Due to the consequences of the corona crisis, we are ordering everything online en masse. Last year, much more was ordered online than in 2019. It is still very busy with the parcel deliverers in our country. Everywhere you look you see vans driving that are busy delivering parcels. Research by the Consumers' Association shows that the number of complaints about parcel deliverers has increased significantly in 2020. Last year, the Consumers' Association received about 13.000 complaints about parcel deliverers. That is more than 4000 (44%) more complaints than in 2019. Most complaints (24%) are about parcels never delivered, followed by notifications not at home (21%). Most complaints were made about PostNL and DHL. There were 8.833 complaints about PostNL and 2.876 complaints about DHL. What is striking is that there has been a huge increase in the number of complaints about the smaller delivery services such as DPD, GLS and UPC.
Sandra Molenaar, director of the Consumer Association: “Companies seem to pursue an active discouragement policy by hiding telephone numbers far away on their website and keeping consumers on the line endlessly with chatbots, endless choice menus and extremely long waiting times. To then refer the complainant to the webshop, because that party concluded the agreement with the postal company ”.
The irritation about the not-home notification while you are at home at that time is very annoying, especially now that many people are still working from home and are at home all day. The customer service of parcel deliverers did not score very high, 1200 panel members were questioned about this by the Consumers Association gave the customer service a 5. This figure is due to the fact that the accessibility of the customer service is poor according to the respondents and there is a reluctance to resolve complaints, which causes great dissatisfaction among consumers. However, the consumer understands the later delivery of parcels due to the crowds, lockdown or bad weather conditions.
“That really must be over sometime,” says Molenaar. 'Parcel services are happy to hide behind the (web) stores where consumers make their purchases. But a parcel deliverer who pretends that the residents are not at home is really a problem for the parcel service. The store has nothing to do with that at all. We enter into talks with the postal companies to ensure that complaints are handled better ”.