the joy of courier

recently we've been having difficulties to acquire FW courier. Either the guy doesn't show up, or he refused to come due to urgent meetings etc. Maybe a simple complaint to FW is sufficient to get him sacked, but that wasn't nice at all.

Anyway, all in all we've dealt with very interesting set of couriers company. Some are more than happy to do business with individual like us, others are turning their cheeks away when they've heard it's "individual".

Most of these couriers have very simple rules, if they agree to deliver your goods, you better NOT let them know that you're shipping live fish. They get so edgy and would rather deny your business than risking compliances with "Aus shipping livestock law". But, if you assure them that the only requirements are to ensure your parcel delivered "on time" and treated as "fragile", most of them are more than happy to deliver them! Of course you lose the advantage of not being able to buy insurance etc, but then they won't be able to insure the kind of things that you're sending anyway ;)

So far, we've found that many local and interstate couriers can do the job for you. but sometimes the price difference is just way too much. FW requires you to buy labels, if you're small shipper, then buying bulk label will last you for years! A very unnecessary upfront investment. However, if you ship regularly, FW is in fact pretty reasonably cheap. Sure, half of the time they are unreliable. How many times the parcel went to another state? lost for a day or two? or you have to call them 10 times just to find out the fact the parcel never left your closest depot? Well, that's FW ! But when they do deliver, they're not so bad at all.... They charge per weight and different locations require different labels, try to keep track of that if you can ! Oh yes, they've got parcel tracking capability, but heck, no one knows how to use it, not even their own employees (try to call them up and ask where your parcel is, their answer will usually "on the way" or "with the driver"). They can't even monitor where their drivers are, so you're left waiting at home for no good reason.

Another alternative, if you're sending to big cities, AP isn't that bad. They've got network everywhere and you can just find nearest office to send your goods ;) They charge per weight and dimension, so you ended up paying different price for different size of order. The weakness is that some people has been reporting lost parcel. We never experienced this, but sure, it happens. You can't track where the parcel is, unless you're willing to pay heaps more. The bad thing for AP is that sometimes some remote locations will take a good 2 or 3 days to get there, whereas other couriers can make sure they arrive in 1 day.

Recently we've been sending some parcels with P&S. They're reliable. They take care of your parcel very nicely. But they charge per volume/dimension and suffice to say "very expensive"! Definitely can't use them on regular basis, though they have been trying to get eBayers' market. They're quite reasonable if you simply want to send your parcels without urgency. Most of our parcels need to get there in 1 day time, so they charge special prices for this urgency. Nevertheless, they're very reliable and ready to send anything you're throwing at them. So you can consider them as nice backup plans, particularly when none of the above options available to you and you need to send the parcel asap.

Other smaller (or bigger) courier companies work in very much same way. If you're lucky, you can even piggy-back your company's courier ;) This way, you can open account with any of the big courier companies and they'll deliver your goods pronto!! If you do have this option and willing to share it with us, do contact us asap. We're more than happy to pay for the shipping (reasonable cost of course) and while we're doing that, you can get some free fish yourselves! (on condition if we still have fish!)

local pickup or delivery beats all of the above. if we have time (which we never had), then we would be able to do it. Otherwise, some people had been very much accommodating us....they're willing to visit us on very awkward time!!