Does Shopbox work for you?

I would be very interested to know if anybody has experience of Shopbox (shopbox.co.uk). It's essentially a wheelie-bin with various compartments including chilled and frozen. It's obviously been designed with a lot of thought and targeted at the grocery delivery market.

Does it work?
Is it big enough?
Do the major grocery delivery companies use it?
Is it value for money?

Let us know your experiences here.

Delivery blues hits horses and hounds too.

Here's an account from somebody with serious delivery problems. take a look at the original posting and note the distances being driven to achieve the home delivery - ridiculous! http://www.horseandhound.co.uk/forums/showflat.php/Cat/0/Number/2156431/an/0/page/0

"Right I have bought a few things off ebay that I really need, some dressage boots, a new neue schule bit, a girth that will actually go round him and some BD tests. I bought these absolutely ages ago all on the same day and paid for them all by paypal. I have a show on sunday and could really do with them, especially the girth! I have been waiting in all last week for them to come as I knew they were recorded and needed a signature. Went out last saturday afternoon as I thought they were not going to come after four. Got in about 6 and found a note saying I had missed the delivery man and I would have to have the 4 items redelivered. Unbelieveable! So I went online and rescheduled them to be delivered on the following Tuesday as I was out on monday. So there I was sat waiting all day tuesday, until it got to 6 o clock. Nothing came, tryed ringing but obviously the office shut at 5 So I rang on the wednesday to ask why my items had not come. She put me on hold for about 20 mins, then came back and said yeh we've got them right here so you want them redelivered???!!! Apparently, they had not checked their online requests for redelivery which is the way you're meant to ask!!!! So I got them resheduled for today, I have sat and sat and waited and replyed to nearly every post on here lol. Just read as I was browsing through the weather forecast, POSTAL STRIKE TODAY. How F**king marvellous, Ohh I am soo annoyed another day wasted completely, now I have no idea when they will show up and I am out tommorrow so i don't think I will get them for my show on sunday! What's even better is that their phone number is not working beacuse nobody is there to even check when my parcel is coming. About 3 weeks ago when I bought these things off ebay I never imagined I would still be waiting for them the day before the show, I actually wanted to use them! I feel like hitting something now then crying LOL I wish I had checked the forecast this morning! This is the reason why have posted so many times today lol! "

Published in "The Sunday Times" January 07, 2007


Internet shopping hit by poor deliveryThe sector has become a victim of its own success as 4m parcels fail to turn up. Report by Jenny Davey


ONLINE SALES may have gone through the roof this Christmas, but retailers failed to employ enough little helpers to make sure parcels were delivered to the right place at the right time.
A whopping 24m parcels from online retailers failed to get delivered first time and 4m failed to arrive at all, according to IMRG, the internet research company.



The shocking figure represents 12% of the estimated 200m parcels delivered to British homes this Christmas by internet retailers. Thousands of children are thought to have been left without presents.

Doing your Christmas shopping on the net used to be a civilised affair that allowed you to avoid hordes of shoppers on the high street. But as internet retailers have become overstretched, deliveries have suffered.

James Roper, chief executive of IMRG, said it was a “total nightmare” and said the failure rate was “completely unacceptable”. He added: “If you have a light-switch that works only most of the time, you think it is broken. But, unfortunately, it is regarded as acceptable by many retailers to have an internet delivery system that works only some of the time.”

IMRG is planning to name and shame online retailers that don’t perform by publishing league tables of delivery performance for the first time.

It has already begun a survey of 4m customers to find out how they believe the system could be improved. It also plans to champion online retailers that are performing well. Roper said most online retailers’ delivery services were “not good enough”, but highlighted Screwfix Direct, Comet, John Lewis and Home Delivery Network (which works for companies including Littlewoods and Tesco Direct) as the better performers.

IMRG has also created a fulfilment guide on its website which provides a list of delivery companies for retailers. In 2005, many internet shoppers had to be turned away by retailers who could not cope with demand.

