Don't Use The Professional Courier Service. Review on The Professional Couriers

"We at The Professional Couriers are committed to satisfy the expectations of our customers through timely and safe delivery of their consignments.

We achieve this through professional managment, team work and continuous refinement of our services."

Sounds familiar? This is the service motto of a courier company, The Professional Couriers, and it sound just like what most other courier companies will tell you. Except that when it comes to executing such lofty words, TPC falls miserably short.

It was my nephew's birthday last week and D and I sent the best gifts we could find him and my niece, along with a special something for my parents, and my brother and sister in law. The reason we went to TPC in the first place was that we were late and our regular courier service had shut shop for the night. I should have been warned when I saw their delivery areas. The piece of paper hanging in the shop, with the rate charge showed delivery area range as follows:

1. South India

   
   




2. Delhi

   
   




3. North India

   
   




4. Maharashtra

   
   




5. West India

   
   




6. North East India.

   
   

Ok, lesson in Geography. Delhi is in North India as much as Maharashtra is in West India. And West Bengal is not in the North East. Mizoram is. But obviously, TPC thinks otherwise, but in my desperation to send the package, I went ahead and made the payment. This was mid-last week.

The gifts hadn't reached mid-this week. Usually you send things by courier because you don't want them to get lost or you want them to reach fast. My nephew's birthday was over and the gifts hadn't reached. So I decided to check with the courier company for an expected time of arrival. The website said, in very ambiguous terms that first it was sent to Mumbai, then sent to Kolkata and then received at Mumbai. Now it is possible that the parcel was sent to and received at Mumbai before dispatch to Kolkata, but the order of this was all wrong. What do you make out from the Mumbai - Kolkata - Mumbai sequence anyway? The track and trace system on the website said the package was in transit.

So I called the "Contact Us" numbers. Mumbai HO picked up after some 5 tries and gave me a number for customer care, which turned out to be the home number of a very gruff Punjabi man. So I tried calling elsewhere. I tried the other two centers in Mumbai, Kolkata, Bangalore, Ahmedabad, Lucknow and Chennai just to get one more number. No one answered the calls for two whole days. In some cases such as Kolkata and Bangalore, the numbers did not even exist. The Mumbai center numbers were always busy.

On day 3, I lost it and shot a mail to the email ID at the Mumbai HO, marking a copy to the Goa center. There was no response from Mumbai, and Goa said they "will check and conf the status". Conf I think means confirm here. I also went online looking for other phone numbers of TPC Kolkata. A very rude man at the Behala center gave me the number of the TPC where my consignment was headed. For the first time at that center a man looked helpful, seemingly going through his entire consignment pack and telling me it hasn't arrived and takes 4 days at least. I was on the 6th day, so I politely thanked him and hung up before he said I should call and check the next day.

I sent another couple of emails, asking the company to return my consignment so I could go with a more reliable service, and I got a call from a man and a woman from the company who took down my consignment number and the receiver address and said they will check. The website still showed in transit.

On Day 7, Calcutta had still not got the parcel, the website still showed transit and Mumbai still did not answer calls. On Day 8, the parcel reached, severely damaged to my nephew. The website of course still shows that it is in transit. I got a call from TPC Goa telling me that it will be delivered today and when I told the woman it has been delivered in very damaged condition, she said "Ok, madam" and hung up!

Horror, I tell you. And the next time, even if TPC is the last courier service in the world and I have to get something delivered, I will run the distance myself and get the job done rather than going back to these guys. They have no idea if your parcel has been dispatched, or if it is in transit, or if it has been misplaced. They do not answer their calls and do not reply to email. And when you tell them that the parcel in question was delivered damaged, they shrug it off. And sometimes I think if you went to the track and trace option on their website and typed out any random number for consignments, it will show that the fake consignment number you entered in is transit. These guys seriously have no idea.

Would you want to deliver things with them? I would not.