Thursday, September 07, 2006

Here's a Good One! - Parcelforce

I ordered some tapes from Florida recently to keep the old Tascam 688 portastudio going.

Parcelforce are taking care of delivery 'this end' which is why they decided to return them to sender rather than actually delivering them to me or telling me they had them. Or telling me anything in fact. In order to check what's going on you need a 17 figure 'Parcel Reference Number'. This appears on the letter they send you which tells you you have to pay import duty etc. If they don't send you this letter you don't have the number. This means that when you call the depot you can't use the phone system because it asks for the number - that you haven't got.

Next stage is a 'Clearance fee' of £8. Did I mention that I've already paid the postage?

So, so far I've waited since May for the package. They wouldn't give it to me, they wouldn't tell me they'd got it, they wouldn't let me speak to them and now they want £8 to release it.

Following a website search and calls to their call centre I now have a letter (which is how I know about the £8). If I call them today (a Thursday) they can deliver it the next day. I won't be in on Friday. Luckily you can get them to deliver on Saturday.

The charge for this is an extra £12.

I'm not making this up. Anyone want to set fire to the depot? My arson fee is £25.56 + VAT.

No comments: