410 cab that was destined for Glasgow to Ireland, and a PJB 12X5 cab that was destined for Ireland to Glasgow, despite both being extremely well labelled! 

 

Parcelforce 24/48 has generally done me well over the years, I've probably sent 500 guitars/basses this way with only 1 or 2 issues. 

 

I tend to send them in a hard case covered in black plastic with the handle exposed and not in a cardboard box, this way the courier can hold the handle with one hand instead of trying to do the same with a giant cardboard box and dropping in 10 times in the process. Sometimes less packing, so long as a carry handle is exposed, is the better option. Not that this was a factor in your case! 

[NancyJohnson]

I know there are moans and groans about Royal Mail/Parcelforce, but if you want to view a truly terrible postal service witness that of just about any carrier in the US. 

 

There was absolute ineptitude on all three things I bought through Sweetwater (which were shipped to Dallas and Houston), but the best (worst) one was a small package that took nearly ten days to get from Union Square to our hotel on W56th Street; 40 city blocks.  We actually walked past the sellers address several times on that trip.

[leschirons]

14 minutes ago, binky_bass said:

 

 

 

 

I tend to send them in a hard case covered in black plastic with the handle exposed and not in a cardboard box, this way the courier can hold the handle with one hand instead of trying to do the same with a giant cardboard box and dropping in 10 times in the process. Sometimes less packing, so long as a carry handle is exposed, is the better option. Not that this was a factor in your case! 

Me too, both parcels had unbreakable Gorilla tape handles that wrap right round a couple of times. I even write "Handle" on the handle😅

[RAY AGAINST THE MACHINE]

Might as well mention another moan  about EVRI …

yesterday I received an email from next advising me my order is on its way via EVRI ( 7-9pm) 

I sent an email to next around 9.30 complaint etc. I didn’t want another 10.30 delivery .Then the courier showed up at 9.45pm.

He was very apologetic, and in a way I wish I never complained. However, when I got the EVRI feedback email,I gave it 2 stars and told them that the courier was a nice guy ,and that he probably was given too many deliveries . I did mention that EVRI are not a professional outfit .

 

I did receive an email today from next advising me that they are taking the matter seriously . Hoping that they see the driver is not the problem .Then again if next don’t get complaints then they’ll keep giving a shoddy courier service .

[Beedster]

For the last year at least I've used Parcelforce whenever possible, due in large part to the really good driver here. Anyway, tried to book a collection for Wednesday and it was a lot more complex than usual and didn't offer the usual time slots, which delayed the whole thing as I was only going to be home in the afternoon, albeit when the driver usually comes by (around 3.00 each day). Postman arrived yesterday morning with a load of bills and also asked for the items he had to collect, which were going into the back of his small postie van. Turns out that Parcelforce have now handed collections and deliveries to Royal Mail, which strikes me as a pretty bad move for us punters given RM are not exactly state of the art  

[RAY AGAINST THE MACHINE]

Sorry to hear that @Beedster. If it’s not broke  don’t fix it doesn’t seem to compute these days .

Having said that , with RM you get email notifications when your item is due for delivery. Plus their app actually does work . Unlike EVRI who are worse than crap .

Since merging with the useless EVRI , DHL have gone massively downhill and their notifications are the exact same as EVRI …

 

For example;; last year I purchased a rare vinyl album from Germany via discogs. I got many notifications on its journey to me via DHL. Gtreat!

On Sunday 2nd nov I purchased a piece of moog equipment from a shop on reverb. It was dispatched on Monday from uk address. I was impressed by the speed of dispatch etc. I checked the DHL tracking on tues and “ I out for delivery ‘ was indicated.  It comes to 10.00 pm and a message ‘ at the depot’ appeared! 
Being laid back etc, I expected the item to arrive Thursday . I sent sellers email at 10.00 pm so they see it  on Thursday morning. I got an email apologising about delay and was told they would contact dhl and it would be with me that day . Turns out I received it around 6pm next day ( Friday) ! 
I was promised a refund if not received,,and was advised to check the link . No! That’s the sellers job ! 
This is exactly the same standard as EVRI , so dhl is on my list of hate . 
 

DPD and RoyalMail are the only ones that are 90+% good in my neck of the woods and if I see a seller using anything else I avoid or politely ask them if they use my choice of courier! 

[tauzero]

On 07/11/2025 at 14:59, RAY AGAINST THE MACHINE said:

Sorry to hear that @Beedster. If it’s not broke  don’t fix it doesn’t seem to compute these days .

Having said that , with RM you get email notifications when your item is due for delivery. Plus their app actually does work . Unlike EVRI who are worse than crap .

Since merging with the useless EVRI , DHL have gone massively downhill and their notifications are the exact same as EVRI …

 

The Royal Mail app is appalling. Half the time it says there are problems with the servers so it can't give me any information. Conversely, the Evri app works perfectly and I get given an expected delivery window.

[RAY AGAINST THE MACHINE]

2 hours ago, tauzero said:

 

The Royal Mail app is appalling. Half the time it says there are problems with the servers so it can't give me any information. Conversely, the Evri app works perfectly and I get given an expected delivery window.

We’ll have to agree to disagree etc. no issue in my neck of the woods .