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Sending a parcel to France


idun
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After reading about Parcels2Go on here, I decided to give them a try.

There were a few company options to choose from, and I chose the Parcelforce option for £19.95+vat and as there was some valueable things in the parcel, paid for insurance. This was for a door to door service for a big box weighing 22kgs. It was picked up last Monday afternoon from home and arrived at his appt in France on Thursday afternoon. The tracking system was very good.

 

When we lived in France, I paid about 35€ once at La Poste to send a rather light, but big package to Germany, and I had to take it to the Centre de Tri.

 

I am delighted with the service and price and wouldn't hesitate to use them again.

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I have a delivery in progress through Parcels2Go at the moment. They are just a portal as you know so the service is only as good as the couriers along the way.

My parcel is currently tracked as 'Held in Depot - insufficient address'. Which of course is total hogwash. Our lieu dit appears on all the satnavs I have seen, is clearly signed and all 3 families here know each other and take parcels in if no-one is home. So the local courier has simply decided it's not worth a trip to the sticks. I'm trying to find out which depot it is held in so I can go get the parcel, give them a roasting and claim my full refund.

But I agree, when it works these services are great. I just hope they hold the local bods to account in my case.

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We've also just used parcels2go with Parcelforce for a box from UK to France - amazingly quick delivery, collected Wed pm and delivered Fri am!

Greyman - we had a similar problem with UPS not long ago, their original solution was (despite having our phone numder) to send us a postcard to find out what the correct address was .....[Www]

However, this was also with parcels2go, we contacted them and they got someone from UPS to phone us and get directions (we couldn't find a proper contact number for the depot); the essential problem was their computer system not accepting a "normal" rural short address - i.e. a lieu-dit and village name only.

Lou

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If you are sending an item of value from the UK which needs insurance, then Interparcel are a better bet, they use the  same carriers as P2G and charge about the same for delivery, but their insurance is a lot less.

£500 insurance cover with P2G is £25.00, with interparcel its only £10, and they do pay out if there is a problem.

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[quote user="idun"]

I'm glad I took the Parcel Force option then and would do so again.

Also my son lives in a city, which probably helped!

[/quote]

Don't be so confident. My delivery was via parcelforce. It has made it's way in to the La Poste system and no-one can give me a reference number with which to track it at local level and I'm still waiting for parcels2go to come back to me with details of which depot it is actually held in. The value is not great, it's just some printing but I won't have chance now to get it resent [:(]

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I looked at Interparcel, but they would have been four times the price I paid for the size of the box and the weight. I took the cheapest option available and was very happy.

 

La Poste, will they get any better now parts of it have been 'privatised?', or will the same old shabby service continue? I cannot blame the posties, ours were always good, it is the rest that was poor.

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I didn't know about Interparcel, but out of interest have just been to their website and got a quote for the size/weight of box we just had delivered via parcels2go - we paid 24.48 pounds inc VAT. Interparcel quoted 41 pounds plus VAT

Given that it's usually the same carriers one way or another - either La Poste or UPS or FEDEX etc etc, I'd prefer to take my chances and pay less!

we've always found the local delivery people, whether La Poste or courier firms, very friendly and helpful, it seems to be the call centre staff who just can't grasp the concept of anyone not having a street address (and I've encountered this problem with others eg EDF too)

Lou

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Parcel2go - another company to add to the list.

I now have GWizz, Interparcel - the first I used, Parcel Fusion, Parcel2go and Parcels Please.

I usually get quotes for 2 or 3 of them, as no particular one seems consistently cheaper than the others.

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[quote user="ebaynut"]That's interesting Lou, what where the dimensions and weight of your package? I send mainly to the US and Australia and never find any difference in their quotes. I would like to check this out. [/quote]

Hi ebaynut

It was a box 60*48*48 cm weighing 23kg

With parcels2go via Parcelforce in UK and then La Poste Colissimo (I think) in France, it cost us 24.48 pounds inc VAT - this was just last week

Yesterday Interparcel quoted me 41 pounds plus VAT

Maybe Interparcel get better deals to US and Australia than France?

Lou

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Lou,

When I put these dimensions in the P2G site, I get the same quote as you paid, however the Interparcel site lowest price is showing as £25.00 plus vat, not £41.00 plus vat as you were quoted.

Clearly in this case P2G are cheaper if the parcel is of low value and you don't want insurance, but if it was of value and you did want to insure it for £500, then P2G would charge £25.00 and Interparcel would charge £10, then making Interparcel cheaper by £10 including insurance.

But it is correct, you do have to shop on these sites, but always take the high cost of P2G insurance into account before deciding.

 

Idun, I am unable to understand Interparcel being four times more expensive than P2G unless you go for P2G cheapest option and compare it against Interparcels highest.
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[quote user="ebaynut"]
Lou,

When I put these dimensions in the P2G site, I get the same quote as you paid, however the Interparcel site lowest price is showing as £25.00 plus vat, not £41.00 plus vat as you were quoted.

Clearly in this case P2G are cheaper if the parcel is of low value and you don't want insurance, but if it was of value and you did want to insure it for £500, then P2G would charge £25.00 and Interparcel would charge £10, then making Interparcel cheaper by £10 including insurance.

But it is correct, you do have to shop on these sites, but always take the high cost of P2G insurance into account before deciding.

