Couriers issues - Aramex / Fastway stay away

HI Gerald

I have moved your post to an existing thread where the foibles of Fastway have been discussed.

You are not alone!

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Fastway-Aramex delivered some wine today with an OK to leave if house not attended. Home all day, front door open, partner in the lounge watching movies. Loud door bell installed.

Mid-afternoon I ventured on to the front landing to see my wine at the foot of the 14 steps to the roofed front landing, in the open, on a 31C day threatening rain. It had been there for about 4 hours using the delivery time shown on the Fastway-Aramex web site. ā€˜Keep coolā€™ stickers were all over it. 15 minutes after bringing it in some serious rain started.

This mob seems to use itinerant contract delivery people who are paid by the piece; some do an OK job but many do not.

What to do? I lodged a complaint with the seller and stated if they cannot use Auspost (that has been brilliant delivering wine) or another, and they had to use Fastway-Aramex, they could remove me from their customer list. I doubt there is a stronger message re delivery satisfaction.

Note to self: Always include ā€˜Cancel this order if it is going to be shipped by Fastway-Aramexā€™ in the notes to seller.

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Their drivers are always in a hurry and leave most items at the front door. If I am lucky they will ring the door bell then go! They pay their contract drivers per delivery and I believe the amount isnā€™t much. The driver has to make a lot of deliveries to make money. They hate having to make re deliveries, if there is no one home. Hence they will leave the parcel regardless and donā€™t seem to check if anyone is there. Very rarely itā€™s the same driver that makes the delivery. I say this as one driver that delivers to me will always ring the bell.

Theyā€™re cheap, so the suppliers use them to save money. You pay for what you get!

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Iā€™ve had three deliveries from Fastway that have been dumped in the dirt in the front garden. Two were toner cartridges from a company that usually provides great customer service and they have now marked my file with a note NOT to use Fastway for deliveries to me. The last time this happened I left a review of the couriers on Product Review and they posted a response. ā€œWeā€™re sorry this happenedā€. No promise to do better in the future. I definitely do not recommend Fastway.

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Fastaway emailed me to say if I didnt pick the goods up in 5 days they would destroy them ,I asked Ebay whats this al about and they said Fastaway came to my place and there was no,one there ,wrong i had been home all day for a week,I told Ebay I had booked the parcel thru my P,o box ,They said they would get the supplier to pay me back
I had a poor chinese girl asking me not to give them a bad star rating as it meant so much to them ,Fastaway had put the blame on to them for 6 weeks delay

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Also noted. I cant bear them, they are never on time. At least all my Fastway (Slow way) deliveries have eventually arrived.

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Iā€™d say Aramex/Fastway are in line for a Shonky after the phone call I had with them today. I had to get some replacement tech gear from an online computer retailer based in Qld just over a week ago. They only had one of the 3 items in stock so sent that directly to me, with the other two items being sent from their supplierā€™s warehouse is Sydney.

I rang the store this past Monday 27/7 to ask on an approximate time for delivery, and they said theyā€™d contact the warehouse for a tracking number and get back to me. When I received the tracking number I checked it out and all looked good until yesterday when I checked again (attached screenshot). I phoned them today as nothing had changed in tracking, and I was told that the item couldnā€™t be delivered as I was out of their area! When I asked where the item was he would not tell me, and told me to contact the seller to rearrange another company to deliver it - I assume that meant pick it up from wherever it was and then deliver it. I then asked him why the company accepted the contract to deliver the item, and accepted payment to do so. He refused to answer and said once again I should contact the seller to fix things.

I then advised him that the way online shopping works is that the customer orders an item and then chooses a shipping option, and then makes payment for both the item & shipping, which gives the addressee the right to get answers from the courier company as to where the product is and why they accepted payment with no intention to deliver it! No answer once again which by this time was no surprise whatsoever. I do love the final description of the delivery status though, it is the most unprofessional wording I think I have seen.

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Fastway/Amarex are a franchise courier service. So the people who deliver the parcels are a franchisee, which gets paid an amount for delivery of the item. If they do not have a franchisee in the local area, then there is no one to deliver the item. I believe they are paid a ridiculous low amount for each delivery, so that they have to make many deliveries in a day to cover there costs and make a profit. So inner city runs would be more profitable. If the nearest franchisee is a long way from you, they wouldnā€™t take the delivery as the amount paid would not cover the cost of fuel etc. Iā€™m not defending Fastway/Amarex, but the seller must take some responsibility as well for using them.

One company I purchase regularly from would use Couriers Please, they use an agent as they do not have someone to deliver in my area. The agent is Australia Post, this lengthens the delivery time and often not all the items of a multiple order would arrive together. I rang the company and told them I want all my orders delivered by Australia Post. this has reduced the delivery time and lessened the problem of the order all not arriving at one,

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From a supplier I occasionally use, with no delivery option other than Fastway (More accurately Slowway), they usually hang onto it for a while before putting it in the post, all for a ridiculously high fee.

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Same issue with Hunter Express today. Ordered king-size mattress in box from Costco last Thursday. Advised by Costco, item was on its way last Friday, but no tracking info given. Called Costco today to seek a delivery ETA and they said the tracking had the item on a truck on Tuesday and then taken off again later that day. Costco said it was put back on the truck today, and had not been returned to depot yet. (Going from Sydney to Brisbane).

Delivery arrived at 4pm. I asked the driver if he had tried to deliver on Tuesday and he advised he was the local driver and today was the first he had received my order to deliver.

On another note - and off topic, the mattress at Kogan, Amazon and Costco (with free delivery) was around $250, whereas the same mattress at House was the RRP of $1299. I was tempted to leave a 1-star rating on the House website for value for money.

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Hi @Symba, welcome to the community.

