I think the Fastways company is in deep trouble.  As far as I can tell, their operation seems incapable of delivering parcels on time, and in my experience, they lose 1/3 of the parcels sent with them. 

Their customer service seems designed merely to hide this fact.  They do this by first making it almost impossible to get through on the phone.  Only a few people will have enough time on their hands and enough sheer stubbornness to keep calling back after being cut off every 10 minutes for an hour.  If you do manage to get through the IVR barricade, you are manually hung up on about 50% of the time.  The rest of the time someone politely pretends to write down your name and number and glibly lies about calling you back.  

Maybe they’re just incompetent and lose parcels right left and centre, but don’t want to actually admit it because then they might actually have to honour their guarantees?  If their financial management is as bad as their operations and customer service, the company must be going down the plughole pretty fast.

I even spoke to the Operations Manager. 

Operations Manager: Where do you live?

Me: St Johns.

Operations Manager: Oh, it normally takes 4-6 weeks to deliver there.

Me: FOUR TO SIX WEEKS TO DELIVER ACROSS AUCKLAND!?!

Operations: Oh, ha ha, no I was just joking.

Frankly, I don’t actually believe he was.  Fastways is indeed a skanky bitch.

On Tuesday afternoon, after my last post, I managed to get through to a person.  I think her name was Mary Beth.  She was very apologetic and said that the parcel had taken far too long to be delivered.  She promised to go down to dispatch and find out exactly where it was and then call me back.  I never heard anything.

Yesterday I tried several times over about an hour.  Eventually I got to somebody’s voicemail and left a message for them to call me back.  I never heard anything.

Today I tried for about two hours.  I just kept going around in IVR circles until I was eventually cut off. At least once in each cycle I would get the operator and had to keep asking her to redirect me to Track and Trace.  I wonder if she thought it was at all unusual for the same person to keep calling back every ten minutes for two hours?    She didn’t give any indication of it, so I assume it must be fairly normal.  You obviously need almost superhuman persistance to get through.

Once I got so frustrated that I asked the operator if there was actually anybody in Track and Trace, but she assured me there were four people there.  I wonder if everyone they talk to has been waiting for days on hold?  

Almost every time I called, the phone would eventually start ringing (as opposed to the silent hold), and I thought maybe I was about to get through, but what usually happened was that I got cut off.  Twice the phone WAS actually answered, and I could hear noise in the background.  Both times I was immediately hung up on.

I persisted and eventually got through to a real person, whose name I didn’t catch because I didn’t immediately register that it was a real live human and not a recording.  She too seemed quite helpful.  She was going to go and get my parcel and then put it in the queue for immediate delivery. (As opposed to the queue for just sitting around in their warehouse forever?) She promised to call me back very quickly to work out the quickest way to deliver it.  I never heard anything.

I never received anything either.

Fastways have now taken two weeks to delivery a parcel from less than an hour away.     This afternoon I phoned them to find out whether I could come and pick the parcel up myself, and ended up on hold for 25 minutes before being cut off.    When I phoned back, I got on a IVR merry-go-round.

<ringing>

"For Pickups, please press 1,  for Track and Trace please press 2 …".   (I pressed 2)

<ringing>

"Unfortunately, all our Track and Trace representatives are busy at present.  Please hold for assistance or fax us …"

<silent hold for about 5 minutes>

<ringing>

"For Pickups, please press 1,  for Track and Trace please press 2, …".  (I pressed 0 for the operator)

<silent hold for about 5 minutes>

<ringing>

"For Pickups, please press 1,  for Track and Trace please press 2".

Seriously Fastways, you need to get your shit together.

I recently bought something from a TradeMe auction, and paid immediately hoping that I would get my hands on it pretty fast.  Unfortunately, the trader used Fastway Couriers (http://www.fastway.co.nz/). 

 These guys picked it up from the trader (in Auckland) on Monday 23rd January.   Thus far, they have failed to deliver it to me, also in Auckland.  Given that it is now a public holiday weekend, I’m not likely to have it delivered before Tuesday, which will make it over two weeks to get a package ACROSS TOWN!.  Even good old New Zealand Post doesn’t usually take more than 2 days, and is cheaper.

They have "Track and Trace" on their website.  Unfortunately, their track and trace can only tell you two things:  when it was picked up, and when it was delivered.   It doesn’t tell me where the hell my parcel is or why the hell they haven’t been able to deliver it yet.

Hoping that maybe they had more information somewhere in their system, I decided to call them.     Locating their phone number was the first problem.   Nothing so simple as a contact us link on their website.  It took me probably 5 minutes of digging before I found a phone number for their Auckland office. 

Then, I negotiated their automated voice response system.  Press 2 for track and trace. No problem.   After waiting on hold for only about 5 minutes, a pleasant sounding woman answered, and I explained that I wanted to try and locate my parcel.   "Just one moment," she says,  "I’ll transfer you to track and trace".

After waiting on hold for another couple of minutes, I got through to another pleasant sounding woman.  "Thank you for calling Customer Services.  I am out of the office for the rest of the day and for tomorow.  Please call back later".

Their website has lots of information about franchise opportunities, franchise awards,  and so on.  Most of their website is devoted to trying to sell you a franchise, and remarkably little about their actual courier service.  It almost smacks of Amway. 

Closer inspection of their descriptions of service reveal that they "operate on a cost effective, easy to use prepaid label system", and "prices are highly competitive and service standards are high".  Nowhere do they actually claim to be fast.   I guess it’s not false advertising if its part of your name, right?

I understand that the entire Courier industry evolved to support the needs of businesses for quick communication, but what about consumers?

A lot of the things I purchase on the web are couriered to me.  Invariably, this means that they try to deliver it to me during the day, when I am at work.  There are a number of possible solutions to this problem, let’s examine them.

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