Hi All.

I recently started selling beauty products on eBay in my spare time for extra money.

I chose Hermes as the carrier as they seemed the best value.

Iam now regretting that decision massively.

I have sent approx 200 parcels so far, all over packaged, and most of them i have taken photos of, and photos of them on the scales.

After about 70 parcels i received an email from Hermes requesting an extra payment as a parcel I had sent was over weight. The parcel weighed 200g, but they tried to charge me for 3.25kg. After emailing i got the charge removed. (Not a good start)

Now I have started receiving messages of item not received, and also parcels with tracking information that is stuck at a particular stage. I understand some times the buyer will be lying to claim a refund.

One particular person said he had not received the item, but my tracking showed delivered through the letterbox, with a photo of the letterbox. He strongly denies receiving the parcel so I asked for photos of his front door with a piece of paper stuck to the door with his name on, date, clearly showing the house number, and house name on. He sent me the photos. Clearly the letterbox photo Hermes provided is a different door to the customers. I am doing the live chat daily, and constantly being fobbed off.

The next issue a customer claims he hasn't received the parcel. Hermes tracking showed delivered, to a safe location. The customer says he has not received the item. Hermes admitted there is no GPS location, and no details where it was left so sent me the missing parcel claim form, which they say can take 14 days to come to a decision. The problem is most of the items I send are classed as a liquids, even though they aren't runny like liquids. So its unlikely they will compensate me looking at their terms.

I acknowledge that delicate items and certain items which they don't compensate for are easier to break and more likely to be broken, but not missing all together. A lost parcel all together is surely a failing by Hermes, and all lost parcels should be compensated for. All parcels I have declared properly what was inside, and chosen the correct cover value.

At the minute I have 2 parcels missing, 1 parcel delayed then today it has updated to say damaged in transit, 2-3 parcels with stuck tracking status's where they say delayed, or out for delivery, and that is the end of it. Some are a week or so without any movement or updates. So I'm guessing they are lost aswell.

I am expecting all these people to request refunds. Which vary from £9-£30. Not huge sums but when you have to refund that many people its not on. I have done all I can do, and left the delivery to Hermes, which that aren't doing properly. No delivery photos, some without gps tracking. Parcels left in places they have not been told to.

I'm just after some advice on what to do please. What course of action is possible. I have been trying to build up as much information as I can before sending the items. Photos of before wrapping, photos after wrapping. Photos of the labels on the box/packet. Photos of the parcel on the scales.

I can see me ending up with dozens of claims for lost parcels, and parcels that just get lost by Hermes, and no way of getting my money back.

Any advice would be really appreciated.

Thanks

If you sent things that were not allowed via their T&C's, its doubtful youre going to have much luck. You can try though. You have to let them investigate first, and then go from there.

Where the nature of the item which has been carried has not materially affected the risk then I see no great problem about making a claim. For instance, if a bottle of perfume has clearly been delivered to the wrong address then the fact that the bottle contains liquid has had no bearing on the failure to carry out the delivery correctly.

For Hermes to rely on the fact that the perfume bottle contains liquid and therefore somehow they are not liable for a breach of the carriage contract amounts, in my view, to an unfair term – contrary to the Consumer Rights Act.

We've had this kind of problem with Hermes before. The way that all complaints about Hermes have gone so far is that people start legal actions, Hermes resist and eventually they put their hands up because they feel it's uneconomic.

Frankly I feel that the real reason they put their hands up this because they don't want to be tested in court because they know they are on dodgy ground.

Why on earth have you given your business to Hermes? I think if you had done a bit of serious research you would find what an unreliable company they are and also when the chips are down how much trouble they make for people about nearly nothing.

If you want to start dealing with these then I would say that the best thing to do is to isolate each incident and deal with it separately. I think that if you started to take a single action for a number of wrongly delivered or non-delivered items, Hermes will find it more interesting to run a defence against you.

I think the thing to do is to start off by listing out each item – in a separate post: what was sent, what was the value, what happened.

Let me say that the outcome of this depends on whether or not you are prepared to bring a legal action. I'm afraid that our great experience with Hermes is that you will need to issue the papers.

You will have to send Hermes a letter before claim threatening legal action within 14 days. If you're not prepared to do this or if you think that you can move them simply by bluffing but in the end you'd rather not take the legal action – then please don't bother. You will be wasting your time, and also it means that the advice and help we will give you here will be wasted.

You decide.

You would think that Hermes would have an algorithm in the software on their site to filter out prohibited items so if you put perfume into the description box, a pop up would ask if that item was in a glass bottle and then, if yes, refuse to carry it as it was against their terms and conditions. It would be easy to do so why don't they?

The simple answer is that if they did that, they would lose a lot of business so they much prefer to include items in the prohibited list but rely on the customer to read the list which is unlikely to happen and only deal with those customers who exercise their legal rights. It's purely a numbers game for them.

There has been a couple of cases where Parcel 2 Go have been taken to task and Hermes are one of the courier companies that P2G use. Bankfodder, in my opinion is spot on with the relevant advice.

Of course the OP doesn't seem to have realised that they need to come back and engage with this thread if they want to get anything done