Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
Other companies may not be perfect either, but there's a chance that they might better, whereas Amazon is known to be bad.
As a customer they are excellent. In particular their delivery service to these lockers is reliable and avoids me needing to be in. And if anything ever goes wrong they're straight in with a refund.
We've been here before - Tesco came in and disrupted the local shopping market by providing local shops that are actually useful in the form of Tesco Express, compared to the 1990s when local shops just had a few mouldy vegetables and ageing "Happy Shopper" tins and little else bar papers, sweets and fags. Those independent shops have had to improve to survive. The ones that improved have survived.
Then Uber came along - not a great company, but the local minicab firms have had to get out of the dark ages and do app booking and card payment to survive.
If other businesses want me to use them they need to (a) use a reliable courier which can divert to a local shop or post office (which means Royal Mail or DPD), and (b) confirm that they do, and which one, on their website. It is literally that simple. I'm even willing to pay the extra cost of it. But hardly anyone offers it, and so I refuse to use them.
Until then, it's Amazon for me.
I usually look for online sellers who specifically say they use DPD. There are some out there, although obviously it depends on exactly what you're looking for and of course using DPD generally costs more than the rubbish of Evri or Yodel. But my stuff might actually get to me in the condition it was sent in!
I'm happy to pay extra for use of DPD or Royal Mail, but only if it specifically says so. Very few companies seem to bother.