Doddle research: majority of UK online shoppers experienced delivery problems in December

61.5% of online shoppers had delivery issues across the month of December as strikes and capacity challenges plagued the UK’s parcel firms, according to new research commissioned by Doddle.

2,000+ people were surveyed for this.

The most common problem was deliveries arriving late, which affected 41% of UK online shoppers in December.

Also, more than 10% of shoppers had one or more of their parcels lost by the delivery provider, 13% missed a delivery and 9% had something delivered to the wrong address or left in an unexpected location.

“We expected Royal Mail strikes to cause some disruption to services, and that there might be a knock-on effect to other parcel carriers in the busiest shopping window of the year,” comments Doddle CEO Tim Robinson.

“What was surprising was the extent to which other carriers in the market also appeared to struggle to manage the volume of deliveries while maintaining an acceptable customer experience. That has dented consumer confidence, with many shoppers now seeking to deliberately avoid or prefer specific carriers.”

28% of online shoppers surveyed said that their experiences had caused them to lose trust in delivery companies, and 39% said they would consider avoiding a specific company in future.

Few online retailers can afford to have such fractions of their customer base move to a competitor, something 42% of respondents said they would consider doing in order to use a parcel carrier they preferred.

Elsewhere, the data show that only 3% of shoppers experienced a parcel being stolen (although this doubled to 6% for respondents in London).

For parcel carriers, the fact that 64% of shoppers still rated their services as good value for money, despite a challenging peak period, may provide some comfort.

Some shoppers plan to change their delivery habits in response to the problems they faced.

21% reported that they would be less likely to receive deliveries at home in future because of their experiences in December, preferring alternative delivery options like Click & Collect, parcel lockers, pickup points or post office collections, with younger shoppers aged between 18-24 the most likely to say so.