Yodel (company)

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Yodel is a delivery service company in the United Kingdom, and is one of the largest couriers along with Royal Mail. It was originally known as the Home Delivery Network, until it acquired the B2B and B2C operations of DHL Express UK and thereafter, re branded itself as Yodel in May 2010. It is privately owned by the billionaire Barclay Brothers. Yodel has been widely criticised for poor parcel delivery performance.

Video Yodel (company)

History

Home Delivery Network operated as the logistics division of Shop Direct Group, until it demerged in 2008. It was formed by the merger of Business Express and Reality, the former Littlewoods and Shop Direct delivery companies respectively. Yodel has hubs at Shaw, Hatfield and Wednesbury.

In December 2011, the London Evening Standard carried a story on reports of packages from Yodel being lost or not delivered on time for Christmas. Yodel said that there had been a great increase in December deliveries over the previous two years and that Yodel had delivered over twenty million packages that month, with 999 out of 1000 being delivered on time.

In March 2012, the BBC's Watchdog consumer programme broadcast a segment highly critical of Yodel. In January 2014, Yodel was voted as the worst delivery service in the United Kingdom for the second consecutive year. BBC Watchdog says that it continued to regularly receive reports of bad service after the re branding to Yodel.

Yodel was named the "worst parcel delivery firm" in a poll by MoneySavingExpert.com, of 9,000 people, with 78% of customers rating their experience negatively. Despite this, Yodel continues to be the delivery company of choice for many major retailers in the United Kingdom, largely due to the company's cheap prices.

The company apologised in November 2015, after one of the firm's couriers had left a parcel on the roof of a customer's home.

In February 2016, Yodel was featured in a Dispatches investigation, which aired on Channel 4. The investigation was entitled Where's My Missing Mail?. The programme sent an undercover reporter to work at Yodel as a sorter. The investigation highlighted how parcels had been thrown onto conveyor belts and even thrown between staff members.

During filming, staff could be seen dropping televisions and walking across parcels. During the twelve days the reporter spent working for Yodel, he witnessed parcels being thrown into the back of trucks every day.

One worker stated to the reporter that he was told by a manager that "if it doesn't say fragile, it doesn't matter". The programme also sent an undercover reporter to work as a delivery driver who was based on the outskirts of Leeds. The investigation highlighted that these drivers are self employed, and in the case of the undercover reporter, they are paid a flat delivery rate of 60p per parcel based on a semi rural route.