TLDR; I’m a self employed same day courier who has a customer who I expect is going to start trying to haggle me on price when I’m already significantly undercutting myself for her. Did a comparison on evri last night and they were about £50 – £100 cheaper. As a business owner or individual sending parcels, would you rather pay a little bit more of a premium for a reliable same day service?
It was playing on my mind yesterday.
In the last six weeks I’ve bought a van and become a Same Day delivery driver. I have one customer who’s quite local to where I live and over recent weeks has been giving me frequent work, and she pays instantly too.
But a few weeks ago she asked me to price her something up, and made the comment of if it was too expensive, she’d have to use Evri. To which I think she did end up using me for that particular job but has since been asking me little questions, like if I use any apps to optimise the most economical routes. I just said nothing special, just Google maps.
There was also two ladies who work for her were telling me they’ve been persuading her to give me more work as they’re confident goods are going to arrive straight away and not go missing. They told me they’ve had 10-15 parcels go missing Evri.
But it’s making me think she’s going to start trying to haggle on price and I’m already undercutting myself for her. I typically charge her £1 per mile and that is it. I should charge manual handling but I don’t.
I did a job yesterday for her that totalled about £300 when I put the invoice together. I quoted this on Evri’s website to compare prices and it was about £50 – £100 cheaper than myself.
Now my selling point if she does try to haggle will simply be “you’re paying a premium for a same day service but you can guarantee goods will arrive.”
I’m just looking for opinions from business owners or even individuals really of where you’d prefer to go for your delivery needs?
26 comments
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There are specific business uses I think that would really suit same day couriers. For example I used to work somewhere that has offices spread all over the city in a 2 mile radius. We often used a local courier company to get things between offices, a guy would show up on a bike and take whatever we needed. The advantage was we knew it would get there, we didn’t have to package it too securely because we knew it wasn’t getting thrown around and we knew it’d arrive that same day. We’d never use Evri or any of the big post companies for those kinds of jobs. But we did use Parcelforce for longer distance and larger jobs.
Not a business owner, but I’ve had conversations with several people who have said a business owner using Evri will make them think twice about buying from them because it’s not worth the hassle. She’d lose custom if she used Evri, that’s worth paying for.
It’s a different service to Evri I guess? You accept the items, put it in your van, and take it to the destination, end of story. A true courier. Evri take things to depots, where they get tossed around, lost, broken, and then back into vans/cars and delivered to destination (unless evri offer a service I don’t know about).
If that’s the case I would hold firm, you’re offering a much safer, much more careful (and faster) service than evri.
It’s inefficient to run a business like that of course – it would be easier with many drivers and a central depot – but that’s why you cost more.
I’m a customer, not a business owner, but I actively avoid Evri and the like because of their poor performance. I’ll happily pay more for a reliable service, and simply find an alternative supplier when they insist on using the cheap ones.
So its 50-100 quid extra, for same day service and apparently guaranteed delivery.
First thing is: do I actually need same day service for this item?
Secondly: Theres a very slim chance Evri will lose the delivery, so its 50-100 quid to take it from 99.9% to 99.99%.
Then, your boutique operation can be criticised for not using eco friendly routes, no tracking, no EVs etc. When your van breaks down, what is your contingency plan?
If I paid this premium and you were late and you said “sorry love, the van broke down”, I’d be pretty embarrassed. It would remind me that I’ve hired a man with a van instead of a professional company with vast resources.
Yes, you can easily compete. You’re providing a premium service at a premium price. Both the peace of mind for your customer in knowing their goods will actually be delivered and the cost saving from Evri losing parcels.
Having said that, I think charging by mile and invoicing after the fact isn’t ideal. The question about route optimisation is essentially the customer questioning whether they’re getting the best value from you. You could try switching to either providing a fixed fee per package or even per day whilst you still only have a few customers.
Another option would be to offer different service levels. So charge a bit less for them booking you in X days in advance (with no cancellation option), or for next/later day delivery (though the downside is you’ll need some storage space).
