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Couriers do big job as upgrade gets going
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WHEN David Wang answered a call from a courier to pick up a package, he never expected the first few words to be curses.
“He arrived ahead of time so I asked him wait for 15 minutes and he left. I actually felt sorry for his wasted journey. But when I heard his curses, I was so angry that I wished I could beat him up,” Wang tells Shanghai Daily.
He made a complaint to the express company but never got any feedback.
Wang is among an increasing number of urbanites who shop online and use express delivery services. Last year in China, the online population amounted to 600 million people, with about one-third of them regularly buying goods via the Internet.
The resulting soaring demand for delivery services has led to a boom in China’s courier industry, especially in Shanghai. In 2013, some 1 billion parcels were delivered in the city with total revenue of 25.8 billion yuan (US$4.14 billion). Every day, about 100,000 couriers flit about the city.
“It means each resident in Shanghai received an average of 39 parcels last year,” says Zeng Junshan, director of the city’s postal administration. About 70 percent of the nation’s express companies have their headquarters in Shanghai, including leading courier firms SF, STO, ZTO and Yunda Express.
Service quality remains a work in progress. Many people have had bad experiences with couriers — the loss of packages, refusal to deliver the package through the door or a rude attitude.
Zeng says the government will launch a campaign to regulate such firms within three years, and “black and red lists” will be released so residents can evaluate the firms based on criteria such as manners, service, integrity, standard and facilities. Both lists will be released by the end of the year, he says.
Meanwhile, the postal authority is considering raising the standard for couriers, as all of them are required to have licenses to get a job.
In 2000, Luna Chen opened her fashion boutique on China’s biggest online marketplace, Taobao. She usually sends 100 to 200 parcels every week. As a regular customer of courier services, Chen says they are improving.
“At first, the courier service was in poor condition. The deliverymen were unfamiliar with the map, behaved badly or even sometimes stole your parcels. But in recent few years, I think they are getting better and better,” Chen says.
Last year, only one parcel was lost and Chen says she got restitution. She uses big courier firms to improve her odds of better service.
“As for manners, it’s not necessarily to require too much from a courier. They have laborious work with low payment, so sometimes if they speak in a loud, rather unfriendly voice, I will just let it go,” she says.
Steven Sun, on the other hand, describes his experience with one courier as a nightmare. The courier made him wait for 20 minutes. They got into a fight and the next day he found that the courier had left a written curse with his name onto the wall of the elevator.
“I have to admit that couriers sometimes don’t have good manners but it is also true that people despise us a lot, maybe because we are not well educated,” says Mike Zhu, a courier.
Three years ago, Zhu came to Shanghai from Zhejiang Province and became a deliveryman at a leading firm in Shanghai.
“Some customers start to scold us or make complaints to the headquarters for just tiny mistakes. And a lot of them don’t say thank you for the service, instead they just slap the door on your face once they get the parcel,” Zhu says.
The young courier was recently fined 5,000 yuan by his firm, which represented about a month’s earnings. Last month, Zhu delivered a parcel to a company where he was not allowed to go inside. He left the parcel with the reception center and left.
Stiff fine
“There they have staff to take care of the parcels. I do this all the time,” Zhu says.
But that day the staff forgot to call the consignee, and it took a while for his customer to find the parcel. “She (the customer) called me and scolded me for a long time for not calling her when I arrived, so we argued,” Zhu recalls.
Later, the customer called the postal administration to make a serious complaint and the firm decided to punish him with the stiff fine.
“The company even didn’t listen to a word from me,” he says.
“When the customer complains directly to the postal administration instead of the firm, things always go worse for couriers,” says Hong San, a contractor of a leading courier firm in Shanghai in charge of Jing’an District.
According to Hong, the fine money doesn’t all go to the customers. Part is paid to the postal administration.
“Most of the courier firms have no regulations or rules; they fine you as much money as they want,” Hong says.
Some customers even exploit this to blackmail the courier to pay them the fine in private.
“Small courier firms do have bad service and rude manners but couriers have many difficulties as well,” Hong says.
A courier usually delivers 100 parcels before noon. Sometimes, they have to bring the parcel several times to get it into the customer’s hands.
Except for SF (1.6 yuan per parcel), most couriers earn 1 yuan per parcel delivered, with no social security or medical insurance paid by the company. Some are even worse, getting 3,500 yuan a month as a fixed salary.
“The courier firms should have more complete systems and regulations for the couriers to enhance their service, not just a working license,” Hong says.
“A working license is no big deal. All you need is a photo, your ID card number and 20 yuan to get it from the firm. Some small courier firms even print the licenses themselves and no one checks them,” he adds.
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