First of all these are not a reviews about any of the courier services, these are personal experiences with the courier services we faced. As per my experience what I felt is it is not the courier service which is responsible for the bad experience, it is the attitude of the local branches. I will explain this with an example of GATI courier later. Before that let us have a look at what is Ashwin’s experience with Indian Courier services.
Overpriced courier services:
About a year ago, I wanted to send a graphics card to my friend Krishnan, who is the editor here at Geekiest. Since I am based in Chennai, TN, and he is in Naduvath, Kerala, the only option I had was to courier it to him. So I went to a Blue Dart courier center, and asked them how much it would cost for the delivery. They told me it depends on the package, and gave me an estimate worth more than the card itself, somewhere in the range of INR. 1,000.
Common sense prevailed, and I walked out of there, and to a Professional Courier office nearby, where the same parcel was sent for Rs. 50. It was delivered safely to Krish. The funny thing is the card I returned was a defective one, yet Blue Dart tried to make me pay an arm and a leg for it.
But it doesn't mean that Professional Courier is the absolute best.
Product could be lost or stolen, a courier service's employee warned me:
Back in 2013, I got a wrong set of Soundmagic earbuds delivered to me by a seller from Amazon India. I wanted to send it back to him and approached Professional Courier. The receptionist there, who takes the parcel kept insisting that the courier service would not be responsible if the parcel's content was lost, and that I should opt for a higher priced option from the company. I calmly asked her to register the parcel. A few days later the seller, who is based in Mumbai, acknowledged the delivery of the product, and sent me the correct earbuds. Though I was a bit disappointed that the seller didn't bear the charges for the courier, the service from Professional Courier was good, and only marred by the rude receptionist who actually warned me that the item could be stolen/lost. This tarnishes the company's image.
Amazon India and India Post - Not made for each other: Mishaps with Amazon India and India Post
More recently, a few months ago, I ordered a monitor cable to connect my laptop with my desktop's monitor. A few days later, Amazon India sent me a message that the item had been delivered. In reality, it hadn't been delivered. The postman did not call my number, and neither did Amazon's tracking service update the details properly.
Amazon India's customer care representatives blatantly lied to me, saying this is very common with India Post, and that they mark the item as delivered, when they still have it at their Post Office. The next morning, I went to the local Post Office and questioned the people there. The postman assured me had delivered it to my house. When I asked him about the house, he gave me the wrong description, and when I pointed this out he told me he had delivered it to a house with the name door number, in the next street.
After asking him to retrieve it for me, and noting down his mobile number, I went to the house mentioned, where the landlady said I was right about the parcel. She showed me the parcel which had the postman's number on it, and said the postman had convinced her this was the right address and that one of here tenants must have ordered the product. After about an hour, I rang up the postman and asked him why he did not return the product to me, and about half an hour later, he brought the parcel to my house.
Amazon India did not even help me in the slightest, and refused to compensate for the stress caused. So, I advise readers to not pay for products online, and instead choose the Cash On Delivery option, to be on the safer side. This way they cannot deliver it to the wrong address.
Now Mohammed will share his experience, here it goes
There are many domestic and international courier services in India. My personal experience with these courier services:
BlueDart and DHL both are one company depending whether it is domestic or international. Yes you listened right, when you courier inside India it is called as BlueDart and if we courier Internationally it is DHL. As per my experience with BlueDart and DHL i would like to say this very good service they provided. I know they ask little high pay but if you want peace with important document with courier service so i would like to suggest you go with BlueDart for national and DHL for International.
My experience with BlueDart and DHL: I couriered some document internationally and they asked Rs. 2,800 and for domestic for they charge Rs.250-300 depending upon the weight. Duration : 3 Days for International 2-3 days for national
India Post: This is national postal service from Indian government. They ask small pay and provide good service. Less than one month i couriered a pen drive with India Post and i got positive result with this courier service. I paid Rs.40 for it from Tatanagar to Delhi. Duration: 3 days within India
GATI: Gati is a international courier service as i know and i don't have any experience with this courier service but as my relative received some goods from abroad to India they got bad experience with this courier service. Electronics good like TV and others were not handled properly and got damaged.
FedEX: is a international and domestic courier service. I received a T-Shirt from United States of America by this service. packing was good. Time from courier to received: i don't remember exactly but it was 10-15 days.
We will update this post with more soon, if you want to share your experience leave it a comment or use the contact form to send it.
Read part 2 of this article here