This week I am singing the praises of Parcel2Go who helped me send a little (OK, quite big) present to my little sister in France. I only discovered Parcel2Go shortly before Christmas when I needed to post a prize for a Mellow Mummy winner - a laminator. The parcel was large and heavy and my budget would never have stretched to a visit to the post office so I decided to look online instead and found the Parcel2Go door to door service.
More recently, I really wanted to send my little sister a present. My sister became a Mummy 5 weeks ago and is really looking forward to being able to take up running again next week after her 6 week check. As a buggy-guru, she turned to me for my advice on pushchairs designed specifically for running. They're not normally my forte; however, I did a bit of digging and found a few recommendations which were all out of her price range. Prices for anything baby-related are sky high in the area around Geneva, even second hand. I did a little more digging and determined that it would be cheaper to buy a second hand pushchair from the UK and post it over to France. Bonkers, but true.
Parcel2Go was the first place I thought of, and they just happened to get in contact with me that week to ask me to spread the news and offered to fund the postage to France. Parcel2Go have been in the news (such as this London Business article) because they offer a FAR cheaper alternative to the post office for sending large parcels... and it is more convenient. I quickly snapped up a bargain second hand Red Castle Shop and Jogg pushchair and started investigating prices on Parcel2Go.
I didn't even stop to find out how much it would cost me to post a 15kg parcel this big from my local post office - it just didn't even seem worth it! Once I had worked out how to fit the pushchair into my one and only free cardboard box I measured it and weighed it and entered the dimensions into the Parcel2Go website along with the destination country (France is just one of a very long list of destinations you can ship to).
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| I'm going to need a bigger box |
I was totally blown away by the prices on offer. This parcel cost me just £22 to post to France. My head still hasn't quite got to grips with this. Last Christmas when I posted a parcel a tenth of the size and weight to my sister from the post office it cost nearly that. Sigh.
£22 wasn't the cheapest option that Parcel2Go offered me, in fact there were several quotes from brands such as UPS, TNT and Parcel2Go's own courier service. There were even quotes for next day delivery but these were just out of my postage budget. In the end, I plumped for ParcelForce Worldwide who seemed to have a high success rate at meeting their 3-5 day estimate for delivery to France.
I arranged for my parcel to be collected from my work address on Wednesday. Printed out the label I needed and waited. My parcel was collected about 10 minutes into the estimated pickup time of 9-5.30 and was whizzing off on its way to France before I knew it.
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| yay... it has arrived in France! |
I was REALLY surprised to find out that the buggy had arrived at my sister's place on Friday. That's quicker than if I had posted a local letter first class within the UK!
My sister seems really happy with her new jogging pushchair... I hope that she and my teeny tiny niece enjoy many miles jogging in it. Thank you Parcel2Go.
