I get the same Excellent service from EKP.

Thank You EKP

Tried opening page… won't open says too many redirects… is there another link I could try ?

George.

I find that most suppliers (certainly smaller ones) send out orders within 24 hrs. The differences seem to be in the chosen delivery method/ company. I find that Royal Mail deliveries generally arrive quickly, but courier companies seem to vary from excellent to rubbish. But considering the volumes they deal with I suppose this is inevitable.

The thing that shows the good suppliers is how they sort out problems. If an order doesn’t arrive when expected, some make you wait until the timescale of the delivery company for admitting that they have ‘lost’ the item. Others send a replacement immediately.

Stuart

Soon after CV-19 started, we quickly realised that there were transit delays with every carrier, depending on where the customer is based, be they in U.K. or elsewhere around the world.

Royal Mail uses the term 24 and 48, broadly to classify the previous 1st and 2nd class service. I prefer to use the term 1st and 2nd class for the purpose of this post.

Prior to CV-19, we used the 2nd class service for sending out low value orders. However, due to delays in transit as RM came under pressure, we quickly switched to sending all parcels by 1st class, where we would have previously used the 2nd class service. Even so, there are still transit delays to certain areas in the U.K.. We will resume using the 2nd class service for dispatching low value orders as and when we fell that the service has stabilised.

For U.K. parcel weights over 2kg and upto 30kg, we are still using Parcelforce. We find that they provide a reasonable level of service within the U.K., which costs us much higher than other well know low cost carriers. However, we are unsure how their system will cope in the coming months, so we are also looking at DPD, which comes in at an even higher cost. I will start a separate thread on that subject.

For overseas shipments, we were using a combination of Fedex and Parcelforce. They were okay to a certain extent, but during the months from April to July 2020, we experienced some difficulties with both of them, and we still have some outstanding disputes with both. From August we switched mostly to DHL for overseas, which costs us more than Fedex or Parcelforce.

Although all of the above changes have increased our costs heavily and reduced our profit margins, our turnover has increased, thanks to the custom we receive, for which we are always grateful.

My team tries to get orders out as soon as it can. The main delay in dispatch of orders is on Monday and Tuesday, as this includes processing orders received over the weekend when we are closed.

Ketan at ARC.

Sent an email to ARC today to thank for good service. Placed order late Friday evening after close of business, Packed and despatched via DHL Monday mid-afternoon and received today (Wed) before lunch in SW France. Good going by any measure.
DaveD