DPD has been voted the favourite UK courier for the sixth year running, in Money Saving Expert’s customer satisfaction survey.
Almost 7,700 people took part in the poll on Martin Lewis’ site to find the best (and worst) parcel delivery firms. Conducted just after the Christmas and January Sales peak, the poll asked people to rate the performance of all the major UK delivery firms, based on their own experiences with each company over the past year.
DPD finished the overall winner with 65% of voters rating their service as ‘great’. What’s more, DPD’s sister company DPD Local was rated as the second-best parcel delivery company in the UK, with a 56% ‘great’ score.
DPD’s nearest major competitor (Royal Mail) was some 11 percentage points behind on 54%. ‘Great’ scores for the other major carriers included 41% for Parcelforce and 40% for UPS, while Hermes scored 31% and Yodel 16%.
It’s worth noting that these votes are largely from parcel recipients, not from those sending parcels, so whilst DPD might be a favourite for consumers you’ll need to decide for yourself if their services and prices fit your shipping profile. If they do, then the massive consumer vote for their services means that, although a surprisingly small courier compared to others in the UK, DPD are well worth considering entrusting your reputation to.
DPD’s success in recent years has been largely down to its unique one-hour delivery slot service, Predict. Predict means that all DPD customers receive an email or text notification of their one-hour delivery slot in advance, along with a series of ‘in-flight options’ so they can always make arrangements for their delivery, even if they aren’t going to be at home.
Major Delivery Companies |
‘Great’ Score |
| DPD | 65% |
| DPD Local | 56% |
| Royal Mail | 54% |
| Amazon Logistics | 48% |
| Collect + | 48% |
| Parcelforce | 41% |
| UPS | 40% |
| DHL | 38% |
| Fed Ex | 36% |
| Hermes | 31% |
| UK Mail | 25% |
| TNT | 20% |
| Yodel | 16% |
“This is becoming a habit, and it isn’t one that we want to give up! While it is the sixth time we’ve topped this poll, we never take anything for granted. We will enjoy this. When nearly 8,000 customers vote, you have to take it seriously. But the nature of this industry is that you have to perform to the highest possible standards every single day of the year, no matter what the roads or the weather throw at you.
The period from Black Friday right through to Christmas and the January sales is our busiest time of year and our team performed brilliantly. We delivered a record number of parcels and service levels were maintained throughout, as this survey clearly shows.
The whole team deserves massive credit and it is great for everyone involved in the operation to know that their efforts are appreciated by the parcel recipients. A lot of our customers know their DPD driver really well and have a great relationship with them. Rightly, they get a lot of ‘thank yous’ on the doorstep from customers in the run up to Christmas, but this is a chance to celebrate the team behind each driver as well.”
– Dwain McDonald, CEO, DPD
7 Responses
Good to see that RM is up there at the top, DPD is too expensive to send small items with a weight less that 2KG.
Hermes not looking too clever.
Anybody stupid enough to use Yodel are committing commercial suicide. There are several retailers such as Viking Direct and Wilko that I simply refuse to order from as the majority of their parcels are ‘dilivered’ by Yodel.
Remember the your choice of carrier reflects on you, if you chose the cheapest most incompetent carrier don’t expect buyers to come back.
So if only 65% think DPD service is great when they offer tracking with a 1 hr time slot, able to change delivery whilst it is on route to leave in a safe place, with a neighbour or at local pick up point.
What more do some of these customers want?
I use MyHermes for most small items unless less large letter size then goes via Royal Mail, UPS get most of my larger parcels for anything over 2KG as UPS Today charge £5 which works for me when dropping them off.
Don’t go near Yodal/Collect Plus as can’t stand the company as often have parcels damaged dumped in the rain with ebay returns.
I used to rate DPD but in the last six months they’ve gone right downhill. I’ve had lots of issues, late parcels, drivers going to the wrong house (one even took a photo of the floor outside my neighbour’s house, not even the front door), and very poor responses to messages.
They’ve even abandoned Twitter for customer service, no doubt there were too many complaints. They’re in decline.
The problem we had with DPD was our collection drivers have always been great and reliable but the other end is sometimes appalling.
They tell porkies on their hand held units. They say they forgot to leave a card, they say they could not get parked when they GPS shows they were not at the address even and they do not always take pictures of the door. When it goes wrong their customer service just say sorry they do not refund you the cost of the delivery.
Add that to the cost and we moved to Parcelforce. The Ireland and highlands rates are mind blowingly lower and mainland Europe is too. over half price in some case. Plus still offering 1 hour texts and tracking apps.
Don’t even get me started on their Hermes service. We stopped using that when we realised they classed a blue recycle bin as a safe place regardless of the collection day.
We decided it was change or say to customers sorry you cant have it sent we will throw it in our local river its cheaper.
Yodel gaining their crown yet again… Que the MD stating how they put c.s first and are always trying to improve… blah blah blah.
The problem is that they get all the big companies using them as they offer the most stupidly low rates on volume. The people using them dont care as they factor in two things. 1, When it goes wrong it is Yodel that get the balme 99% of the time not them. 2, the rates are so low that when you add up the savings it easily outweighs the losses of lost items etc. So they continue to work on this basis. so long as accountants are doing the thinking, customers not shopping with them will rarely enter into the equation.
We are in a difficult position in that we send alot of hazardous stuff and so are limited with suppliers ( yodel are one of them!) So we have a choice of rock bottom price yodel who will cause us harm as we are only a small company, a reasonably priced company who are ok, unless something goes wrong then you are always waiting for them to chase their tails, and a top price company who are better, but not perfect… but the price is high. Sadly many of our competitors use yodel and so it helps make them look cheaper!
I always remember having something delivered to my home address by yodel rather than my works address as we were going to be closed that day. The item was a hazardous liquid, highly acidic caustic cleaner type thing. It was a 10lt container. It arrived while i was out and the wife took it. The box was almost entirely wrapped in yodel repair tape and the guy just dumped it in the door and literally darted off. The wife went to pick it up and saw that it was wet and was leaking on the floor. No wonder he didn’t want to stay. There were various chemical safety warning labels on the parcel….. thankfully she knew it was dangerous and got gloves before removing it outside and containing it in another container. Sadly the carpet etc wasn’t so lucky.
This was the service from yodel ( who denied the item was leaking when delivered and denied that it had been placed inside the door, stating that if it had been leaking then it would have been returned to the depot… not sure how the drips along the path got there then? Great patio cleaner!). The company that sent it was a very large UK chemical producer… In the end they paid for the carpet etc out of goodwill as yodel refused to believe us!
Not doubt they are still using the likes of Yodel….