More than 60% of online shoppers (61.5%) in the UK experienced delivery issues in December as strikes and capacity challenges impacted parcel delivery companies, according to new research commissioned by Doddle.
The most common problem faced by shoppers was deliveries arriving late, which affected 41% of UK online shoppers in December. More than 10% of shoppers also had one or more of their parcels lost by the delivery provider, 13% missed a delivery and 9% had something delivered to the wrong address or left in an unexpected location.
Tim Robinson, CEO, Doddle, said, “We expected Royal Mail strikes to cause some disruption to services, and that there might be a knock-on effect to other parcel carriers in the busiest shopping window of the year. What was surprising was the extent to which other carriers in the market also appeared to struggle to manage the volume of deliveries while maintaining an acceptable customer experience. That has dented consumer confidence, with many shoppers now seeking to deliberately avoid or prefer specific carriers.”
More than a quarter (28%) of online shoppers surveyed said that their experiences had caused them to lose trust in delivery companies, while more than a third (39%) said that they would consider avoiding a specific delivery company in future.
In reassuring news for consumers, only 3% of shoppers experienced a parcel being stolen (although this doubled to 6% for respondents in London). Despite a challenging peak period, 64% of shoppers still rated parcel delivery services as good value for money.
Some shoppers plan to change their delivery habits in response to the problems they faced: just over a fifth (21%) reported that they would be less likely to receive deliveries at home in future because of their experiences in December, preferring alternative delivery options like click and collect, parcel lockers, pickup points or post office collections, with younger shoppers aged between 18-24 the most likely to say so.