My advice is to stand your ground if they keep pushing on price. Lean on the value you’re adding to them as a business by delivering such a delivery service to their customers.
You most likely can’t out price Evri, so don’t.
Don’t compete on price with them, compete on customer service, ease of use, trustworthiness etc. If your price appears to be premium, then be premium. Act premium to your customers. Present yourself as premium. Wear a tie if you must – worked for Eddie Stobbart’s branding.
I’m a firm believer that in most service businesses, there will always be a market for you, you just have to find them.
If customers were only ever interested in cheap, then Waitrose and M&S wouldn’t exist, only Lidl and Aldi.
Don’t undercut yourself. Own the fact you’re not as cheap as Evri, and focus on showing your *value* which is totally different to price.
The key is to not compete with Evri, all that shows is literally anyone cannot deliver.
Go specialist.
I’ve worked in the legal sector in London and there’s a fairly regular occurrence of transferring disks, papers between offices there, often at short notice, and to be delivered on time. Law firms are not short of money.
What about delivering things that no-one else can? Same day temp control interlab transfers, or others that require specialist handling.
The main selling point for me would if I can call you and get through with little to no bother. Companies like Evri are notoriously difficult to get ahold of.
As somebody who works in a groupage haulier network, I would personally not use any multi drop couriers for anything that could potentially break. Things are usually flung around and on multiple vans and trucks door to door, drivers etc don’t really care and customer service is pretty much non existent.
Stick to what you’re doing as there will always be last minute things that need to get to a destination in a certain time frame that evri etc cannot and will not provide a quote on. You could also potentially look at getting yourself a hazardous goods certification as there will likely be more work available and would put an extra few quid on each delivery too.
Unless your shagging her don’t bother
Only thing I’d question if you’re a single person and one van, what happens if you become ill or injured or something happens to your van part way through the day? What’s the backup option if that happens, especially if it’s once you’ve collected the parcel?
She wants your levels of service at EVRI prices. It’s your choice, but your operating expenses are only going to go up. Point out that nobody has ever complained about you and she has never had to deal with angry customers about missing deliveries, which involves her sending out another order which she has to swallow the cost for.
Stick to what you’re doing. Look for IT companies in your area as I’ve worked at a few and we always use premium couriers to ship our equipment either between our own sites or to customer sites.
If you start competing on price then you’re in a race to the bottom where the only loser is you. You end up with the worst type of clients and will never be able to raise your prices in line with cost of inflation etc.
Charge what you need to earn your living, if you genuinely can’t get customers then first take a look to see if you can cut any of your costs, then reassess if you are reaching and dealing with the type of customers you actually want to work with, but don’t impoverish yourself by not charging enough to live, I work with a lot of self employed people who simply do not make a living because they’re too worried to charge what they actually need to.
I know nothing about your business, but as someone who’s tried to get a business or two going in the past:
Customers always want the lowest price for the best service and they will always try to haggle (I’m talking about collective customers, not individuals- some do appreciate what you do!) and that’s something you will have to learn to deal with. Business owners like yourself want to provide a service to make money for themselves without cutting it too close. Customers don’t often see it that way, especially when biggers companies are an option.
Don’t be offended by haggling, it’s the nature of the beast. Just know what the lowest you can go to is and never drop below that. They can go elsewhere if they want. When haggling, don’t be scared to highlight what makes you better and where that extra money they are paying you goes. Don’t get into an argument. As a business owner, sometimes you have to say no thanks and move on.
Finally, imagine if you do accept her offer now and lower your price. That will be the standard she expects. And how long will it be until she haggles again? Before you know it, you’ll delievering all her stuff at a price that makes you very little money and you’ll start resenting it, it’ll probably start getting in the way of other jobs too. Stick to your guns now, offer her the best you can without undercutting yourself and don’t be afraid to decline. Ahe knows where you are and that you’re honest and to the point, she may well come back to you further down the line.
Different career, but I learned a long time ago to not ‘buy’ jobs. Stop undercutting yourself, tell her the price is the price.