Thanks for sharing your experience and observations.
Itā€™s all to easy to simply dismiss poor service as an every day norm. Speaking with the delivery driver or commenting on pricing observations we can all share and learn.

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Thatā€™s the problem though, Fastway/Aramex DID accept the delivery and the payment for that delivery. I donā€™t blame the retailer at all for what happened as after communications with the retailer they were not informed by Fastway/Aramex of any areas they did not service. As such the retailer has cancelled their contract with Aramex and is currently negotiating with other companies.

Itā€™s been a strange few years in the Australian courier landscape. Aramex and AusPost were competitors a few years back, then became partners for a couple of years in 2016. In January 2016 Aramex swallowed Fastway, and sold Mail Call Couriers to StarTrack (AusPost) about halfway through the year. Aramex and AusPost then set up a joint venture. In 2018 AusPost bought out Aramexā€™s share of Aramex Global Solutions (the joint venture between the two) and a year later AusPost divested. Could explain why AusPost is so unreliable these days (even pre-COVID), seems they learned too much from Aramex lol.

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Certainly Fastway/Amarex should know if it can deliver a product and pass this on to the client. But I believe thereā€™s a lot of disconnect between franchise companies and their franchisees. Itā€™s a staple complaint on current affair programs, and not just couriers. Again, I wish to stress Iā€™m not defending Fastway/Amarex. I do not know about this retailer and Iā€™m not saying this is the case, but some retailers choose Fastway/Amarex because they offer the cheapest service allowing them to make additional profit from the delivery or offer a cheaper delivery rate to get customers. I would have thought a simple web search on the reliability etc of the company before signing a contract with them would be a must. Iā€™m not saying they didnā€™t do this, but you get what you pay for.

Since my original post on Fastway, I have had very little problems with them delivering my purchases and for me AustPost is very reliable. I buy from Aliexpress and Banggood etc and they direct ship to Australia where either Fastway/Amarex or AusPost make the final delivery. Also Ebay uses Fastway/Amarex as well. But them Iā€™m in a metropolitan area, which I feel makes a differance.

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They should, but my take on their systems suggest they do not. They have a disconnect between their systems showing a delivery franchise for an area, but that franchise is not always willing to go to the destination.

I have, more than once, waited days for a Fastway delivery after it was ā€˜on the truck for delivery todayā€™ because the local franchisee was not interested in coming to my place until he had additional deliveries in the neighbourhood or I lodged a complaint, whichever came first. I could also imagine their franchisees delimit their area on a street in a manner whereby they will deliver on one side but refuse on the other, while the 'database only has the street as its metric.

Or the corollary that you hardly ever get more than you pay for but often less.

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I am yet another of Aramexā€™s disgruntled recipients. I ordered a power adapter from a supplier in China. It took 5 days to move from China to Australia and admittedly took a day and a half to clear customs. However it has been 8 days and it has moved from Sydney toā€¦ Sydney ie. It has not moved anywhere. It has taken longer to move 100m through a warehouse than it has taken to move 7500km across continents :pensive::pensive:

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Welcome to the Community @Hagg78

I have yet to have the pleasure of an incoming international purchase delivered by Aramex, always Auspost. My domestic experience with Aramex was beyond ordinary for a long time but recently the few deliveries they have made have been without any drama.

FWIW our ā€˜trackingā€™, company independent, seems somewhat less than woeful on the best days and non-existent on many others.

Although Auspost for relativity, we had an incoming from Denmark that even though it was tracked from Copenhagen to Brissie disappeared from any visibility only to turn up in Eltham a week later. Another incoming from the USA got to Sydney and tracking showed it in customs for 8 days and all of a sudden is at a Melbourne depot.

Bottom line is it could be that your parcel is indeed ā€˜stuckā€™ or it is possible it is the ā€˜worlds most ordinary trackingā€™ that we regularly experience.

A few years ago I also had experiences where incoming parcels were apparently sent by USPS but were actually a global DHL service, and DHL delivered them. It can be entertaining to track, in a dark sort of way.

Have you put in a trace via Aramex?

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I can certainly sympathise with you. I am having another issue with the courier company, Aramax over a missing parcel which has been going on for over 3 weeks. This is another company that is very hard to contact and get the same automated message every time I try. The parcel took 9 days to travel from Sydney to Adelaide and 3 days after it was listed as ā€˜on board for deliveryā€™ it was supposedly delivered. This was an utter lie and I have footage from my security camera to prove it.
My internet provider is Superloop, which is a local company with a local call centre where you can talk to real people who donā€™t speak with an accent that you canā€™t understand which is so rare nowadays.

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Hi @carljh, you may find this topic more appropriate for sharing your specific experience with Aramex courier services. Your post has been moved in keeping with the focus of the topic.

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All the problems with Australia post pale into insignificance since I have been trying to deal with Aramex. My parcel is two weeks overdue and there is no speaking to anyone at that company or their depot because their given contact numbers ring out. I finally received a response to an email saying two attempts for delivery were made and I would have to pay an extra $5.50 for each attemp henceforth, what a scam. They did send two text messages that looked like scams because they wanted me to reply to a linc with my full address. What sort of logistic company has to ask the recipient what their address is as I am sure the company that sent the package didnā€™t send it without an address.I looked up Aramex online and they have 7000 one star reviews, no wonder that I am still awaiting for my package to be delivered

Hi @GilesFairmont - your post has been moved to this topic sharing related examples of poor service by Aramex. It may assist you to scan through this and two similar topics for suggestions on how to proceed.

Are you confident the contact you have with Aramex is reliable? IE not a scammer. For Aramex a possibility is they are also being wary of your contact, especially if the details of the shipment (consignment number etc) do not match in their system in some way?

Other topics.