Nightline/Parcel Motel Thread Part 2 (post all related questions here)

Hi lads, signed up there to just speak on my own experience.

My experience with Support

So about two months ago a motel in the east cork area was giving me trouble as none of the doors would properly stay closed. I was walking up to it once and huge bit of wind opened pretty much all the doors. Packages in most of the doors as well. I could have easily robbed them, but I too was there to place a package.

I had to put my package into a door that would just not stay closed. I had to leave it there though as it needed to be posted off at that time. I closed it as well as I could and went off and contacted UPS on Phone. Their phone number plastered above the screen saying 'Need Assistance?'. Useless **** of a number if it's not even registered. I googled their ParcelMotel number, same one. Looked for a UPS Ireland one, bollocks of a voice mail asking to essentially email or if your a worker/vip ring another one. I then emailed and just like you all lot, no response. It's now been months.

Now here's what's gotten really annoying. There in start ish of January I took a package to my closest motel and scanned the code. It would do a loading symbol for bloody ages, then think the barcode was not valid at all. I scanned and manually typed the code many times. There was even another lad who was there before me with the same ****. I ended up going to another one 2.5 km away and it worked. I presume the motel was either full, or had a dodgy network connection to UPS's services? This happened twice by the way. I have no car so that walk was annoying to do back and forth twice, to both of the motel locations.

Basically, ParcelMotel has been in the **** bin for months. I wouldn't bother emailing, calling, or anything. If you want a refund here's what I've observed to be two ways from other members here. First of all, just don't bother emailing them a waste of **** time.

Topped up with PayPal

If you topped up with PayPal within the last month or two you can make a dispute that will instantly give you a refund. However, you might only be able to request a refund up to however much you paid in that transaction (e.g., likely a max of €11.85 or such). If you have multiple recent transactions that cover it, you could try doing the following on multiple transactions.

1. Go to a transaction and click on it and click "Report a Problem". You will be brought to the Resolution Center.
2. Under 'Issues with your purchase' click 'I want a refund for some or all of the items in this order'.
3. Fill in the Item 1 form with Name: 'Account Balance', Type: 'Service', Category: 'Other', Quantity: 1. Hit continue.
4. Choose 'The service was canceled by the seller' and hit continue.
5. Put '01/22/2023' as when the service was canceled and when you were supposed to receive the refund. This is when the service realistically stopped for us as users. Put the expected refund amount as the same amount you have in your account balance. I'm not sure if it let's you put over the amount you topped up by in that transaction (probably not).
6. For the link to the refund or cancellation policy, just put a link to any news article about ParcelMotel's closure and hit continue.
7. Answer truthfully if you reached out to UPS or not. Likely doesn't matter but I put yes and told them truthfully as to when I emailed them and how. I also stated 'The seller wasn't available' as the 'sellers response' field.
8. In the last page of the form, I put images of my email, the homepage of ParcelMotel showing my name and account balance, and informed PayPal about the unresponsive behavior and the closure of ParcelMotel.
9. You will now get the choice to choose where to receive a refund (card, bank, PayPal wallet). I chose back to my card.
10. PayPal will instantly refund you the money, no quibble.

Nag them via regular Mail

The email seems to be completely ignored. Instead, one user here on boards has seemingly found that mailing them is the answer.

Request a refund and give them all the details they may need like your IBAN or PayPal email depending on where you want the refund, ParcelMotel Account Numbers or Email you used there, and so on.

Stamp and send the mail to:

Unit 5 Mygan Park

Jamestown Road,

Finglas East,

Dublin 11, D11 A729,

Ireland

What now?

Well, personally I've decided to delete/anonymize as much of my information from the service as I can. As for the phone number you can put 0800000000 as a 'valid' number to remove your own. The address you can have as either empty or a for each field.

I would ask them to remove my account and personal information entirely under GDPR if only they responded to their emails...

