Mark Lewis, eBay’s MD who left in March this year when Clare Gilmartin returned from maternity leave to become EU Marketplaces Vice President has landed a new job. He’s just become CEO of Collect+, the parcel delivery company set up in 2009 by Home Delivery Network and PayPoint.
The unique selling point of Collect+ is that you can drop off your parcels at a local shop and your customer can then collect them 3-5 days later from a shop local to them.
The Store-to-Store service means that you don’t have to wait in for a collection and your customer can generally retrieve their parcels at more convenient hours than from traditional courier or postal services. The downside however is that you need to negotiate with your buyer to check that they’re happy to collect their parcel and determine which store is most convenient for them to visit.
This will be an interesting role for Mark Lewis, with his eBay contacts Collect+ may be hoping that he can raise the profile of the service and attract more eBay sellers to use it. For ecommerce in general it’s a genuine alternative to traditional couriers that currently doesn’t appear to have gained much traction – personally I’ve never been offered it as a delivery option by any company on or off eBay, so there’s plenty of room for growth.
15 Responses
This guys an idiot. Id never employ him bad luck to HDN and its employees who he will pulverise every last bit of sweat from – in his name.
Mark Lewis – You ruined ebay and i wont use HDN because of you. I feel sorry for HDN employees because now they work for you.
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Are there customers who are prepared to wait up to five days for a delivery??
Oh, *that’s* why these guys seem familiar…
https://tamebaynew.wpengine.com/2009/10/alternatives-to-royal-mail-collect.html
I still love the sound of this service. I’d be really interested to hear from any sellers or buyers using it already.
We had a rep visit us a while ago, we talked but nothing came of it.
We are with UPS, who offer a great service and a year later and no complaints at all, they are a bit more expensive than other carriers but you get what you pay for, 3 attempts to deliver and they do card each time, always use there own vans and all drivers are always smartly dressed and polite, exception managment online with email to inform of any issue to you so you deal with it, eg customers gates where locked and no access. Icing on the cake would be if the delivery fails due to no one available at address the customer can ring them and change the delivery address or time/day themselfs without needing to speak to us.
All I know about HDN is they do deliver flowers and wine, so if they can do that and ur products are breakable might be worth talking to them
complicated enough as it is with out further complications
I can hear it now ,if your posting today please send it to the flying noodle takeaway,
next week I will be staying with mum could you please send it to maggies cake shop,
though if I am at work, send it too Jimmys pie shop, and if I need to take the kids too Ann Summer could you send it there
ebay, paypal and most creditcard companies have a unique point too,they dont like you sending to a third party address
Dead in the water; no one will bother to use it, it wont work with current paypal requirements and people like door step delivery.
I used Collect + last year, absolutely dire service. Parcels went missing, shop keepers did not have a clue. The biggest problem is that all the major catalogue retailers use it and when their customers drop a package in the shopkeeper labels it and sends it to a central hub, I dropped 5 parcels into one shop and he relabeled them and sent them all back to Littlewoods, took HDN 3 weeks to get them back and to my customers. Would never use again due to the lack of training the shop keepers get, at least the chap collecting from you in his van knows what to do with the parcels, leave the shopkeepers to selling milk I say as they do not make good parcel handlers.
its a grim idea
what will be interesting is to see what happens re ebay / collect+
if, as I suspect Lewis was binned by ebay, nothing will come of it. if he left on goo terms, expect to see something joint attempted
A full collaboration between collect+ and HDNL would be a good idea, where it is possible to drop off parcels at a shop and have them delivered to the door of the recipient (and vice versa).
This would be especially useful as HDNL do not print depot details on the missed delivery cards so working people have problems.
I do wonder what rate they are getting from HDNL for the back haul (although as Amazon used HDNL to deliver a £2.75 second hand book [with free delivery] anything is possible)