Retailers hit by Yodel delivery problems

Delivery company Yodel has assured retailers that its backlog has been cleared and customers should receive deliveries they ordered last week no later than this Wednesday (17th December), after late deliveries hit pre-Christmas sales for bookshops and their customers.

Yodel, which deliveries over 145 million parcels a year and has a relationship with 85% of the UK’s retailers, announced that it was unable to pick deliveries up from retailers this weekend (11th-13th) because it was already three days behind on existing parcel deliveries, not helped by the rush of Black Friday online ordering (29th November).

Independent bookshops which order through Bertrams, which uses Yodel, and those who order direct from Penguin Random House said they were affected with delayed orders. Meanwhile customers took to Twitter to complain about late parcel deliveries from the Waterstones website. One customer, Nicola Welch, tweeted the company to say: “How can I get a refund on books brought online? Yodel still haven't delivered them and I'd rather buy elsewhere?”

However, James Daunt, m.d of Waterstones, told The Bookseller that despite delivery problems Yodel’s performance had been “much better than feared”. While admitting the service had  not been "perfect", Daunt said 88-90% of Waterstones customers who had chosen the free shipping option had received their orders within the 72 hours quoted. However a smaller proportion who paid for 24 hour delivery, and the 10-12% whose parcels have not been delivered, had “been let down.” Waterstones has apologised to its customers who were affected and has moved to other carriers like the Post office and TNT temporarily.

Daunt said: “The volumes are so huge it is quite difficult for the carriers. People are ordering a lot more, more often. So little amounts, but much more regularly. I think Yodel have been relatively sensible, rather then pretend they don’t have a problem, they have come out and said people will get their orders late while they deal with a back log.”

He added: “From our position, we have seen a huge shift to our click and collect service instead, which is really where our online growth is coming from. Customers quite sensibly are using that instead of taking the risk of ordering deliveries. Assuming that most of these are Christmas presents, they will get delivered on time for that so we are not getting too much disquiet from customers. At least it wasn’t this week.”

Bertrams also uses Yodel but David Pagendam, the wholesaler’s head of marketing, said the company had shifted to using TNT temporarily in some locations. “The problem seems to be easing a bit,” he said.

Nic Bottomley from Mr B’s Emporium of Reading Delights in Bath, said it had been “pretty bad” and that the problems with Yodel had affected supplies from Bertrams and Penguin/Pearson. “It has simply been a case of saying [to customers] that deliveries aren’t going to next day, they’re going to be in three days,” he said. “These problems happen and you need to adjust expectations.”

The Edinburgh Bookshop’s owner and manager Marie Moser said the shop had been affected because it relied on daily deliveries in the run-up to Christmas, as the shop has little room for undisplayed stock. She said she was still waiting for deliveries for orders from Bertrams via Yodel that were due to arrive on Friday and on Saturday. Moser said: “We’ll have four to five copies of key sellers like Do No Harm by Henry Marsh or Richard Flanagan’s The Narrow Road to the Deep North, but beyond that we’re relying on the regular deliveries.”

Emma Milne-White from the Hungerford Bookshop said that her Bertrams deliveries were starting to come from TNT instead of Yodel. When asked if the widely-reported delivery issues was putting off customers from shopping online and leading to a rise in people visiting the high street, she said: “I think it is a combination of reasons, but we are seeing more people shop here and sales are up on this time last year.”

Meanwhile, indies who use Gardners were unaffected, because Gardners use TNT. Peter Donaldson of Red Lion Books, Colchester, said: “Our biggest deliveries are from the wholesalers via TNT and they're amazing – we’ve had our morning deliveries already today. Yodel is less significant for us.”

Ron Johns of the Falmouth Bookseller, said: “Luckily over the past year we've asked our wholesalers to switch. Yodel are terrible, they don't deserve to exist as far as I'm concerned. They're blaming Black Friday, but they were terrible before that. Once we were chasing some returns to Penguin, and the docket said 'Customer gone on holiday.' We mostly use Gardners and they use TNT.”

Dick Stead, executive chairman of Yodel, confirmed that the parcel backlog in Yodel’s central sorting facilities has been cleared and parcels were now in our network of local service centres for delivery between Monday and Wednesday this week (15th - 17th  December).

“This follows the deferment of some additional consignment collections from our clients last Thursday and Friday, which enabled us to use this weekend to process the outstanding parcels which had come in since Black Friday / Cyber Monday,” he said.  “As planned, scheduled collections of parcels from our clients into our central sorts will resume in full, on Monday (15 December). New parcels entering the Yodel network may still be subject to a 24-48 hour delay which is reflective of normal Christmas peak operations.”

He added: “We have liaised closely with our retail clients and we expect a slowdown in the number of consignments to be sorted over the next week; this means that parcel volumes will be at the levels originally forecast, and that the Yodel Christmas network was designed to handle. We will be closely monitoring this situation to ensure that all parcels are out for delivery before Christmas.”