Internet shopping has become a victim of its own success. Growing confidence in the web has prompted many consumers to leave orders to the last minute in the run-up to Christmas, which has put more pressure on their delivery services.

And the growth in internet shopping has led to thousands more lorries delivering parcels at a time when there is growing concern about traffic congestion and its impact on the environment.

Meanwhile, IMRG said that the record £183m spent in a single day online in Britain on December 4 was matched on December 11. It forecasts that online sales in the UK will rise by 40% to £42 billion in 2007, up from £30 billion last year.

Bumper online sales have contributed to a tough time for high-street retailers, which have already been hard hit by soaring rent, rates and wage bills.

But Verdict Research forecasts that retail sales growth will actually improve from 2.6% in 2006 to 2.9% in 2007. It also forecasts that cost growth will slow from 4% last year to 3.5% in 2007.

Richard Hyman, chairman of Verdict, said that boosting sales will be the key to success in 2007. “This really will sort the men from the boys and focus attention on who can sell and who is weak at selling,” he said.

"Is internet retailing all it's cracked up to be?"

The title comes from an article appearing on the Retail Bulletin website from a retail think tank. It's an interesting piece that suggests that many people and organisations may just be getting a bit carried away with the impact that internet shopping is having.

Some interesting comments regarding delivery, which we at "deliveryblues" have a particular interest in, include....

In addition, Nick Bubb of Evolution Securities felt that, “More attention needs to be paid to the problem of missed delivery slots as this one issue can have a disproportionately negative effect on the consumer’s overall online retail experience. In fact, nothing seems likely to alienate a customer more than a failed or missed delivery.”
AND

The cost of missed deliveries also exposes the myth of internet retailing always being cheap. The cost of returned products – and subsequent repeat deliveries – goes straight on to the bottom line and eats into the narrow margins with which these businesses are working.


Worth a read.

Design your site for your customers

Here's an interesting case of somebody who is doing their utmost to rearrange a delivery at a suitable time and struggling bigtime. This person is trying to help TicketMaster complete the job that they have been paid to do, but the design of the process is doing more harm than good. Perhaps the key phrase here is "HAVE BEEN PAID".

How much goodwill is being lost by the sour taste that is created by poor delivery options?

LET ME KNOW

How a liitle change could make a big difference

Delivery options - latest research

The following extract was spotted in the M-logistics August newsletter

Home delivery options – ‘little improvement’
Internet retailers are making little progress in improving the range and quality of their delivery options, according to a new report commissioned from consultancy Snow Valley by IMRG. On a count of 14 aspects of home delivery, the report found only two areas where the change since last year exceeded 5 per cent – deliveries limited to billing address only (down from 17 to 9 per cent), and an online tracking facility (up from 59 to 67 per cent). Fourteen per cent of retailers delivered at a specified time of day (11 per cent last year), and 24 per cent offered Saturday delivery (23 per cent last year). No fewer that 43 per cent of the sites studied offered no delivery options, and only 6 per cent of retailers offered a “buy online and collect in-store” service. But the report concludes that many retailers “are actively trying out new ideas when it comes to delivery.”

Does anybody have any idea what the "new ideas" might be?

I also read that shoppers may be provided with the capability to precisely track (presumably on-line) their deliveries so that they can arrive home at the right time to receive the delivery!!

Would this work?

We just don't know!!

I stumbled across this blog recently and a fairly old post caught my eye at

http://homepage.mac.com/redsmartie/iblog/

It's the posting on 21st January that contained the interesting comment...

"It arrived last week. Well, in a manner of speaking. I missed the delivery man so it was a Friday night dash across Manchester to the TNT depot to collect it and full of expectation I rushed home (in as much as you can rush home on the M60 40 mph road works that have been, and will be there, for ever)."

I wonder how many other people were making journeys like this that could have been avoided if they hadn't missed their parcel delivery??