As a growing internet business I trialled them and had more customer complaints in 2 weeks than I’ve had in 18 months when using Royal Mail. My parcels got delivered quicker through the strikes by Royal mail than Hermes and even if they took 2 weeks they won’t let you claim!

Their staff give you wrong information, their couriers go on holiday and the cover doesn’t turn up and nobody checks so your parcels are just dumped until they come back and discover a backlog. They don’t send you claim forms when you ask, they don’t call you when you ask, they don’t reply to your letters of complaint and they will not give the name of the person in charge so you can write direct either.

They are a shambles.

I appreciate that different considerations (including speed) apply to ebay sales, but this was a website sale. I’m not selling on ebay atm and don’t plan to again before the postal disputes have been sorted out, whenever that might be.

My main concern was make sure an alternative choice was available for my customers, although as it turns out, so far I’ve only had one taker.

MyHermes was very easy to use and low cost, I didn’t actually try to track the delivery.

I did speak to a local franchise of a national courier (APC) recommended by a friend a few weeks ago – who didn’t want to touch me with a bargepole! The guy obviously thought I was very risky – not a ltd co (I thought that was quite ironic as surely easier to get money back from a sole trader), not VAT registered, working from home etc I wasn’t even asking for credit and would have been perfectly happy to pay up front.

The reality is that the despatch time DSR is delivery time – we all know it and even ebay have admitted that by suspending it during the Royal Mail strikes. If it was despatch time they wouldn’t have had to would they?

Out of interest what was the distance between your collection location and the delivery location? And was the package trackable throughout?

We’ve just done a deal with DHL through Sendex which is very attractive – not as low as MyHermes but next day for about a pound more which seems worth it to me.

Also a note by the way that all the Special Delivery packages we posted on Thurs and Fri last week (around 30) were delivered next day so that does also work as an alternative even on strike days.

Thanks for the info Tamebay, and the discount info too

Any suggestions for carriers who would offer compensation for glass items carried please? Glass is one of the items they don’t offer compensation on if it’s damaged in transit.

And thank you for raising this issue for us.

Not sure if I was just lucky but got through the last strike no problem (no negs etc.). The biggest worry to me is that people stop ordering rather then items not being delivered.