The 24th December 2014 was a dreadful day for City Link employees. Christmas Eve is not the time to hear that your employer had been placed into administration. Additionally, it produced an unanticipated fall out for suppliers. All of the work load that City Link were no longer fulfilling had to be merged into the van space of the remaining courier companies. It certainly was an interesting logistical period in the Promain despatch department, but a great feeling when we ensured that all our customers’ orders were successfully fulfilled.
However it seems to have been an exceptionally frustrating day, when this particular post suggestion was forwarded to the Promain Blog Inbox:
“It appears that some couriers do not read the label, which is there to prevent unnecessary damage. I would go as far as to suggest:
If our label says do not bend, they sit on it; if it says this way up, they deliver it upside down; if it says fragile, the product is thrown in the air and kicked.
Or at least, that’s what this Promain customer thought when they opened up their package below.
Their order was for Thermoplastic Line Markings and, to be fair, this package is only really suitable for what is termed – a palette delivery – where the package is kept horizontal during transit and storage.
Boxes …
Products such as thermoplastic playground markings can also become brittle when cold and many methods of transport and storage depots tend to be unheated. Palette delivery, whilst more costly, is the best way of ensuring this sort of damage does not happen to our thermoplastics. Once received, we would always recommend that the product is stored horizontally and never up-ended.
… Tins
On a related matter, sending tins of paint, via courier, is another potentially hazardous exercise. A proportion of the products despatched is solvent based paints, flammable thinners, and corrosive cleaning and etching solutions. Most of our deliveries are next day deliveries – plus we offer free of charge deliveries, for orders over £70.
However, for hazardous products, couriers with a special Hazardous Goods Licence are required; in these instances we may not be able to offer free delivery or a next day service.
… And Dents
Even though it is a rare occasion when an order is damaged in transit, it does upset us, as we know that it will cause an inconvenience to our customer.
Promain take good care to provide safe and sturdy packaging which is suitable to enable safe delivery. We understand it’s disappointing to receive a tin with a dent caused during transit, in fact, we could go back to the top of this post to get an indication of how frustratingly disappointing it is when this happens.
If a tin is dented and no paint has been lost – the tin will have done its job. It has contained the paint and it will still be fine for use.
It is frustrating when this happens, though. All of the Promain Team are proud of our attention in providing our customers with first class service and a quality product.”
Thankfully, damage is a rare occurrence … to find out more about the great products and service that we do offer at Promain, why not take a look at our website or give us a call, to find out more?
