Customer Service

Someone probably once said: "There are two types of forces in this world. Forces for good and forces for evil". Kiva is a force for good. Gravity is a force for good. Armed forces can be used for good (the defeat of Hitler during World War Two) or evil (the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in the 1930s). Parcelforce is a force for evil.

This might sound like a slightly overblown claim (in contrast to my compensation claim from Parcelforce, which was, in my humble, if admittedly subjective, opinion, fairly modest in relation to their incompetence), and obviously that's because it is. But if "evil" is a strong word, I would strongly recommend that Parcelforce should not be a force you send parcels with.

For those of you who have not yet given up on my ridiculously complex sentence structures, and fortunate enough never to have encountered it, Parcelforce is a UK-based parcel-delivery company.

On December 7th I paid £62.89 to deliver a parcel from London to San Francisco in 24 hours using Parcelforce's "Global Express" service. I thought this was quite a large sum of money. I mean, it's not like I was sending a grand piano or transporting a live elephant, I was sending a small bottle of perfume and a picture frame. But I was impressed by the 24 hour delivery "guarantee", and it was a belated birthday present for my girlfriend, so I thought I'd blow the bank on it.

The "authorisation date/time" of my parcel was recorded as 00:33 on the 7th December, so I was a little surprised when the parcel was not collected from my house until 15.09 later that afternoon. By my maths, that left Parcelforce only 9 hours and 24 minutes to deliver the parcel from my house in Harrow, England to my girlfriend's office in San Francisco, America. But I reassured myself with the assumption that Parcelforce must have some "technologically ground-breaking new super-fast-jet design prototype that reduces transit time by 78% and eliminates carbon emissions". I also assumed that this prototype had VTOL capabilities so it could land in a vacant parking space just outside my girlfriend's office, and that it was piloted by Usain Bolt.

I was a little bit more surprised when the parcel was returned to my house in Harrow on the 9th December because it had "insufficient paperwork". I was surprised for several reasons, but principally:

1) I had spent about 30 minutes on the phone to 4 different Parcelforce employees on the 7th December, to ensure that the parcel had "sufficient paperwork". And I had been told by the 4th employee that the parcel had "sufficient paperwork".

2) The driver of the Parcelforce van did not know why the paperwork was "insufficient".

3) The driver of the Parcelforce van was not Usain Bolt.

4) No paperwork was added to the parcel before it was taken away again, with the guarantee that the paperwork was now "sufficient".

I was unfortunately not able to witness these events in person (my heroic dad was left holding the fort in my Parisian absence), but I imagine the exchange went something like this:

[Doorbell rings]

Dad: Hello.
Not Bolt: Er…hi, I have your parcel here. It has "insufficient" paperwork, so I am returning it.
Dad: OK. What is "insufficient" about it?
Not Bolt: I don't know.
Dad: OK. Shall I just keep it here then?
Not Bolt: Er…yeah, that would be great.
Dad: OK. But that's not really going to work is it, because then it wouldn't reach San Francisco, which is sort of the intended destination.
Not Bolt: Yes I suppose you have a point there.
Dad: OK. Is there a way that we can establish what paperwork will be required to facilitate the parcel's delivery?
Not Bolt: I suppose we could call up the office and ask?
Dad: OK.

[Dad calls up the office to ask. Is put on hold. Music plays in the background. It is Wagner. Entire Ring Cycle completes before Parcelforce employee picks up the phone. Employee does not work in the right office. Transfers dad. Led Zeppelin's Stairway to Heaven (extended version) repeats 3 and a half times before next employee in the right office picks up the phone. Tells dad that paperwork is "sufficient". Hangs up immediately.]

Dad: OK. According to that man, the paperwork is "sufficient".
Not Bolt: Oh yes, I see it now. It says here "sufficient" paperwork. I had misread it as "insufficient" paperwork. OK well that's fine then.
Dad: OK. Can my son get his money back?

[Driver is seen sprinting back down the drive, slams door to van, and speeds off, knocking over 3 garden gnomes and a young sapling in course of hasty exit. Dad closes door. Sighs.]

Well this banterous tete-a-tete took place on Wednesday 9th December. So did the parcel arrive on Thursday 10th December (I hear you ask). Er…actually…not. And nor did it arrive on Friday 11th December, or in fact any of the days following that, until the day of Monday 21st December (please see the timeline below). I am most intrigued by the 8-day period between the 8th and the 16th of December, during which the parcel was "awaiting export documentation". I wonder what this documentation was. I wonder who provided it (I certainly didn't). I wonder if this is code for "Oops. Fiddlesticks. That's the parcel we forgot about". I have visions of the parcel being put down for a minute in the middle of the Parcelforce common room by Not Bolt, who then nips out to use the loo. During his 5-minute absence, I imagine another driver coming in, assuming that the parcel is a coffee table, and covering it with a wide array of chocolate biscuits. Not Bolt returns to the common room a few minutes later, but can't see the parcel for the biscuits, and assumes that it has been returned to the sender due to "insufficient" paperwork. It is then only 8 days later, once all of the biscuits have been consumed, thereby revealing the label of the parcel, that Not Bolt realises what has happened, and sheepishly, covertly forwards it on to the outward Office of Exchange.