I got an email reply on my case /email to parcelmotelsupport@ups.com, so at least there is someone at the other side of the support email address.

Hi

• Can you please confirm what way you would like to be refunded? PayPal (please provide your PayPal email address) this is the quicker option.
• Card (please register your card on your account, if it hasn’t being used at all or if hasn’t being used in over 6 months I will have to charge the card 3.25 this will be refunded the following day along with your balance )
• Please confirm your PM number and amount to be refunded

Best Rgds

Odd, mine was from

UPS IE PM Tracking  <parcelmotelsupport@ups.com>

I see they eventually updated the website, homepage is now:

"Dear Customer,

Please be informed that decision has been made to cease the Parcel Motel services. Lockers in locations across Ireland will no longer be operational from 31 January 2023.

For customers with an outstanding balance on their Parcel Motel account, or pending credit or refund, please reach out to parcelmotelsupport@ups.com no later than 23 March 2023. Please include your PMID, and whether you want your money to be paid out via PayPal or bank card.

For other questions or concerns, please reach out to us for additional support. We have a higher number of incoming queries right now, but we are working hard to get back to everyone in due time. We thank you for your patience."

I didn't realise I was very low on credit when I had something sent to them nearly 3 weeks ago. I topped up the account within a few hours of getting the email but to date, my parcel hasn't made it from them to a locker. All I'm getting is an automated UPS reply. Something tells me I'm never going to see my parcel. I hope its contents disappoint the thief utterly because I'm convinced it has been pinched.

All I can find on the matter is, "Following an extensive consultation period, we have taken the difficult decision to cease Parcel Motel services," stated UPS to RTE. So it seems as if they were in talks for a bit, and they saw some issues going into the future, or saw it as non-profitable and axed it.

Good points. But there's still a lot of reason to using at least a locker system. E.g., my friend often used PM as they did not know specifically when they could go and post stuff off, nor would it likely be in the 9-5 (while working). So being able to post on their own time was a huge advantage.

I personally only used PM as a way to get almost 50% off compared to An Post's prices for even slightly weighty packages. For example recently I posted off just a box set of Fresh Prince on DVD. An Post asking for 11 euro, UPS asking for 6.50. Huge. Or, when I was posting 6x faulty PS1 consoles + 4x controllers, power, av, memory cards. 8.50. An Post wanted somewhere upwards of 19 euro, standard.

UPS directs us to their other options which for my area only consists of asking them to come down and collect the package. What's annoying is we cannot estimate the cost of the post before we ask them to come take it, therefore how am I supposed to provide an accurate postage cost to adverts/donedeal buyers? Makes no sense.

Looks like OOHPod are looking at 'backfilling' some of the PM sites with their lockers. Ironically OOPHod is run by the former PM owners.

I had no idea PM was closing - got no email or any other form of notification. (I don't think it's acceptable to use a press release to notify customers!)

Practical Q: I had a parcel delivered (from Austria) to their Dublin location yesterday, which I had thought would be delivered in the usual way to my closest locker - any idea how I go about retrieving this? I don't see anything helpful on the website and no-one is answering the phone.

Value is about €100, so not the end of the world but better in my hands than lost in some warehouse!

yeah, I am guessing UPS will give me the option of delivering to my house or else collecting

I got the same, i.e. the below

Really fills you with confidence 🙄

Possible some are not getting emails because, like myself, they had an eircom.net address linked to the account and didn't bother changing it. I'm guessing that's why I got no email. Didn't really bother me as I haven't used it since Brexit killed it for cheap UK postage for eBay.

Do you know what's ridiculous? They still allow top-ups from what I can see. Didn't actually top up to see, but they haven't removed the option to.

Plot twist : - they claim they'll be sending it to my locker?!

they've taken the money from my €11.85 topup, so something is happening. Whether it goes to the local depot or locker remains to be seen.

They've had mine since Jan 13th so curious to know where it will end up!