Why Royal Mail / Parcel Force deserve to fail...

If you run a small business in the UK and have recently been migrated to the new Click & Drop (C&D) platform, I fear you will be sharing my pain....

Services which sort of worked before with WDM (the previous Parcelforce system) are now a mess, now that we've moved to the Horizon based system (does that ring any bells?).

In theory, the new system brings together business services from both Parcelforce (PF) and Royal Mail (RM), but in practice this only 'might' work for larger businesses as I will now explain.

With WDM we could create a label and either elect for collection of drop off. Drop off worked better for us as we only ship once a client pays, so pre-booking a next day collection seldom worked. For international we had a macro driven Excel sheet which would price the various services. Clunky, but it worked and was reissued when the rates changed. For smaller parcels (<2kg) we just used the 'Joe Public' RM system which gave options and prices and enabled us to print labels and again elect for drop off or collection (30p each time).

So with C&D we can enter client/address details and select either a RM or PF services from a long list of services, many of which are merged or renamed. We are told this, but there is no lookup or information sheets to describe in English what these services are which is not helpful. For the RM services on C&D, we noticed that none of these services are costed either and none now have a collection option. But I booked some RM parcels and took them to our local post office, joining the queue of people picking up pensions and sending birthday presents etc when all I really wanted was to drop off. When I reached the desk neither parcel label scanned. Apparently I should know about a manifest, whatever that was. Not a good start, but hopefully the parcels eventually arrived. I then took a call from the RM Business team wanting me to set up an account. I asked about collections, those that were 30p on the domestic service. Apparently these are £21 now, but could be free if I committed to 1000+ packages a year. No, we would probably struggle to do 150pa, so predictably I decided against a business account for us.

Apparently we can't ship without a manifest, a piece of paper we have to separately create (on C&D) and give to the driver to scan. This manifest exists for a specific day and can't be reused or regenerated so if the parcel is not available on the date required during booking then the only solution appears to be to delete the original booking and recreate another label and manifest. Now, if I was retired and had time for this, rather than trying to run a business then perhaps this would work, but no RM/PF this process sucks! For now, our driver (who is great) and I have a work around; I put up a red flag so he knows we have mail and he ignores the manifest requirement. True, the package isn't scanned until it reaches the Depot but we avoid the unnecessary red tape from PF.

You may be asking where the support is?

We once had an account manager, a named person, but now we are in theory supported by a virtual account team who 'serve' many businesses. The only way to contact them is using the pfwaccountquery@parcelforce.co.uk email address. No phone numbers or other means.

As part of the 'migration' I should have received a rate card, in other words a means of estimating how much each service, particularly international, would cost. But I didn't, so on 12/1/26 I emailed my virtual account team and waited. I've subsequently repeated this several times, even using my personal email (as RM have a habit of bouncing emails), but now a month later no response. I spoke to a migration support person today who tells me they have a huge backlog, but no way to put me through. So after a month I won't use PF for international as I don't know how much to charge clients. For UK I have to assume the rates will be in line with previous and for small packages I use RM, but via the Joe Public website as this at least gives me a cost. None of the business Click and Drop services give a price. Strange how UPS can give a price on-screen for any shipment.

The lady I spoke to said I could make a complaint via a form. I told her it was like pissing in an Ocean and I personally don't want to waste any time on what I consider a broken service.

I had actually rung to ask where the Courier Pack service had gone as it was no longer in my list of options on Click and Drop. Apparently it's now merged with Express 48. When I asked how I was supposed to know she just apologised for the lack of communication, before telling me my time was up and she had to close the call. I guess we should be thankful we still get a human and not a bot, even if the outcome is still failing.

Did no one test this new system (clearly as much as the original Horizon)? Could they not provide better, more accessible support, rather than a fortress that appears impossible to access?

If this is how RM/PF plans on operating then they truly deserve to crash and burn...

Rant over, for now :-)