• COMMENT PARCEL VOTE LOSERS
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• In the week of the general election we cannot resist drawing a parallel between the political parties and the subjects of our 1987 next-day parcels deliveries survey, although neither side is likely to find the analogy flattering.
Both groups have evidently recognised the importance of marketing their products, and both are given to making attractive-sounding promises on how they will perform — if only they are given the chance. There are even signs of the parcels companies beginning to indulge in verbal duels reminiscent of party election broadcasts.
Which ever party is now forming the Government (we went to press about 36 hours before the polling staions opened), the electorate will have to wait to find out if preelection promises begin to develop that familiar hollow ring. As for the parcels carriers, we have already been led to the disappointing conclusion by this year's survey that, by and large, their claims must be treated with considerable scepticism.
When four of the dozen firms we contacted either declined or were unable to collect a parcel from Fraserburgh, the imagination is stretched to find suitable definitions for the words like "nationwide" and "global coverage" they use in their advertisements. "Nationwide — excluding a large part of Scotland" would seem to be nearer the truth for several companies.
When we made it clear to each of the companies involved that our package was "extremely urgent" and yet still only five of them managed a next-day delivery, phrases like "rapid, reliable delivery", taken from another advertisement, are not the kind that spring to our minds, especially when two of the fastest deliverers contrived to crush our packages.
We cannot claim that our survey has anything like the statistical authority of an opinion poll, but neither do we believe that the poor performance of more than half the companies in it was a fluke. That leads to the surprising conclusion that, notwithstanding the excellent performance put up by a few of the companies in our survey, intense competition in this business has not yet led to generally higher standards.