Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Colissimo - What a joke.


If you want to send a package to anywhere in France, La Poste insist that you send it by Colissimo. Colissimo is more "expensive" than normal post, but it has insurance just in case its delivered late, goes missing or whatever you are sending gets broken.

Recently I sent a couple of Firebird mugs via Colissimo to a customer/Firebird user in France. After receipt and opening of the carefully packed box, the customer found that one of the mugs was cracked. After a brief email exchange he agreed to send me the damaged mug and I would send him a new one.

Once I had the broken mug, I asked the local post office for the basic repayment for the damaged mug from Colissimo. Their response was to hand me a form to fill in, and suggest I post the completed form direct to Colissimo. OK - job done - now I sit back and wait for them to send me the money for something they had managed to break.

After a couple of weeks a letter arrives telling me that they are looking into it, two weeks later another letter arrives, this one apologises, and says we cannot pay you the insurance because the reciever of the damaged goods should have filled in the complaint form and not the sender.

WTF? When you receive damaged goods from someone, what is the first thing you do?
Well, I would have thought, you contact the sender, ask if they want it back and ask for a replacement.... Its then the senders problem to deal with the people he used to send it.

Not in France it seems. By now we have paid for three lots of Colissimo (send original, send it back, send another) and wasted a whole lot of time. The result - huge profits for Colissimo, zero service for the customer. I now give up and throw the whole lot in the bin. Life is just too short to start aguing with a "fonctionnaire".

12 comments:

Baradharajan said...

In India this is common

John said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
John said...

The French love to do things the wrong way round - just look back in history over the last 100 yrs. The whole country is a joke.

France is full of scams like this.

Unknown said...

Please help me. My friend sent me a package from France thru Colissimo and I'm from the Philippines. He sent me the package around June and till now, late August, I haven't received it yet. I'm worried it's already missing :( Where can I go to find this? I can't find an office here in the Philippines. Thank you so much.

Paul Beach said...

Gel,

You need to get the tracking number from your friend for the parcel and then find out where it is using
http://www.colissimo.fr/portail_colissimo/suivre.do

Regards
Paul

Unknown said...

The thing is... He lost the receipt :( I'm really sad about it. It's supposed to be a birthday present for me. I just hope it will find its way.

Paul Beach said...

Without the receipt you are pretty much stuffed. You can't track it, you can't prove its in their system, you can't even tell them it might be missing and try and demand compansation. Sorry.

Unknown said...

I'm really damned. But thank you so much for replying. I know it has been 2 years since you posted this. haha

Maru said...

bonjour
Aurait besoin de savoir qui téléphone -je contacter pour faire une réclamation d'un paquet envoyé x la poste mobile service client
Quelqu'un at-il un numéro de téléphone du service client colissimo ?
Merci
Cordialement

Armando said...

Hi. I know this post is 9 years late but Im hoping to get some answers anyway lol but i would just like to know if would a parcel from france to here in the philippines would be handed over to PHLPOST or would it be delivered to my address directly

Paul Beach said...

If the parcel went by Colissimo, then it would be handled by La Poste (the French Post Office), as such it would be then handled by the local Post Office for delivery in the appropriate country, Philpost in your case. If you want to cut out the local Post Office, use somebody like UPS or DHL.

Unknown said...

This whole company is a fucking Joke!!!