anyone ever use parcelforce?

lizzylad84

Recently bought a bike online and seller has sent it via parcelforce. He'd only deliver to northern ireland abd I gave him a mates address. Two delivery attempts were made today abd another is scheduled for tomorrow. No contract number for delivery driver was provided when he called earlier. Having awful trouble contacting depot in portadown.

Anyone ever used them before?

Type 17

Never had the pleasure, but I can only say that when I lived in the UK in the 90's, everyone called them Parcelfarce...

5rtytry56

Years ago, a company I worked for used them to deliver laptops new

These machines were thrown into front gardens by this courier

lizzylad84

Encouraging words.

Type 17

lizzylad84 wrote: »

Encouraging words.

Sorry, but better to know the truth than be under any illusions.

Actually, here's a short, Parcelforce-related story:

When I was a student in the 1990's in the UK (Hertfordshire), I took temp jobs with an agency during the holidays. One of them was to go to the Parcelforce depot in St Albans. When I got there, I was shown a huge pile of parcels and a Leyland Sherpa luton van. I was to go through the (2-3m high x 4-5m diameter wide) pile, select all of the London Colney addresses, and fill the van, with the parcels arranged by street, so the van could be emptied as it was driven across the area. I was then expected to deliver all of the parcels, and not return to the depot until the van was empty. It was already around 11am.

The only issues were that:
1. Although I had a full licence, and it covered driving the van, I had never driven a van of this size before (I had only passed my test about 18 months before), but the agency said that PF were desperate for temps with a full licence.
2. I was living in Harpenden (about 10 miles away), and had no detailed knowledge of the streets of London Colney, both for the correct filling of the van, and for the actual delivering of the parcels. I asked, but no maps of London Colney were available to me...

Seeing the horrific day ahead of me, I walked out... The lady from the temp agency was annoyed with me, but I told her that "I was not going to work with them if they were going to send me to disorganised dumps like Parcelforce".
It worked, as my next placement was at Siemens GEC Communications in Luton, where I began what turned out to be a career in telecommunications....

lizzylad84

Fingers crossed mines a success story. Bikes currently in depot (according to tracker). Have to ring to see can I collect it tomorrow. Slightly concerned as I didn't get it posted to my own address

Type 17

Well, good luck! (sorry for the ramble above, but it was fun to write it out and remember all of the details)

Kaisr Sose

ParcelForce is Royal Mail’s parcel unit. They are not really a courier service. They don’t deliver in Ireland - it would be handed to An Post. An Post do not deliver bicycles (over sized). For the same reason, I could not imagine ParceForce being good on bikes due to their size. However, it’s not all bad.

ParcelForce a massive company. Chain Reaction Cycles are it’s largest customer in NI, and in their top 10 export customers (5th or 8th I believe) across the full UK - which includes som very big parcel customers. (Figures prior to Wiggle, so probably bigger now) Not a bad account to have. If you buy something from CRC for delivery in Ireland, it’s probably collected and forwarded to Ireland by ParcelForce. Same for Amazon, but not exclusively.

marklazarcovic

If it's in northern Ireland an post don't have it,and an post deliver bikes every day,and far bigger than that as well,where do u get that info from ffs

Kaisr Sose

marklazarcovic wrote: »

If it's in northern Ireland an post don't have it,and an post deliver bikes every day,and far bigger than that as well,where do u get that info from ffs

What with the attitude?
Be civil and read posts properly and s-l-o-w-l-y so that you understand them before replying. If you can’t do that - don’t post meaningless and poorly written replies.

Wow parcel force now there is a blast from the past, had to google my old user id here to remind my self of the horror I had with these ****ehawks. Surprised they are still in business

CramCycle

marklazarcovic wrote: »

If it's in northern Ireland an post don't have it,and an post deliver bikes every day,and far bigger than that as well,where do u get that info from ffs

MOD VOICE: I would read the post again, I also would calm down on the FFS, no need for it, particularly when there is no reason for it.

mcgratheoin

I had a new bike (Kona Paddywagon) delivered from cycletore.co.uk last week by Parcelforce with no problems at all - delivered to a work address in Dublin so I didn'; actually see who looked after the Irish leg of the journey.

lizzylad84

Got sorted folks. All good with the world. New cross bike built up and sitting in me kitchen

Alek

Nee cross bike

Nee, you've taken up CX? Nice

Bloggsie

Type 17 wrote: »

Never had the pleasure, but I can only say that when I lived in the UK in the 90's, everyone called them Parcelfarce...

I still do call them that, have had the pleasure of dealing with them frequently, if they told me it was raining, I would look out the window, bunch of nuckin fumpties.

Type 17

lizzylad84 wrote: »

Got sorted folks. All good with the world. New cross bike built up and sitting in me kitchen

Great news, enjoy it