Hi there @Hustlerdior. Sorry to hear about your problems here. I have a couple of thoughts, from my days of using third-party delivery services. Honestly, I don’t do that anymore due to the very high costs involved and because of this very issue you are having. Delivery folks are their own world and most of them don’t seem to care one way or the other.
Depending on your delivery volume, you should at least try to negotiate better terms. I’d ask for refunds of delivery fees you paid if you can prove that the deliveries were too long. But, on retail items, that is going to be much harder than it is for food and beverage items, trust me. Regardless of whether you can negotiate that, you’ll probably have to figure out something to do to retain customers who cancel or receive items late. It’s worth eating some delivery fees if they don’t cancel, just to keep them as a customer.
You don’t say who you are using for deliveries. If you aren’t already, I’d look into finding a local delivery company and not using the big national ones. In my experience they just don’t care, period.
Lastly, once the delivery company has accepted the order, you are at their mercy. You can specify that an order needs to arrive by a certain time — but there are no guarantees. Pick a company that lets customers know they have the order, it is on its way, etc. Pick a company that doesn’t overload their drivers with ten orders to pickup and delivery at one time. Doing that requires trial and error. And, if you have enough deliveries, you might find it more cost effective to have your own driver in-house. Then you could eliminate cancellations, having to return fees, etc. Honestly, if I ever decided to try delivery again, that is the only way I would do it.
Hi there @Hustlerdior. Sorry to hear about your problems here. I have a couple of thoughts, from my days of using third-party delivery services. Honestly, I don’t do that anymore due to the very high costs involved and because of this very issue you are having. Delivery folks are their own world and most of them don’t seem to care one way or the other.
Depending on your delivery volume, you should at least try to negotiate better terms. I’d ask for refunds of delivery fees you paid if you can prove that the deliveries were too long. But, on retail items, that is going to be much harder than it is for food and beverage items, trust me. Regardless of whether you can negotiate that, you’ll probably have to figure out something to do to retain customers who cancel or receive items late. It’s worth eating some delivery fees if they don’t cancel, just to keep them as a customer.
You don’t say who you are using for deliveries. If you aren’t already, I’d look into finding a local delivery company and not using the big national ones. In my experience they just don’t care, period.
Lastly, once the delivery company has accepted the order, you are at their mercy. You can specify that an order needs to arrive by a certain time — but there are no guarantees. Pick a company that lets customers know they have the order, it is on its way, etc. Pick a company that doesn’t overload their drivers with ten orders to pickup and delivery at one time. Doing that requires trial and error. And, if you have enough deliveries, you might find it more cost effective to have your own driver in-house. Then you could eliminate cancellations, having to return fees, etc. Honestly, if I ever decided to try delivery again, that is the only way I would do it.
