81% of people stay at home for deliveries, only for them to not arrive
MutualPoints favourites Kelkoo recently conducted a survey into home deliveries and uncovered some shocking statistics. Arguably the most shocking of all is that days ‘lost’ waiting for deliveries costs the UK economy a whopping £1.6 billion a year.
The survey asked over 13,000 online shoppers their experiences with online deliveries and of the people surveyed, just under half (45%) had taken time off work to wait for a delivery and of these people, 22% lied about the reason for their absence.
The survey revealed that the most likely excuse used by women is a Doctor’s appointment, coming in at 34%. Men used the same excuse just 31% of the time. Interestingly men were more likely to plead that they were working from home that day than women, with 12% of men using that excuse compared to 8% of women. Also of interest is that women were more likely than men to own up to the real reason for their absence, with 41% admitting to their boss that they were waiting for a delivery, compared to 35% of men.
Lots have suffered from no-shows
Perhaps most alarming of all is that some 81% of respondants had suffered from products not arriving when they were supposed to. Importantly for retailers, 94% of people said they would be unlikely to place further orders with a retailer that failed to deliver.
Bruce Fair, Managing Director, Kelkoo UK said, “People increasingly want to be able to select the exact date and time of their deliveries to minimise the impact on their working day and the need to take a day’s holiday. I’d recommend shoppers look for the IDIS (Internet Delivery is Safe) badge as it means that the retailer offers a good choice of delivery times and has good options in place in case of non-delivery”.
As always we’d love to hear your experiences. Have you suffered from non-delivery? Would you use that retailer again? Let us know your views.
July 11th, 2008 at 12:13 pm
The most annoying thing about deliveries is the most companies specify morning or afternoon, which usually equates to 8am-1pm and 1pm-6pm. It would be much more helpful if smaller delivery windows could be given to save sitting around waiting for so long, i.e. up to 5 hours. Supermarkets seem to manage this with grocery shopping home deliveries, it’s a shame other retailers can’t learn from that.
July 11th, 2008 at 12:39 pm
You can bet your bottom dollar that the retailers themselves have a good idea of when items will be delivered given the attention that has gone into logicits and supply chain management in recent years. The whole concept of lean production relies on precise stock management so it does seem odd that deliveries can’t be done considerably better than they currently are.