SURVEY SURVEYED • I have just read your edition of
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Commercial Motor which contained your 1988 parcels survey. As a distribution manager for a fairly large organisation which uses the services of one of the carriers in the survey, I find some of your observations somewhat biased and unfair.
The main questions I found myself asking after reading the article are as follows: 1. If you used a Yellow Pages for the telephone numbers I find it most interesting that you phoned TNT first, then Red Star, Interlink, DHL, Amtrak, Federal, ANC, Parceline etc. All of the Yellow Pages I ever use are in alphabetical order.
2. TNT only do a confirm call on request and at a surcharge, which does not reflect in the price that TNT charged.
3. I very much doubt whether TNT give a pen out at every delivery I did not receive one last time they delivered to my warehouse.
4. You measured the carriers' times from collection to delivery. Surely it does not matter what time a carrier collects if they deliver at the right time.
5. You printed two photographs of TNT (one being A4 colour) and, except for a black and white photo of Parceline and Red Star, the other carriers did not get a look in.
6. Federal Express was quite right to refuse a collection from a private address as quite a large number of the carriers will refuse this type of collection or delivery because of the implications that arise ie no one in at the address, problems on finding it, etc. These problems could jeopardise an important consignment for a commercial address. I suggest you leave private addresses to the GPO who are set up for this type of work.
7. If Interlink had come out bottom of the survey would you still have done a four-page promotional profile on it? Also, while on the subject of the profile, I find it a bit suspicious that the writer Richard Scrase also wrote the survey and was also the receiver for TNT at Skegness.
I feel that next year's survey should have more thought put into it to enable all the carriers to have an absolute equal chance. Use more than one person to phone the collections so all the carriers could be contacted at the same time, for instance.
Thank you for taking the time to read my letter and I look forward to hearing your comments.
Robert Town, Chester, Cheshire.
0 Our parcels survey is invariably contraversial and clearly this year's was no exception. To answer your points: 1. The sequence chosen was completely random, from shuffled papers it is fairer that way.
2. TNT's confirm call was neither requested, nor charged and came as a complete surprise. It included a tout for regular business and seems to be a good sales pitch.
3. We can only report what occurs in the parcels survey accurately and fairly. Since none of the parcels companies have any idea where or when we are conducting it, it is totally unbiased.
4. We showed the times in transit as a measure of the efficiency of the parcels companies. Pick-up times can be important, as we discovered, since we had to leave Wales at 2pm. Without assistance from Paul and Jane Newman, neither DHL nor Securicor would have made a pick-up.
5. One of the problems with the survey is getting photographs without alerting the parcels companies to our survey. In fact the issue contained pictures of seven different carriers: Interlink, Datapost and United Carriers on the front cover; a Securicor, Parceline and TNT parcel on page 38; a TNT van on page 39; a Red Star car on page 42; and a Parceline van on page 44.
6. Federal Express was the only company to refuse to collect at all (Lynx would have done if it had had a truck available). The address was a farm at the end of a track, similar to hundreds of small operators throughout the country.
7. Interlink has done well in most of our parcels surveys. Our two-page (not four) profile was conducted before this year's survey and would have been included whatever the results. With its expansion into Europe, Postplan ambitions, and decision to launch an overnight freight service, Interlink has more news at present on which to report.
Finally, features editor Richard Sane sent all the parcels and travelled to Skegness to receive them. Who better than someone involved in every aspect of the survey to write the report? Ed.