Unfortunately, by the time the parcel arrived in San Francisco, my girlfriend had already left for her Christmas holidays, so she didn't actually pick up the parcel until mid-January. But I suppose even I can't blame Parcelforce for that one.

But at least I would be compensated right? And presumably pretty promptly and easily right? Wrong.

I sent in my compensation form to Parcelforce and it arrived with them on the 15th December. I sent it in by post. Honestly. Believe me. Some people do use the internet in England. Just not Parcelforce. In mid-February I received a cheque in the post from Parcelforce by way of compensation. But I had 2 problems with this:

1) It was mid-February. That is, it had taken them 2 months to process my compensation claim. It took England 3 weeks to win the World Cup in 1966. How long does it take to address a claim form? Do they get that many claim forms? (Actually, probably yes.) Does Not Bolt have to run with the claim form from the Parcelforce office in London to the outsourced claims processing centre in remote Nepal because the Parcelforce vans that would normally take it to Nepal have been buried under a mountain of chocolate biscuits? This time I imagine the 3 Parcelforce employees in the "Claims Processing Unit Centre Department" all staring at the claim form. One of them says to the other "Shall we deal with it today?". The other one pulls the lever on the fruit machine in the corner of the office. One cherry…two cherries…(they both stare at the screen in growing anticipation and excitement…)…tangerine. "Insufficient paperwork" flashes up on the screen of the fruit machine. "Nope. Let's play again tomorrow", says the second employee, as they return to updating their Facebook stati.

2) It was for only £15.23. 25% of the £62.89 I had paid. I wasn't too happy about this so on Monday 1st March I rang up Parcelforce to ask if I could get the remaining £47.66 because my parcel would have reached San Francisco faster if I had personally rowed it across the Atlantic:

I rang up Parcelforce. The lady I spoke to told me that I had sent it on Global Priority (a slower service - 3-5 days rather than the "guaranteed" 24 hours of the impossibly-ironically-named Global Express). I said that this might explain a few days between the 8th and the 16th December, but that I thought I had sent it on Global Express. She said she would check the paperwork and get back to me.

Half a day passed. She didn't get back to me.

I rang up Parcelforce again. The next lady I spoke to was more helpful, and got the information in 2 minutes (which begs the question of why the first lady couldn't have done the same thing. But maybe she had looked for the paperwork before the mid-morning chocolate biscuit break). She told me I had sent it on Global Priority. She hung up.

But I was not to be out-smarted. Oh no. I am a stubborn and resilient man when there is £47.66 at stake, and I craftily re-entered the details of the parcel into the Parcelforce online (gasp!) price quotation form. The price of Global Express was £62.89 - exactly what I had paid.

I rang up Parcelforce again. I explained to the third lady that the price I paid corresponded exactly to the Global Express price. And if I was paying £59.19 to send a parcel in 3-5 days, why would I not pay the £3.70 extra to send it within 24 hours ("guaranteed")? She re-checked the records and discovered that I had…

…In fact…

…After all…

…Sent it Global "Express".

She "guaranteed" to send me a cheque for the remaining £47.66. I asked her if I could receive some sort of additional compensation for the gazillions of hours that my relatives and I had spent exchanging pleasantries with Parcelforce employees and enduring the Ride of the Valkyries. Or for the risk to my relationship with my girlfriend that the tardiness of my birthday present had posed. But she said that there was some political upheaval at the moment in Kathmandu, and it might take the claims centre a little longer than usual to get around to processing it. I told her not to worry.

By contrast, let's take a look at Amazon.com.

I sent a cafetiere to my girlfriend via Amazon, which arrived on the 8th December. (I was trying to buy redemption for the absence of the perfume and the picture frame.) Unfortunately it was broken. I sent an e-mail to Amazon on the 9th December explaining the situation.

Within 19 minutes, I had got a response from Amazon saying they were "truly sorry to hear that the item was damaged". And that they would give me a full refund to my Visa card. I think this is outstanding customer service - both because of the promptness of the response, and because they did not even need proof that the cafetiere arrived broken. (By contrast, Parcelforce knew that they had failed on their "guarantee" to deliver the parcel within 24 hours by the time the 336th hour had passed and the parcel was still "arriving in destination country", but they still required a hand-written, posted compensation form and 2 months of processing time to repay me a quarter of the amount I had paid).

At the bottom of my e-mail from the nice man at Amazon, it said: "We're Building Earth's Most Customer-Centric Company". And I believed him.

America is great at customer service.