Re: first post - again
This thread is just to enticing to miss
Hi everyone
Living in Greece and being addicted plant buyers we have used nursery postal
services many times. Parcelforce to Greece - until this year - used to be
about 8 days standard service and we found that if we ordered in late autumn
or early winter plants arrived fine. However Parcelforce have now stopped
using the European postal systems and contracted with couriers. Not for all
parcels mind you, just the ones over 2kilos and 48 hour service so some
travel by courier and some by Greek Post Office. In Greece Parcelforce's
partner is Speedex (renamed Slowdex by us).
We ordered Roses from Peter Beales in the spring, and a shredder from the UK
in the autumn of last year. Between the planing of those two orders
Parcelforce contracted Greek parcels out to Speedex. For a delivery by
courier our telephone number is needed but no-one knew that the system had
changed, so parcels were despatched without phone numbers. The first
suggestion that all was not well, was when five days after the shredder
despatch enquiries at our local post office drew a blank. Well emails went
to and fro and I finally found out about the courier. A call to Speedex head
office only drew a blank. Eventually I was advised that the shredder had
been returned to sender because we (yes we) had refused delivery. Lots of
fuss ensued and a second shredder was despatched from the UK. This was sent
special delivery and came two days later at our local post office.
In the middle of all this a visit to our local Speedex office (Hania,Crete)
drew a blank on the shredder but turned up a parcel containing roses which
had been in their office for 2 weeks and which no-one had bothered to do
anything with because it did not have a phone number.
It gets better - two weeks later the first shredder turned up at our local
post office. It seemed that the head office of Speedex, not knowing what to
do with this very heavy parcel, had consigned it to the Greek postal service
who had eventually delivered it.
Its hardly surprising that nurseries are becoming mail order shy.
Paul if you can bear to please mail me privately so that you can send me
your catalogue?
regards to all
Janet B
Janet Blenkinship
Crete, Greece
What is this life if, full of care,
we have no time to stand and stare.
William henry Davies
----- Original Message -----
From: Anthony Lyman-Dixon <lyman@lyman-dixon.freeserve.co.uk>
To: <oasisdesigns@btconnect.com>
Cc: <medit-plants@ucdavis.edu>
Sent: Sunday, April 01, 2001 1:04 PM
Subject: Re: first post - again
> > paul spracklin wrote:
> >
> > The options? They operate a guaranteed 48 hr delivery service which
> > is more expensive than using a private overnight courier. SO plants
> > can be sent by overnight courier at a cost of £15 for the first
> > 10kgs. This is staggeringly expensive but there are NO options.
> >
> >I agree with everything Paul says about parcel force. Before I learnt
better we used them for delivering fresh cut herbs to London wholesale
markets. The stuff arrived days later, soggy and black and we were nearly
ruined in consequence. Customers cringe indeed when we mention their name
and beg us to send by any other method, pack camel if necessary regardless
of the cost. However until we discovered Horticultural logistics of
Tewkesbury, we were compelled to risk the post office for small
international deliveries of live plants which in effect meant that the
customers either had to order a thousand plants that could be delivered by
international freighters (eg Gondrand of Lyons) or do with out .....until
last year when the post office salesman came round, begged us to give them
another try and promised to keep a personal eye on a consignment of 100
Artemisia pontica to South Eastern France. Surprise, surprise!, the parcel
went missing for six months, yes really, six wh!
> ole months and the salesman who had sold the idea on the whizzo
computerised satellite global tracking system said that once parcels had
crossed the channel, they were out of their hands. Anyway by then, for
domestic deliveries we had already switched in rapid succession to City Link
(much the same, only more expensive) Fed Ex (twice was enough) Interlink who
were fine for several years but got taken over and decided we were too
small to be worth bothering with any longer and now we are with NCN who
claim to be plant specialists and in the last four months haven't fouled up
once, so far as I know, but thats only for plants, we haven't started
sending out fresh cut yet. not only that but we can charge our customers
£7.50 next day delivery on the first five kilos or two plants and still
make enough to cover our packing costs. We haven't tried them yet for for
small internationals too small for the Tewkesbury lot to deal with but I
will keep you posted. Incidentally the last !
> time we used Gondrand for an Italian delivery, the plants spent longer in
the Florence warehouse waiting to be delivered to Volterra than the rest of
the journey put together. Our client got so exasperated he drove to Florence
and collected the parcel himself.
> It's an international problem.
> Anthony
>
>
