11/06/2023
I'm a member of a few delivery related Facebook groups. The general consensus is that every delivery company is bad to work for.
We have worked with four different national couriers, all of which are recognised by most households. Some are fairly transparent about the way they work, some aren't, some penalise you financially for non-compliance, some give you points and when you hit a given number of points you lose the route - the end result is always a financial penalty.
Every house has its rules, drivers and service partners must abide by those rules or move on, rules are there for a reason, i.e. to improve and maintain a good customer experience. An example of a delivery rule is the delivery photo; needs to be an open door showing the goods - this proves the goods were delivered and transfers liability from driver to customer. It makes good business sense to transfer liability to the customer, but only a good photo can do that 100%.
Some rules are more onerous than others. We hire self-employed drivers to provide a delivery service, some are very good at following the rules, some don't seem to understand what a rule means, that is the reality.
It's extremely important to set real world expections from the start, and this is where many carriers get it wrong - they are not completely transparent, and this generates many online complaints. A frequent issue is drivers leasing vans through the carrier, what happens when the van develops an issue and the driver is not at fault? The driver should receive a replacement van immediately so as not to affect his or her earnings. However, the reality is somewhat different with drivers having to rent a van to maintain income whilst the lease van is put in a queue to be looked at.
Other issues include a lack of communication, not knowing who to contact regarding vehicle or route issues, being left at home when volumes drop amongst other things.
It's difficult to gauge the cost to a carrier of all these online complaints, but it wouldn't cost them anything extra to be completely transparent about everything a driver needs to know, there is work to be done so everyone wins.