Parcel companies are letting people down for the third year running
Shopping online has become second nature for many of us. Whether we’re ordering presents, baby products or a tool for a DIY emergency, we rely on online deliveries to give us what we need, when we need it. But here at Citizens Advice, we are seeing consistent issues with parcel deliveries.
We’ve surveyed over 8000 UK adults who have received a parcel in the last month from the top 5 biggest parcel companies. We ranked them out of 5 on delivery problems, accessibility, customer service and trust. We also compared the cost of sending a parcel and this year added a new environmental metric on grams of CO2 emissions per parcel for each company. We collected data through consumer polling, our consumer service data and social media activity.
Here’s what we’ve found…
Amazon Logistics & Royal Mail are doing the best, but not by much…
For the third time, Citizens Advice has uncovered widespread problems in the sector, with no parcel company scoring above 2.75 stars, down from last year’s top score of 3. Royal Mail and Amazon jointly come top with 2.75 stars, followed by DPD with 2.25 stars and Evri and Yodel come last place with an overall score of 2 stars. This year the difference between first and last place is smaller than ever, meaning we are seeing poor performance across the board.
People are having far too many delivery problems
Our research found that 13.3 million people faced a delivery problem with the last parcel they received in the last month. This chimes with what we’re seeing when people come to us for help — our advice page If something you ordered hasn’t arrived has been viewed almost 222,000 times in the last 12 months, a 78% increase in views since 2019.
Consumers reported frequently experiencing parcel delivery problems such as their parcel arriving late, not arriving at all or the delivery driver leaving before they had time to get to the door. Of the people that had a problem, 27% said their parcel was left in an insecure location showing this to be a key problem driving consumer dissatisfaction with parcel deliveries.
Aisha* purchased a laptop online for her son. The courier said they tried to deliver the parcel and no one was in, but the photo of the attempted delivery was from her neighbour’s door two houses down. When she contacted the delivery company, they said they would re-deliver at first, before saying it had been delivered. The second photo they sent was also not of Aisha’s door but an unmarked one. When she reported the case to the police and got a reference number, the seller told her it couldn’t be verified and closed the case.
*Name changed to preserve anonymity
Unfortunately, the rate of delivery problems for people like Aisha shows no sign of letting up. We want to see Ofcom take further action to tackle these preventable issues that cause harm to consumers and drive much of our frustration with parcel companies.
Some people experience more problems than others
Over half of disabled people (51%) who wanted to share an accessibility need, were unable to share this with the delivery company. Among those disabled people who had an issue resolving a problem with delivery, 25% found it very difficult to solve their delivery problem compared to 16% among those without a disability.
This year, our data also revealed people from a racially minoritised background were more likely (51%) to experience a problem with their delivery compared to white people (32%).
Next year, we’ll be focusing on gaining a deeper understanding of the reasons behind the poorer outcomes experienced by certain groups.
Accessibility is still the lowest scoring criteria
Accessibility has the lowest combined score of all the criteria, showing that parcel companies are not meeting the needs of consumers with accessibility needs. Accessibility needs might include people who need additional time to get to the door or help with carrying or picking up parcels. If we don’t see improvements in this score in next year’s league table, when changes to accessibility provision should already be in place, then we will be calling on Ofcom to take further action.
What next?
Over the past 3 years, we have been disappointed to see the lack of substantial improvements among the parcel companies’ scores. We welcome Ofcom’s changes to guidance around complaints and accessibility but we’ve yet to see substantial improvements in these areas. And that’s only half the picture — the rate of delivery problems is not being addressed by Ofcom’s interventions, and that needs to change. Consumer experience between 2021 and 2023 has remained poor, and they have continued to be placed at the sharp end of problems in the parcels market. It looks like this trend is set to continue if decisive action is not taken. The parcels market regulator, Ofcom, needs to take further action to prevent these problems.
Specifically, we would like to see
- Parcel companies use the league table results to identify areas they need to improve. We want to see them reduce the amount of delivery problems consumers face, with a particular focus on parcels being left in an insecure location. Our results suggest this is one of the biggest factors driving poor consumer experience.
- Ofcom review their new complaints and accessibility guidance by April 2024 and consider enforcement action if there have been no significant improvements.
- Ofcom expand its monitoring processes, to fully capture the type and rate of delivery problems and take action on companies with persistently high rates.
