All entries for Monday 16 May 2011

Dell's Delivery Reputation Sub–sub–sub–contracted Out

My Dell Delivery Saga finally ended when Patrick at the Milton Keynes head office of UK Mail upgraded the delivery to a before 10-30 am service and it did indeed arrive at 10-25 am.

Even this outcome would not have been possible had I not Googled Walsh Western’s BPO code to be UK Mail. See my WWI will not communicate post.

Talking to the UK Mail staff at their Birmingham hub I discovered that the final delivery was passed on to self-employed drivers.

So Dell’s delivery chain was:

1. syncreon AKA Walsh Western International.
   Who got it from Poland to Birmingham via Hinckley (actually closer to Coventry).
2. UK Mail. A Bulk Business logistics specialist with too few hubs
   for easy customer pick-up.
3. Self-employed drivers.

The driver who failed twice either has no pride, was completely incompetent or had no real business incentive to deliver. See log, below.

My address have not changed since the house was built in 1970 and Dell’s chain has delivered here 3 times before. Well at least posted the card!

I do wonder out of the £20 delivery charge how the split goes;
1. For WWI for the international transport and import?
2. For UK Mail?
3. For the self-employed driver?
If this was a fixed fee arrangement then, in these days of very high UK diesel prices,
I can imagine that the address that is the greatest distance from the locus
of delivery points could cause the driver to be significantly out-of-pocket.

I can only speculate about why a driver can have a valuable consignment on his vehicle for 20 hours, 2 complete days, and fail to deliver?

My contract was with Dell and the purchasing expert who negotiated their delivery chain may have saved cash but at what cost to their reputation?

Dell use UPS in North America. I would pay more to have UPS’s basic service, they have found my house and delivered every time but would prefer to be able to book my slot.

Dell should stop driving service to the cheapest possible and start to offer delivery up-sell options.

Robert McGonigle : 16 May 2011 12:00 |  Tags: Dell Delivery Problems Walsh Western Complaints Wwi Complaints |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem