BEWARE - Hermes delivery company

Not a very efficient company at all...how long does it take for a parcel to be delivered...my estimated date of receipt is 'before the 16th March'...from UK to ROI...presuming it doesn't get redirected to Neverland...10 days!!!

Hermes... Don't get me started... One of them is leaving parcels in the black rubbish bin... 

'Their' Chat is useless.. claims happily I need to contact the 'Other' Hermes (There is just 1 company, trading as 2 variants) and they couldn't do a thing. 'Other' Hermes is uncontactable

They do actually deserve some good old bad press

My experience is that all the private courier companies are as bad as each other. They tell porkies about if and when things have been delivered and they are a complete pain to contact.
I don't really blame the couriers themselves as, as I understand it, they are all on crap job contracts getting paid peanuts with unmeetable targets. Which explains why they sometimes report something on-line as 'delivered' 6 hours or more before the they actually deliver it. Or say 'handed to resident' when I found it lying on the landing.

The particular constant problem I have with them is they don't know how to get into blocks of flats, so they often don't even leave a 'while you were out' card. The regular RM guy, because he delivers to every flat, every day, is able to get someone to let him in. so at least I know if he's tried to deliver something.

I can't help thinking its rather wasteful to have mulitple companies each driving vans around delivering to a handful of addresses in the same neighbourhood. Would it not make more sense to have one organisation doing all the deliveries in an area, employing local staff who actually know the area, with proper training and decent working conditions? Or is that too old-fashioned?

When I lived in London, a Hermes delivery driver emptied the contents of our recycling box (by the front door) all over the path so they could leave the package in the container. Didn't leave a note through the door but I guess he didn't really need to at that point. 

Where we live now, the Hermes delivery guy is an old retired bloke that lives in the village. If we're ever out when he tries to deliver, we've got his number and we call him and he pops it in when we're back.

Yodel once put 64GB of Macintosh RAM in my Recycling Bin; On Recycling day; Before the Bins had been collected; thankfully I came down from the Study to make a coffee and noticed the card on the doormat.  A strongly worded letter followed.

To be fair to Hermes, I had a package delivered by them yesterday which arrived two days before the expected delivery date!

While he was at my door, the delivery guy asked me to take a package for a neighbour who was out at the time (Saturday 2 PM) and dropped a card through the neighbours' letter box telling him where his package was.  My neighbour came to my door later that evening to get his stuff.  Result!

I think you can get lazy basturds in any delivery company - whether it be Royal Mail, Hermes, Yodel,  etc. - so there's a bit of pot luck going on when it comes to efficient deliveries.  Hermes are about pricecutting to stay competitive against the more established networks in the market so the old peanuts/monkey rule has probably got a lot to do with the quality of service an address can expect from any given carrier. Using sub-contractors doesn't help either, so when you choose a company to ship your stuff, bear this in mind.  An extra quid spent at the post office might be worth a lot more in terms of hassle-free deliveries later down the line.

In the last couple of years, nearly every single delivery service (including Royal Mail multiple times) has misdelivered to my house. Wrong number, or right number but wrong street are both common. Even nearly-right number, wrong street (Velux blinds' service, take a bow!)

Last year, the doorbell went. My housemate was in the shower, so I answered. It was Ocado or Waitrose, whichever my housemate used regularly. I took the groceries in - about eight bags, with the invoice coming with the dead-last bag - put the cold stuff in a cool place and went back to work.

About half an hour later, housemate comes downstairs...and asked whose groceries they are. Cue searching for the invoice.

My neighbour was so unpleasant when I painfully limped around with as many of the bags as I could carry ('Can't you go back and get the others?'), that I swore never again. I used to hold her deliveries on a regular basis, now I apologetically turn them away. And some drivers are desperate to get the packages off their hands.  I feel for the poor bastards.

Still not keen on those who mis-deliver though.

Herpes (sic) are one step across from Yodel in my experience - as bad as each other, both in the mode of apparently employing people that simply don't care! Three times I've had the local Hermes agent knock softly once and by the time I opened the door (no more than 15 seconds from the knock) he's been opening his van door to go and claimed "I don't usually get a reply here" (I work from home, swmbo is here 99% of the time too)

My experience as a customer:

DPD/Interlink - by far the best and most responsive to contact (not counting sending the RM posties a text lol)- depot 60 miles (Tyneside)

Royal Mail - I live in a village, we have a regular postie and her backup is equally regular. Local DO ½ mile

UPS - they'd be excellent if they delivered every weekday here - but they appear to miss Tuesdays & Thursdays. Never needed their depot - think it's Livingston or Linlithgow (60 miles)

FedEx - god help me if I miss a FedEx - the "local" depot (near Carlisle) is 86 miles away. Otherwise they're OK.

Parcelforce - just a bit shit (depot 50 miles - Edinburgh). Used to be better when they handed off the local deliveries here to Royal Mail  (except that they used to hand over the parcels at the regional mail centre about 10 minutes after the trunking run had left - so 1 day delay automatically)

Hermes drivers get paid 45p per delivery and have to pay for their own fuel. They have to leave parcels on doorsteps just to make a living.

My local Hermes driver was a really nice scally lad who always wanted a chat despite being in a mad rush and geniunely seemed to care and take care of parcels. A lot of the time stoned, and probably shouldn't have been driving, but I felt so sorry for him who was I to judge. He got sacked Christmas week for his car being stolen after leaving it unlocked while delivering. Poor bastard.

