A Tamebay reader, and Yodel user, who has asked to remain incognito received a note from Yodel’s Execuitive Charirman Dick Stead this afternoon and it’s worth sharing.
The full text is screen grabbed and posted below but these paragraphs leapt out to me: “Black Friday” and “Cyber Monday” exceeded all analysts’ expectations and in many cases orders for UK retailers were double the previous record level set last year. This sales period continued beyond last week and into this week, when we saw “Manic Monday” campaigns follow hard on the heels of previous promotions, driving parcel volumes.
We know that many retailers are still picking and packing orders taken over a week ago and orders continue to come in. The net impact of these extended sales is that parcel volumes destined for the UK remain significantly higher than forecast. The natural consequence for us all has been a sudden increase in demand throughout the entire distribution pipeline. This has led to a number of localised issues and general strain across the carrier industry.”
In short, a thing that has consistently got bigger year on year for the past decade, got bigger. But bigger than we expected. It’s a bit of a cop-out and specifically calls out increased volumes rather than a lack of preparedness as the cause behind their suspension of collections for up to four days for some users.
It’s also short on apology, indeed any contrition. It also doesn’t say how they will be redoubling efforts to get back on track as soon as possible.
Here’s the full text:
7 Responses
carp…..these delays started before black Friday
And some parcels before black Friday were stalled at local level.
The Wednesday-thursday before black Friday parcels were held/missed trunk to the main sorting hub.
At least when hermes had a problem they fessed up.
over 1 week for a 48 hour delivery is taking the carp.
This is shocking service from yodel, then hiking the prices because they can’t cope to slowing the collections down is terrible business practice.
Well I can provide two tracking numbers for two parcels collected on the Wednesday BEFORE black Friday. Both parcels were sent on a 48 hour service so should have arrived before the ‘mad rush’. Both parcels sat in a depot for 7 DAYS!!! without going anywhere and one of them still hasn’t arrived despite it now being 8 days! The other arrived this morning! I contacted livechat and they said the delays were due to the black Friday weekend but my parcels should have been delivered BEFORE that weekend anyway. Completely unimpressed – Especially as they have refused to refund for the service!
U pay for what u get. Pay cheapo get cheapo service…aint rocket science
I could write a book about my Yodel experiences, all pre-festive rush. One one occasion, when independent witnesses meant they could not allege that I had not answered the doorbell, they alleged that I had refused to accept the package they were delivering! The last straw came when an order was delivered, late and not on the pre-arranged day, and on finding our office empty the delivery driver hurled the package, which contained a printer/scanner, over our security fence, in the pouring rain, where it remained until our return. After several days I gave up any attempt to secure an admission of guilt, let alone an apology. These days I just don’t buy from companies who use Yodel for deliveries.
Reading the above statement I find myself wondering if there is another point to it. If all sales estimates have been shattered does that mean that customers will have nothing left to spend after Christmas??
Last year there were stories of people who had borrowed heavily from such as Credit Cards to fund Christmas. So if 2014 has shattered all the previous records set in 2013 will we get to January and find that sales totally collapse?
Last year I had a reasonable January and February but possibly I am in a different market. Most of my customers are probably men or for men probably mainly middle aged or at least more mature and older. So maybe not so vulnerable.
However while my December has been reason able it certainly is not of record proportions but I could do without January and February being non-events.
Can you imagine how much worse it would be if a couple of flakes of snow fell? Reading the comments below the articles about Yodel in the national press, Amazon Logistics seem to be fast catching up as the most complained about courier.
you cant expect champagne on a beer budget free shipping has its Costs?