"We had an agreement with LYNX who turned out to be abysmal,packages lost,damaged,delivered to wrong addresses,and no help when you telephone.We are now using a new company called Target,no comments avaiable yet!"

"The company we have now started using seems to be independent and keen. Our past experience has been awful with little or no care being taken in the handling of the parcels. Talking to many of our contacts they also have had problems and one of the other problems is meeting the deadline for delivery, again the new company we are using seem to be better."

"we often have problems with courier companies, form non delivery and lost items to inaccurate billing and account closure for no reason. We now use City Link who are acceptable in service but their drivers change too often."

"We use one carrier for the UK and one for overseas. Despite almost continuous contact from other carriers offering competative quotes, now that we've found firms we're happy with using in price and service, we are staying loyal - we tried several in the first couple of years of the business before we found ones which we were happy with"

"Carrier use depends entirely on what we have to send. Sometimes it might need DHL's expertise, sometimes Parcelforce."

"Used to have a contract with Parcel Force, but found them expensive and sometimes slow - and not helpful. Now prefer to shop around."

"It is sometimes difficult arranging a one off ad-hoc package delivery as a low user who does not have a contract. Therefore it is often easier to use Parcel Force"

"We currently use Parcelforce. Their compensation service for lost/damaged parcels is a disgrace: They obstruct, avoid and delay making any compensation payment on every claim we make. We were badly let down at Christmas with goods despatched 5 days before Christmas failing to arrive on the 48 hour service. "

"We try hard to aviod using parcelforce, but find Royal Mail excellent!"

"Britannic provide an excellent service"

"Not an integral part of the business,main use is for returns where the carrier is specified for us"

"Mostly we find the drivers helpful and considerate if you are frinedly and chatty with them but the 'standard' varies enormously acroos the different carriers. Our outbound experience is minimal and we have not experienced any handling problems with outbound goods but there is scope for inprovement in all of the carriers treatment of the customer - some drivers are excellent and go that extra to be of service; others do just enough. The standard of dress of the driver, cleanliness of the vehicles and standard of driving all vary greatly though Parcelforce seem to start the day with a clean vehicle !. Maintenance of vehicles is a sticky one and my responses are influenced strongly by the muck spewing out of the backend of the vehicles as I drive to customers. I believe in the free market but there are too many vehicles on the roads. Can we not look towards an integrated system utilising air, what's left of rail at a sensible cost, and finally road. On many occasions we have asked for estimate from thr rail system and the fees they want are prohibitative compared to road - it's no wonder we see so many vans charging up and down breaking the speed limits etc."

"DHL is excellent but is quite expnsive, We have occasionaly used TNT ecomomy to Europe and found the service good. Parcelforce is the absolute pits and we have had no end of trouble with them. We call them Parcelfarce here. Occasionally we have to use them when there is no alternative."

"Although we don't send many parcels, we do receive quite a few. The top delivery company without doubt is Lynx (as used by, for instance, Virgin Mobile), the worst Parcelforce, where we regularly have to visit the depot to collect parcels they have failed to deliver"