Hi,
I was wondering which delivery service had the best record for getting some documents to the right address in France. Having used the Royal mail and watched the tracked letter disappear into Italy- never to be seen again; I would sooner use an international company.
Any thoughts on DPD; DHL; EVRI or others??
Destination near Briancon
Cheers
Rick
Hi, welcome.
For documents, I’ve never had a problem with DHL. It isn’t always cheap though. Evri in the UK have a very bad reputation, I don’t know if they operate here.
DHL every time. It’s who the UK Passport Office and other departments use.
RM / PFW were sketchy before they were privatised and they’re worse now.
DPD are hit and miss in France and Evri couldn’t find there backside using both hands and a map.
From where?
Hi Rick and welcome to the community.
Fed-Ex every time. Not cheap but fast and reliable, even to our rural location.
DHL for me too.
Those of you who use DHL, how do you get in touch to book? How much notice do they need?
We are going to need to get signed house purchase documents back to the UK in the next couple of weeks.
I’ve used Chronopost for sending irreplacable originals to Ireland for a citizenship application. They were fine.
Thank you all for the responses. I will go with DHL. Watch this space…( with trepidation)
Do so with caution. I booked a DHL courier online on Thursday afternoon to collect between 9am and 1pm Friday, (yesterday). I spent all morning waiting. 1pm came and went. I had a phone call from a woman about 1:30 saying something about would 2pm be alright. By 2:45 my package still had not been collected, so I phoned their helpline to be told that for my area no courier had worked 9am-1pm and the only collection time was between 2pm and 6pm. She finally arrived about 3:30. Since my package was the signed contract for the house we are buying and the timing is extremely tight I was pretty stressed and pretty angry that it hadn’t been made clear when I booked on Thursday that there would be no collection Friday morning - I spent all Friday morning waiting needlessly. Thank heavens we’ve got the weekend. There is some hope that our contract will still reach the solicitors in the UK by lunchtime Monday.
So far, not impressed.
The passport office use Royal Mail.
When I renewed my passport this year via the overseas page of the Passport Office’s website, they sent my new passport to France with DHL.
Ok , just I know that all passports in uk are delivered by Royal Mail and the success rate for delivery is much higher than previous courier. I know this as I work for Royal Mail!
The OP doesn’t want to use RM though.
Personally, I think DHL’s tracking is much better and more detailed than RM’s. Also the France part of the delivery is likely to be La Poste and their tracking system is basic.
Then they could use DHL Express door to door service , obvs this will cost more. Otherwise most postal couriers will hand over parcel to local delivery partner or postal carrier.
HMPO used DHL to send our new passports to us and to return our old ones here in SW France.
This is a whinge about Geodis, please let me know if this is the wrong place to post it.
OH has waited for at least half of today for a wine delivery. Around lunch time they said there were about 7 deliveries before us and then nothing happened. Later it was amended to a before 8pm delivery and nothing has turned up. I assume it’s too late now. They haven’t said anything for a while this evening.
I imagine that Geodis have decided that as the cargo isn’t perishable, they can deliver another day. I’ve suggested to OH that he could choose a wine company that uses someone else to deliver next time. I see that Geodis are doing very badly on Trustpilot and I’m not surprised.
Yea the flakier delivery companies all seem to think that a private peeson receiving a delivery is just likw the offices they prefer to deliver to - open from 8am all day every say till 6om 8pm or even later and will always have simebody there to receive a package
Instead of a private oerson hsving to make a day or a time avsilable to receive a delivery. Otherwise normally they’d be out working or doing other things. So it’s a nightmare to wait for a delivery from 8am through to 1800 or lster and waste the day ehen the dekuvery then does not turn up.
They blithely imagine they’ll just turn up on the following day instead then. Which is infuriatibg. Btw that’s what Geodis will most likely do, to you..
Going to add my own rant today about GLS. Wife ordered some furniture from But. Announced delivery date 12/12 via GLS.
I decided not to go the office today, completely by chance.
At 16:30 today, I get a text from GLS asking if OK to drop package off at house somewhere. I asked my wife to confirm when we were supposed to be having the delivery in case it was a scam (this has already happened in the past, especially with GLS for some reason…).
Anyway, next thing I know, before my wife even has a chance to answer me, I see a bloke hoofing it up the drive in the rain (he’d had to cross the gate first) and standing outside the door, package on his shoulder. Credit due for the muscles exercise, but seriously ? What would he have done had I not been there ? Dumped it in the rain ? I did mention to him that it would have been wiser to advise me in advance of the actual moment he turned up. Enough said.
The last delivery I had from Geodis was 12 crates of wine, as business gifts, delivered to my work address. Guy pulls out the crates on a pallet from the back on his powered fork trolley, then promptly proceeds to allow it to tip over off the ramp coming out of the truck and fall to the ground. Sound of tinkling glass did not bode well. Fortunately, I was there, saw it happen, and notified the vendor immediately. The guy said he would have just dumped everything by the door had I not been in.