 

Idun, I am unable to understand Interparcel being four times more expensive than P2G unless you go for P2G cheapest option and compare it against Interparcels highest.
[/quote]

I've discovered the difference..... if I just chose a quote for UK Mainland to France without entering postcodes I get  25 pounds plus vat, if I enter the two postcodes we would be using, it quotes 41 pounds. The collection address is in a town in the UK, we are fairly rural here in France though still in a village.

Lou

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Given the praise doled out to Parcels2Go I thought I would just update my situation so that readers will understand what happens when it doesn't go well !

My parcel was collected in UK on Monday 15 October and arrived in France on Tuesday 16 October. On 17 Oct it 'went out for delivery'. That night it returned to the depot with an address problem - I have no idea why as I have a copy of the label and it is perfectly addressed.

Ever since then there is a daily update to the tracking saying 'held in depot' - so that is 6 days now.

I contacted P2G the first day it said 'held in depot' (Thurs 18 Oct) and asked what the problem was and could I go and fetch it ? Could they tell me where it was ? That will take 24 hours I was told.

Having heard nothing I made contact again on Fri 19 Oct and Sat 20 Oct, each time being told it would take 24 hours and never receiving any information. On Saturday I took it up to Jenny, a superviser. She again promised to get me an answer in 24 hours or maybe 48 as it was a weekend. She also said Parcelforce had asked the local depot to call me.

On Mon 22 Oct the tracking again updated to say 'held in depot' so I called P2G again. I was told that no-one had yet requested the depot details and they would do so now and it would be 24 hours before I received a reply. In the meantime Parcelforce had asked the depot to call me ! In addition they told me the carrier was La Poste and gave me a freephone helpline number to call but were unable to give me a La Poste reference number to track the parcel !

So all in all their Customer 'Service' ethos is - once your parcel has been collected we couldn't give a damn and you're on your own. We'll just fob you off with banalities and empty promises of replies in 24 hours.

I wouldn't touch them again with your bargepole let alone mine. [:@]

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I actually feel very sorry for them (and you of course) for having to use and deal with problems with Chronopost.

There are some great sellers from Germany on amazon.fr but they end up getting lousy feedback for 2 reasons, the first being that the french will often only award them half the stars when their feedback says they are delighted with the item, service and delivery, the second and by far their biggest problem is having no choice but to use Chronopost.

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I note that Parcelforce had the parcel in France within 24 hours, so clearly the problem ( surprise) is with the French end.

Also if you took the Parcelforce option on P2G, than that would have been the cheapest of the services offered.

So hardly a shock that the service which accompanies the cheapest is not so good when there is a problem.

Poor old Parcelforce, done the best price, done their side of the deal by getting it to the French delivery company so quick, then let down by the French, not an unusual story, then PF get the blame for poor service.
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But I'm not blaming ParcelForce. I was quite happy with a 5 day service, which was a good price.

I'm unhappy with Parcels2Go. There was clearly an issue with my delivery on the French side which I was willing to intervene to resolve. They were totally unable to get a very simple piece of information i.e. where was my parcel, which was being tracked, for 4+ working days after I asked.

Having paid for a 3-5 day service I don't think it's unreasonable for the involved parties, to whom I have paid the price asked, to get their act together and get the parcel to me in 3-5 days. When it started to go wrong I acted promptly to try to sort it out.

Out of interest the parcel has just been delivered from the back of a hire van ! It didn't seem like la Poste to me. So it was 8 days, 6 working days from collection and only them because I hassled to get the address issue confirmed. The address on the package was well attached and faultless too (the original as well as the extra one stuck on in France).

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Thats par for the course with all the French distribution companies Greyman they treat their customers (the parcel companies) with the same indifference with that which they treat you the end user.

Even a wholly owned subsidiary like UPS is not immune to the french touch.

Until they went pop I still used my old friends the courier company for my business in the UK to send out some stuff to me in France, they apologised in advance and warned me that often it would all go kaput once it hit French soil and looking at the traceability thats exactly what it does, they can never get truthfull information about the location of a parcel on the French side it always shows up as lost etc when it does arrive then the true audit trail comes out where it has been declared as lost by one depot but in reality shunted out to another who just do the same thing, luckily most parcels do arrive eventually.

Have a look at the tracking data for your parcel, I bet its updated now and will show you exactly what your parcel was doing all that time, I bet its done the rounds of France.

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Apologises, the message should have read,

 

I note that Parcelforce had the parcel in France within 24 hours, so clearly the problem ( surprise) is with the French end.

Also if you took the Parcelforce option on P2G, than that would have been the cheapest of the services offered.

So hardly a shock that the service which accompanies the cheapest is not so good when there is a problem.

Poor old P2G, done the best price, done their side of the deal by getting it to the French delivery company so quick, then let down by the French, not an unusual story, then P2G get the blame for poor service.

 

Glad it has now turned up for you, but I doubt you will get better service time than this. I know you paid for 3-5 days delivery and that's what it should be, but with the very small margins in low cost delivery, you have to be flexible, or pay for the top service. They have never lost one of mine yet, but many have been late and the biggest pain is when the customer demands to know where it is and of course P2G start losing money on the deal when they have to start checking where it is. So they are in no rush to help, or if they do I doubt if the French can be bothered to respond, seeing as they could not even be bothered to deliver it on time, if as you say the address was correct.
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