Pass The Parcel

at

You can check in.

But your parcel may never arrive.

Eric Chubb writes:

Wondering if any Broadsheet readers have been using Parcel Motel lately and had problems with it?

I ordered a parcel from Amazon which arrived into their Belfast depot on the 15th of June and went no further, until they eventually owned up to having lost it after me ringing them every day or every second day for a week and a half.

They offered me €100 compensation which is less than half the value of the item in question – mea culpa for not taking out the additional liability cover.

However, they also said they think the parcel arrived already opened, but couldn’t prove it as they couldn’t find it.. Surely if it arrived opened, they might have the courtesy to inform the customer so they could get on to the merchant ASAP. In this case, evidently not. Their customer service is non-existent.

They don’t seem to reply to emails, very occasionally they reply to tweets, and if you ring them you could be on hold for an hour. See here: here and here.

I accept that with COVID19, courier firms are flat out every day, but then they are making plenty of money out of it too. If you scan Twitter, or Boards it’s just customer after customer with the same problem.

Packages go missing, PM don’t respond on any customer service channels. I realise that customer comments tend to skew negatively in general, but the sheer volume and consistency of the complaints paints Parcel Motel in a very poor light indeed.

The courier industry in Ireland is completely unregulated from what I can see. ComReg have no jurisdiction over NightLine who own Parcel Motel, so it seems that the next step is the Small Claims Court..

Anyone.

Parcel Motel

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21 thoughts on “Pass The Parcel

  1. dav

    I’ve used them before and have had no issue (yet). If you traced the Parcel to Belfast does that mean you were using their Antrim Depot address. I’ve only used their Dublin address and had no issue. Perhaps it’s a problem with up north?

  2. Susan

    Same problem with AddresPal, packages being refused on their end and then being told that I personally rejected delivery

  3. broadbag

    My worst Parcel Motel experience was having to pick up my parcel from a Stillorgan GAA club which they were using as an overflow space due to demand at the time – there were zero signposts or clues as to where they were set up, staff at the club were cranky due to the flood of people looking for info and eventually I was directed round the back of the complex to the men’s changing rooms, I kid you not, therein a bunch of rookie staff were floundering around with clipboards and I was asked to describe my parcel for them, which they then retrieved from the piles on the benches and floors!

    Mostly PM are fine, but when they’re bad they’re very, very bad!

    1. denise

      I was about to tell the same story! stopped using them after that, the time before I used them they randomly sent my parcel to a place in Blackrock, bizarre

  4. Mick

    Sorry to hear you had a bad XP with them – I’ve been using them for years and half a dozen time over the last 3 months, cant remember of a single instance with an issue but I know from having looked around and seen their Twitter that they are not big on CS. I asked them actually at the start of Covid what was the story for deliveries through them since there was nothing about Covid-19 pandemic on their website and they eventually came back to say “business as usual”.

  5. realPolithicks

    If you ordered the item from Amazon you should be able to get them to replace the it for you.

    1. Elly

      If parcel motel took the delivery, it’s not Amazon’s problem, it’s up to parcel motel to refund it

  6. Hector Rameriz

    It was purchased in 2017 by UPS (when UPS bought nightline) maybe being subsumed into a larger organisation has had an effect on its service?

    1. JEH

      I’m not sure that UPS has necessarily had any affect on Parcel Motel’s structure though. I work for an Irish company that was bought by a huge British based multi-national, but you’d hardly know anything has changed and this is years later. The bought us because we were profitable and decided to leave us alone precisely because we were already profitable. UPS may have taken a similar outlook. I offer this as a potential explanation for why I have never had any issues with UPS in any country, but have many issues with NightLine and Parcel Motel.

      1. Hector Rameriz

        It was just a theory, but I suppose a lot of theories don’t work out, you know, Evolution, democracy and the like…

  7. Rory

    I’ve had around 200 deliveries over a few years through Parcel Model, all delivered bar one. My experience was similar to yours, delivered to Belfast, never arrived in Dublin. It took 3 weeks of emails for them to admit the package was lost, 10 days to recieve anything other than an automated response, and over 2 months before the value was refunded (slightly less than 100). Up till that point i was quite happy with Parcel Motel, however i was dissapointed with the response when the package was lost.

  8. Custo

    Never had one go missing. Used it hundreds of times. Used it maybe 5 times since lockdown (by mistake cosni was at home) and all delivered bang on time.

  9. Brian

    Agree customer service is appalling. I had a similar experience where I had proof from Royal Mail that PM had taken delivery of my parcel in their depot in Antrim, but PM then denied all knowledge of it and refused to give me any further update across various channels. Phonecalls, emails, tweets and tickets all went unanswered but I eventually reached a breakthrough and got my package with a promise of a ‘free stay’ which they then never credited to me giving me another job to get that put up on the account. They used to be great but now seem to be in complete disarray and unable to manage to rise of online shopping during the lockdown. By contrast An Post run a similar service called AddressPal which has been fantastic by comparison.

  10. GiggidyGoo

    I’ve had two experiences with DHL not bothering to deliver to the address on the package – there’s always someone at home – and the lazy drivers choosing to stuff the parcels into their DHL ‘hotel’ at a service station that’s 12 km away.

    DPD I’ve always, without fail, found to be reliable.

    Weren’t Nightline the ones cheerleading the Eircode introduction? Handy that, when they don’t have to deliver these motel ones.

  11. JEH

    I stopped using them about a year or two ago for shenanigans like this. I had placed different orders at different times on Amazon and they all arrived into Parcel Motel’s distribution/sorting hub within incident, in the expected amount of time, and fully traceable. Once it arrived into Parcel Motel’s hub it fell into some kind of black hole where it took over 2 weeks to deliver. In one instance I had ordered some essentials for a trip that I was about to take (when we could do those kinds of things) and thought 2 weeks was plenty of time to go from the UK to Dublin. Wrong. It arrived after I left for my trip. On another occasion I had ordered essential text books for a course, again a couple of weeks before the course was set to commence. The books sat in their hub for something like 10 days before they were finally delivered to the motel. However, I was not in Dublin when they arrived and couldn’t pick them up. They charged me for a holding fee the entire weekend since I was away and couldn’t collect them. This, all when they were sitting in the Dublin sorting up for almost 2 weeks.

    Then there’s An Post’s Address Pal. I tried that a couple of times from the UK but they never ended up delivering any of the small parcels. Each time they left a note at the door saying I needed to collect them from the local post office. However, the office closed at 430 which meant either leaving work early or racing over at lunch to try to collect them.

    Curiously, if you order the same items through Amazon without using Address Pal, An Post will deliver them to your destination without any issues.

  12. G FitzGerald

    Still waiting for my parcel which arrived in Dublin depot May 22. Waste of time trying to contact them; they set up a ‘ticket’ after every e-mail. I now have 4. Can’t get through on phone. Have asked my solicitor to handle it.

    Will never use them again because they treat us customers like vermin.

  13. Gokkers

    thing is…when they loose your stuff they wont tell you…you have to chase them, then they offer you credit to its value. so…we’re poo so here’s a voucher to keep you interested. terrible customer relations, Eir’s equivalent!

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