From late arrivals to missing parcels, delivery services get a bad reputation but is there one that is a cut above the rest?
This week, delivery services in the UK were described as "miserable" by customers for the third year running, according to an annual survey by Citizens Advice.
13.3 million people have experienced a delivery problem in just the last month, such as parcels left in insecure locations or arriving late, according to the new research.
In fact, none of the major parcel firms have managed to secure even a three-star rating in the charity's league table.
Royal Mail and Amazon achieved joint best position but only with a meagre 2.75 stars.
At the other end of the scale, Yodel had the lowest scores, with 40% of customers reporting a problem whilst DPD had 37% and Evri 34%.
It paints a bleak picture - which got us thinking - is there a delivery service that has proven itself better than the rest?
We've decided to take it to our readers in a new poll.
Between the five major delivery companies - who is the best for customer service? Who took into account any accessibility needs you have? Or who have you had the least amount of problems with?
What is the best parcel delivery firm in the UK?
What did the Citizen Advice survey say about UK delivery services?
Citizens Advice said there had been no improvements in delivery problem scores from the year before with the rate of parcel problems remaining “far too high across the board”.
The Citizens Advice parcels league table looks at the top five delivery companies by parcel volume and measures their performance against criteria including customer service, delivery problems and accessibility needs, such as people needing longer to answer the door.
Of those consumers who experienced a problem with their delivery, nearly half (43%) then had a further issue when trying to resolve the problem, such as not being able to find the right company contact details or not receiving a response.
In the end, more than half of those who had further issues (53%) found it difficult to resolve their problem. This figure rose to 60% of people with a disability.
Almost all parcel firms scored two stars or below when it came to meeting the needs of disabled customers or individuals who require adjustments to how they receive parcels.
A Royal Mail spokesman said: “We are pleased to come joint first of Citizens Advice’s parcels league table. We are working hard to further improve our quality of service and continuing to introduce more convenient options for customers to access our services, including automatic redelivery and safe place delivery preferences."
Elsewhere, Yodel responded: "We welcome feedback and invest heavily to continuously improve our service. However, this report is not reflective of our own parcel data, which indicates that 98.7% of the 200 million parcels we handled over the last 12 months were delivered correctly on the first attempt."
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