Use Interlink Direct, part of the DPD Group, it's worth a little extra to get next day delivery within a one hour delivery window.

I use MyHermes for all my Ebay sales and have sent over 200+ items with them over the last 4 years and ive never gotten any bad feedback or low postage ratings on Ebay and the items arrive on time

Royal mail on the other hand have lost, mis delivered, late delivered and damaged parcels over the years and i now refuse to use them for anything personal

Unfortunatley i still have to use them on a daily basis at work and have no end of trouble, in fact its got to a point that the company are looking to switch to another company instead which means Royal mail will lose around one million items a month coming from us

Well Ratfink has laid out his reasoning pretty well and has also confirmed that he would, and indeed has helped out others in need at the roadside.

I don't think he's a bad guy but I think perhaps he is leaning a bit to hard on the insurance and liability side of things as examplified by:

"By picking up the packet the postman has left himself wide open for grief.

If god forbid he had an accident between the 2 addresses and they found him carrying another companies packet i can assure you that's nice would not be the official response.

(unlikely you may say but recently a colleague came back with less fingers than he started the day with)

If he was driving his insurance would be invalid as we are only covered for the transit of royal mail items and property."

Does that mean that I as a householder should refuse to take delivery of a package destined for my neighbour? What would happen if the package came to harm in my house? What would happen if I tripped on my neighbour's driveway whilst delivering it, what would happen (heaven forbid) if I dropped it when her dog barked as I rang the doorbell?

We can of course chose to live by such limitations and worries or we can get on with life safe in the knowledge that the British legal system will protect us in such situations using the concept of reasonableness - what would seem reasonable to an ordinary person (the man on the Clapham Omnibus) - and so just get on and do what we consider to be reasonable and ideally helpful to others.

If my postman saved me from spending many hours on the phone, weeks sorting out compensation and then having to re-order some product I'd be pretty grateful.

RatFink, you are literally a jobsworth. The label comes from "I couldn't do that, it'd be more than my job's worth". 

This way, Royal mail has gained another customer, Hermes has lost another one, and the customer has got their parcel instead of going through a costly (timewise) 10 week negotiation over compensation for their 'lost' parcel. It's a good result for everyone. Of course, you could chose not to go to work today as you could get taken out by an axe weilding homicidal maniac, but then again, most terrible outcomes of simple problems very rarely come to pass.

Who uses them so I can avoid mistakingly buying from them?  Most sellers don't tell you who the couriers are.  I know they are not always the best, but I still have a soft spot for Royal Mail (but not parcel force) less now they are part privatised.

It's not a case of helping people out.

Hermes have been paid to deliver an item to an address.

Until it reaches the correct destination it is their responsibility to safeguard it.

By dumping it outside the wrong address they have failed at what they have been paid for and the sender is entitled to presume it lost and claim for it.

As you might have guessed by now i'm a postman myself and have been for many years.

By picking up the packet the postman has left himself wide open for grief.

If god forbid he had an accident between the 2 addresses and they found him carrying another companies packet i can assure you that's nice would not be the official response.

(unlikely you may say but recently a colleague came back with less fingers than he started the day with)

If he was driving his insurance would be invalid as we are only covered for the transit of royal mail items and property.

I'm sure the comments on here after a cyclist hit by uninsured postman story would not be that's nice.

Someone may see him picking the packet up and presume he's stealing it, again a phone call and more grief.

I get people trying to give me packets from other companies a couple of times a week and i see more dumped outside the wrong houses in trees etc.

I give the same answer everytime,

I'm sorry but its nothing to do with me and if i take it and they're not in i'm stuck with it and i can't be found with it.

The only thing i can do is if i see them i'll tell them where it is.

Also at the end of the day people might use us next time after trying the cheaper options.

Most people fully understand what i'm saying.

As for helping people out you would not believe the things i've done for people over the years

but that's helping people out, not what at the end of the day is doing a competitors work for free.

As for roadside mechanicals one rather unprepaired fellow with a ripped sidewall on his tubeless schwalbe g-ones recently rode off with a boot made from a P739 (sorry you weren't in card),My spare inner tube and the contents of my C02 cannister (yay finally got to use one)

Leaving me to finish the day with some rather unsightly white stains down the front of my trousers! (sealant! you dirty minded sods).

Hermes left my new lights on the doorstep today despite the fact that we were all in!

I refuse to buy stuff from people who only deliver by Hermes and I tell them this in the hope that they will change the courier they use.

The fact that you can't get any info about the time they'll deliver and they haven't got any facility for you to collect undelivered items in person almost guarantees that you're going to have to take a day off work and if you do the maths the lost earnings for outweigh any price difference you're likely to see on the item you're buying.

Company manages to not keep any delivery times as drivers all self employed. Their customer care desk manages most enquiries by not allowing you to get in touch with a human. Next day delivery not there after 6 days.
I found email for CEO and this made negligible difference.
Sometimes you don't have a choice, but if you do select these jokers, I hope it's not for any important items!

They are lying bastards in my experience. I remember a couple of times I waited in for deliveries from them and they didn't deliver and the main office just kept claiming the driver attempted delivery. Like ferk he did. Ended just picking the stuff up from them as I couldn't be arsed waiting anymore time or effort with them. Same deal with Yodel, pretending they attempted delivery or delivering to the neighbours and not leaving a card so I had to do the rounds in the street for my package.

"Nice" doesn't pay his wages though.

Hermes  of course still get paid despite the fact they failed in the safe and correct delivery of the package that they were paid for.