Re: Crated delivery
Delivery is a tricky business, no matter what store you buy from or what delivery service you might use. What I try to do is find a national carrier that will balance the price charged to a historical damage ratio, along with how they handle delivery issues and then suggest that carrier to my customers. You can ALWAYS select the carrier of your choice, its your purchase and you can specify who hauls it - after all you are paying for the service, you have a right to choose. It's not always easy to balance and as the damage ration percent goes lower, the price goes higher.
For example, let's say we have a $ 4,000 leather sofa to deliver and say you live in Georgia and you want a in-home, 'white glove' service. Which do you pick?
Carrier A: Charges $ 190 and has a 6% damage rate and takes up to 6 weeks to deliver and won't answer the phone. Tell you if you don't like the way they do business then thats too bad.
Carrier B: Charges $ 330 and has a 3% damage rate and takes 2.5 weeks to deliver with reasonable response to customer inquiries. Not always the most prompt, but they get there.
Carrier C: Charges $ 550 and has a 1% damage rate and takes 2-3 weeks to deliver with premium customer service response time. Usually very prompt.
Carrier D: Charges $ 1,100 and has .1 % damage rate and takes 2-3 weeks to deliver and has exceptional and immediate customer service. Top shelf, all the way.
The customer that chooses Carrier "A" to keep the price down usually is frustrated and angry at the end of the day. The value is long gone as they wait for their sofa and no one keeps them updated. I avoid these carriers and there are a lot of them out there. You want to use them, do so at your own risk and don't complain to me!
To me, the sweet spot is Carrier B. Reasonable charge / damage rate / time frame customer service. However if you are one of those 3 % that get damage (light to moderate) or the truck is late, you're not that happy. They are not perfect, but balanced.
Carrier "C" gives you marginally better service but costs more. You are distance ordering to save money, do you want to pay more for just a little bit better service? Its still not a perfect operation.
Carrier "D" is a fine art carrier and as close to perfection as possible, but do you want to pay that price? Almost no one does.
The white glove delivery business is a carriage business. The driver and his helper are responsible for the load and remember, they haul more made-in-China product than they do premium USA so they want to inspect everything before they load it, therefore it comes out of the box. If it arrives damaged, they don't get paid. A lot of stuff made in China is broken in the box, so the standard procedure it to unpack it and inspect it in the warehouse before they load it. Once out of the box, it does not go back in. Sofas are stood on end in the truck, fully wrapped. Chairs are stacked. The truck leaves full or as close to full as they can get it. They wrap well, but loads shift on bumpy roads and pads can come off and then you get rub marks (most damage is this, not serious rips/tears/breakage). The driver has more interest in getting YOU to sign off the bill of lading 'free and clear' than making sure you are 100 % satisfied. If you accept it, then its pretty difficult to get recourse on any marks or flaws the next day but customers find small marks the next day - call me up and ask me how I'm going to take care of it. The Delivery company is the one that does that, not the selling dealer.
Keeping in mind that the bulk of what these companies haul is cheap furniture, they do NOT know how to touch up something like a pure aniline leather, the leather they handle 90% of the time is painted for example. Nor do they do much with fine exposed wood. As such, I cringe when I think of them stacking on its end a Hancock and Moore Somerset sofa that weighs twice what they are used to shipping and has exposed wood the sofa will ride upon in its journey. For that reason, I try to follow those kind of pieces and advise them to leave those in the original carton to the destination, and sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't. I can't control how they load and ship and more than you can as the customer. All we can do is ask.
When I get pieces for my store (locally) it comes in the factory packing and damage is so low as to be statistically irrelevant. That's right, right at zero or maybe .001 percent. I unpack every piece personally and load it in my truck for delivery. Maybe once every 5 years out of thousands of deliveries we will have a damage, but its extremely rare when its handled by myself and my delivery guys - because we care. You really can't beat buying from a local dealer that is even halfway paying attention to his business for a clean delivery. Having said that, there is a store 20 miles from mine that is huge called Gr********, and they handle all the pieces very roughly, even leaving them in rain in their loading area and really don't care because they hire whomever comes off the street at $ 7 an hour for labor, whereas I pay my guys over double that rate and demand they be professional.
Some pieces can be drop shipped in the factory packing, too. Hancock and Moore for example, does what we call and 'export' pack, where every piece is designed and packed to ship around the world, its the best packing in the business. Councill does it that way, too. So those we can send on a truck line to you and they will arrive in the original packing - but - (there is always a 'but', eh?) they will only go do a loading area at a commercial address. That means you have to get the pieces home and unpack them yourself. Some of my customers have their pieces delivered to their local moving and storage company this way and then contract with them to unpack it and bring it to their home. You get the pieces faster and the damage rate goes way down as well, but you have more work to do to set this up on your end and overall cost will be higher.
There is also www.uship.com. You put your load out for bids, kind of like an EBAY for shippers. Here there is a real crap shoot - you can get an excellent carrier and a bargain price, or a disaster in the making if you choose poorly. It's all over the board.
White Glove Delivery businesses want to delivery your order efficiently and damage-free, but at the end of the day its about that individual delivery team and that particular truck, and some teams are better than others.. Problems are as much a hassle for them as they are for you, believe me. The system works well for reasonable people most the time, but if you are a perfectionist then you should not buy long distance, but purchase locally and pay the higher local price points. You'll be happier in the long run if you do.
Last edited by drcollie; 04-23-2014 at 10:50 AM.
Duane Collie
Straight answers from thirty-six years in the business.
My Private Messages are Disabled - Please ask questions here in the forum.