As for private over evri, I would rather pay somebody to kick my parcel to its destination than use that set of scumbags…
Possibly not for price but the evri guy where I live seems to hate every package. Chuck over the fence… into a puddle …stamp on it…..
Really annoying because the last guy was brilliant, if somewhat stressed at the company.
you are not Evri and to be honest thats a fucking good thing. Evri is trash.
The answer you should give is that you are a smaller business who works directly with their clients. you get a lot more guarantees working with us. if you want to use Everi thats is completely ok and I understand but they are not known for their reliability.
wont take long for Everi to fuck up enough for them to be back
My fiance used to work in customer service for Mountain Warehouse. 90% of the problems they dealt with on a daily basis were delivery issues because of Evri.
An insane amount of packages being delivered were lost in transit or damaged when delivered. But for MW it was cheaper for them to resend packages than pay for every delivery to go with a more reputable courier.
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Find a niche where cost to replace the order would far outweigh the cost of delivery, for example, delivering custom-made computers, and aim for those clients. If saving £50-100 and choosing a sub-par courier is what a company wants, then they’re not one which cares about how their packages are handled.
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If you’re gonna deliver packages to the front door and treat me like a human, rather than going to the back door, seeing an open window, and tossing the package through it (yes, an Evri driver did this the other week), you’re going to win the hearts and minds of the end customers.
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As a suggestion, maybe get some “Rate me” stickers/small leaflets printed and put them on the boxes you deliver. If there’s enough room on whatever you choose, put something like “I’m an independent courier, and giving me an honest rating on Trustpilot (or whatever you use) would help me grow my business”. Most people won’t rate you, but the ones who you make an impression on (e.g. helping them move a fridge into a top floor flat) may give you some nice reviews. And if you’re getting great reviews from the end customer, you can take that to businesses which are getting lots of complaints about awful delivery drivers, and say “I can improve your reputation”
My ex-partner is a courier for a same day company. You basically get what you pay for.
For example, he had to deliver car batteries (electric car) to Scotland. This happened in one day. He even rang up the customer at 8, asking him if he wanted them tonight or in the morning. He got the response “I go bed at 10:30, any time before then”. So the batteries got delivered that same day. (From somewhere in Surrey to Scotland).
If they want evri, they need to accept that things may get broken, missing, ending up in bins!
Not that I’m some business expert but you know how much the job is worth to you. You know how much you need to charge to do the job and make the sort of profit you think is reasonable so unless you haven’t priced things accordingly there’s no reason to give discounts if it’s coming out of your pocket.
This customer clearly prefers your product and is willing to pay the price you charged. It sounds like she wants to have her cake and eat it. Her mentioning that she’d have to use Evri sounds like clear manipulation, after all surely you’d know that if you give a quote the customer will use someone else if they think it’s not worth it so why mention it if not to manipulate you into a low price?
As a business owner, you’ve got a choice between focusing on delivering Time, Quality and Cost.
Generally, the cheapest and fastest won’t be best quality service, the fastest and highest quality won’t be cheap, and the cheapest and highest quality won’t be quick. etc
In most industries a self employed person or small business is not going to be successful trying to be the cheapest because of economies of scale. IMO the best way you can justify your higher costs are focusing on a high level of service.
Luckily as Evri generally seem to be fucking dogshit in the service department this shouldn’t be to hard.
You’ve got to stand your ground. These people would complain to Gordon Ramsey that he’s more expensive than a Pot Noodle if they thought they could get a discount. If there wasn’t something you were offering for your customers that went beyond what Evri can do, they would not use you in the first place.
There’s always going to be someone cheaper, but that definitely does not mean better.
i absolutely avoid using Evrii because they are a nightmare, they are uncontactable when something goes wrong / missing or is damaged. Customer service and care for shipments is something you will easily be able to blow them out the water with to a point you wont even need to worry about being cheaper.
im sure you’ll do fine!
I ordered a huge chinese vase from a store, and they offered to get a courier to get it to me. Cost a fair bit, but the fact of the matter is that they arrived exactly on time, with the vase in one piece. You wouldn’t get that from one of those parcel services.