Yodel for DHL

[JSR]

I'm probably the last to hear of these things but I've just been chatting to our DHL driver and he was telling me that they were bought-out last year by "Yodel".

I don't know all the details, I just noticed his van didn't say "DHL" on it anymore.

The Yodel website confirms the information and also states that Yodel is owned by the Home Delivery Network Ltd (HDNL).

Whether this will make any difference to the services remains to be seen, but "Yodel" doesn't have the same long-standing authoritative name as "DHL", and "HDNL" does have a reputation for not being all that efficient.

Can anyone else offer more information?

[DREAMGLASS]

HDNL deliver a lot of stuff for Amazon as an alernative to Royal Mail. Usually the bigger/heavier books etc. Their service is typically three working days, which is out of sync with the 24/48 hour services offered by other couriers.

[bms]

I think the DHL/ HDNL network also delivers up to 8pm at night, which is great if you are delivering to someone home, but not so good if business customers work from home and your "work address" is in a residential area (as defined by DHL/HDNL). Paying for next day delivery, when it arrives in the evening isn't much help if you're trying to turn things around quickly.

[Ian M]

I think the DHL/ HDNL network also delivers up to 8pm at night, which is great if you are delivering to someone home, but not so good if business customers work from home and your "work address" is in a residential area (as defined by DHL/HDNL). Paying for next day delivery, when it arrives in the evening isn't much help if you're trying to turn things around quickly.

I think they deliver within normal business hours if you have a business/company name on the address label & the later times are just for a home address. Hope that makes sense Martin.

Ian

[JSR]

My concern is that I could have chosen HDNL for my deliveries in the past but, because of their reputation, I didn't. I chose DHL. Now they're going to be one and the same so I won't have that choice. Will they improve the HDNL side of the operation to be as good as DHL, or dumb-down the DHL side to be more like HDNL?

I guess the proof of the pudding will be in the eating. Trouble is, what's the alternative?

[bms]

I think they deliver within normal business hours if you have a business/company name on the address label & the later times are just for a home address. Hope that makes sense Martin

Yes I see what you mean. When we used them for a while the 'home' addresses are based on postcodes so when we had customers that worked from residential addresses (as per a postcode) then they could get very late deliveries. I don't remember now if we put a business name on the address label but perhaps that would have helped!

[JSR]

Seems that "YoDel" may have grown too big too quickly:

http://www.roadtransport.com/Articles/2 ... a-week.htm

Axing 60 of its 120 depots and losing £1m per week. Doesn't bode well for all the different services they've bought up.

[JSR]

I've just received an email from P4D proudly proclaiming that they now offer CityLink for £6.99. That's odd, thinks I, because DHL was £6.99 before. Why offer a competing service?

What they don't tell you in the email is that the DHL service has now been properly rebranded "Yodel" and has gone up to £8.99. And the CityLink option goes up in price over 15Kg (reaching the same Yodel £8.99 price once over 20Kg).

And, barely two weeks after P4D sent around an email proudly stating - "Cheaper Next Day: Next day delivery with DHL used to cost you more than a tenner before VAT, but it's now fixed at £9.99, so it's good news all round!" - the 24hr Yodel service is back up to £10.99. That really was "fixed", wasn't it? Not!

It's so annoying when companies hide bad news and masquerade a worse service as a better one.