snip


OK. So here's today's one. Some more small parts ordered this time from
Farnell (no other stockist option). Order placed yesterday morning,
acknowledgement and dispatch verification emails received by early
afternoon. Parts arrived this morning, 9:45 am, in a Jiffy bag, through
my
letter box without needing a signature, and delivered by .....

TA-RA !! Royal Mail

So these places can do it if they try. That use of Royal Mail was not as
a
result of any special request by me, but clearly someone, somewhere in
their
dispatch department, determined that it was a better option, in this case
for this package, to use them over UPS. But all this actually serves to
tell us, is that they still have a Royal Mail collection, and have not
turned everything over to courier delivery despite how it appears, but
that
they actually have no logical or cohesive policy in place, as to which
service gets used by default, for which packages.

It's all to do with relative pricing structures of RM and courier,
together with the value of the consignment. Rapid do it by size and
weight. The limits used to be that if it was under 1kg in weight AND
worth less than £60 it went by first class post, otherwise by courier.
These quantities may have changed.

MBQ



Yes indeedy. That would be the logical way to do it, and I'm sure that it
was the way that Farnell did it not so many years back. Sadly, that is no
longer the case with them. Most of the parts that I order are low value and
low weight. usually transistors or chips for a specific job, and usually in
normal 'standard' ordering quantities. Sometimes they come by Royal Mail,
sometimes by Royal Mail Parcels, sometimes by UPS in a Jiffy bag, and
sometimes in a box the size of your head packed with plastic balloons or
polychips. You would have thought that in a fully computer controlled
warehouse system, it would be a trivial task for the picking computer to
make an order by order decision based on size, value, weight etc as to what
method of packing and shipping is to be used as most appropriate and cost
effective. It's very frustrating never knowing whether your half an ounce of
transistors are going to arrive first thing the next morning with the
postman, or anything up to 6pm the next day with a man in a big brown truck
with a signing-for thingy in his hand ... I've actually been caught out by
this a couple of times on urgent jobs, where I've assured the customer that
if I order the parts now, I'll have them first thing in the morning, and
their item should be ready for when they need it that afternoon. I know we
shouldn't do it, but sometimes, we all do, trying to help someone out or do
them a favour !

Arfa