Wordery suspends Express Delivery

Online retailer Wordery has suspended its Express Delivery offer after poor service from embattled courier Yodel.

Will Jones, co-founder of the website, has told The Bookseller he was “disappointed” not to be able to offer customers the next day delivery service, which only launched in August, and which he described at the time as “market-leading”.

Jones said he was forced to axe the service after poor customer feedback on deliveries from Yodel.

“We took this action as soon as we noticed a drop in service levels, so thankfully very few customers were impacted,” he said.“It is disappointing that we are not offering an Express Delivery service this Christmas, but of paramount importance to Wordery is that we meet and exceed our customers' expectations.”

He added: “We continue to offer our Free Worldwide Delivery service on all orders.”

Wordery said despite the problems with deliveries to UK households, the company had achieved an “outstanding Christmas to date, trading significantly above expectations and last year.”

Yodel told retailers it would not collect parcels to take to customers over last weekend (11th-13th December) because it was already three days behind on deliveries, not helped by a flood over orders over Black Friday (29th November) and Cyber Monday (1st December), with Watersones and indie bookshops hit by the delays.

However, as of yesterday (15th December) the courier said the backlog had been cleared and customers should receive their parcels between now and Wednesday.

Wordery launched an Express Delivery service in August which would deliver orders the next day to UK mainland addresses for £1.95 per order, with no limit on the number of books. The move allowed the retailer to compete with Amazon and The Book Depository for fast delivery of books.