I need to have a small parcel (medicine) urgently sent from the UK to my place in Alpes de Hautes Provence which is a bit off the beaten track - can anyone advise on the best courier company to use. thanks.
Thanks everyone for your suggestions and comments - though taking them as a whole it looks like pot luck if you get a good service from any of them. So let me find my pin…
I had bad experience with UPS at the beginning when they though the address wasn't complete but since then I have befriended the driver who has now given me his number and will leave parcel elsewhere if I'm going to be out. DHL is OK but they sub-contract the drivers quite often, Chronopost (= Datapost in UK) are good because they deliver on a Saturday.
I do add the name of the next "lieu dit" to my address as that is signposted from the village.
I have used DHL several times for delivery my Chinese Visa's from London to down here in South Aveyron and they are generally an absolute shambles. It is always touch and go. Three times they have been several days late and I only received the Visa on the day I was due to fly from Toulouse to Beijing. The worst instance was I had to meet the courier on Intermarche Car Park in Requista because he got lost 3 hours before the flight and it takes about 1 3/4 hours to get to Blagnac. I have arranged to collect it at the depot in Blagnac airport the night before my flight which was a nightmare as they had already put it on the Van. I was at Blagnac and the visa wasn't. I pay a fortune for next day delivery which usually takes about 4 days.
I have to apply for another in a few weeks. Time to try someone else I think.
Oh...and DHL farm the local deliveries to a local white van man.
Avoid TNT! I sent a package to France from Canada. They sent it to France and back to Canada for some reason and billed me for shipping it both ways. Was sent invoice after invoice for months. I finally found a TNT rep in Canada who called someone higher up in the main office in the U.S. They finally cancelled the invoices. Really bad customer service.
They use DHL Vic. They driver found us no problem. Local people visiting often don't, unless they have GPS like DHL. It was just that I wasn't here three times in a row when he called!
Absolutely right Theo. We live "out of town" & have terrible problems with deliveries, or rather the lack of 'em! We always include our phone no's & the local cross road in the address as this is on the GPS & state we are 150m north of this. Makes no difference with some couriers. UPS couldn't find their arse with both hands & the others are not much better. We are dreading the "return" of my wife's passport assuming it ever gets done by the passport office! Anything sent by the French Post is fine as the local posties know everybody.
This courier-matter is really one of my biggest concerns. It does not matter which courier service because here arround Nimes & Avignon seems to be all handled by Chronopost, even though sometimes I see a UPS truck. In any case, virtually every delivery becomes a kind of lottery. Once a letter from Chronopost arrived with the message that the driver could not find my address ...Luckily Chronopost was so generous to specify a Hotline / Helpline telephone number, - for 50 + cents per minute. Facs was for free. By the time they have read the facs they had send the delivery back to the sender. Another time Chronopost was sending my Passport to Monaco, one day before my departure to Riyadh. Surprisingly the Monaco post-office at least gave me a call because they did not have a street with the name of my address which was on the envelope. So Alan, you being in Alpes de Hautes Provence, it will be very similar. I can only recommend you to choose this courier service that has the greatest presence in your region. When this is Chronopost, good luck and enough strength for much hope. The problem does not lie with the respective courier companies, it is clearly the stupidity of the driver! And always: your telephone #'s (incl cell-phone) must be written on the envelope as big as possible, it increases the change a little bit that the driver does not give up too fast. The reason why the services in rural areas is so bad is so simple and obvious: if they have to drive 20 km, the delivery does not cover the costs for the courier service and the driver does not care anyway.
If you're not in a hurry you could try http://www.parcelsplease.co.uk/
Haha, Most of the ones I have had here come in plain white vans rather than DHL, TNT or whichever, but they are around given the amount of online shopping, etc.
Thanks James and Brian for the suggestions. Guess I’ll go with DHL. I asked because it struck me that I’d never seen any of the big carriers vans around our part of the world.
DHL because they SMS you when it is on the way out then the driver will call you a while before he arrives, so unless you go AWOL at the wrong time (I did - my passport went back to the UK...). I have used TNT as well, not as reliable. As James says, it costs though.
DHL, TNT or UPS for speed, pricey though.