Premium charges but pathetic service. Review on Blue Dart

Kerala has always been given a cold shoulder by courier companies. It takes 3-4 business days for a consignment to be delivered from Thiruvananthapuram to Thrissur or Cochin and even longer to the northern districts. Considering the population density, courier companies can provide very good services in Kerala. They actually can make big money here. Yet services are confined major towns only.

Coming to the point. So far, Blue Dart is the worst courier service that I have seen. In  March 2013 I purchased a Norton Internet Security pack from Flipkart and it took them 13 days to deliver it to Techno Park, one of the most serviced pin codes in Kerala. The item arrived in Blue Dart's Ulloor branch in 4 days but the item simply disappeared from there. They did not make any phone call or email to me stating the consignment had arrived. I was repeatedly checking the status of the consigment on their tracking websire and the website stated unforeseen delays. Whenever I called the branch, either they would not answer or they will say it will delivered today. This happened for days. I had logded several complaints online. This was just forwarded to the servicing branch itself. So obviously, there was no response. Finally, I contacted Flipkart and they said they will check and let me know in two days. In the mean time, I got fed up of the waiting game and decided to take another course of action. One of my friends had a contact in a courier company(not Blue Dart) and she called the person and it got delivered within just one hour. It was on the 13th day that my friend had made the call. If she hadn't called, the consignment would have taken longer to reach me.

Back in December 2009, I had to courier some documents for verification from Hyderabad to Thiruvananthapuram. At that point, Blue Dart had very few branches in Kerala. But I decided to send them anyway. They charged me a very premium rate of Rs 239. And it took them 5 business days to deliver it to Techno Park, Thiruvananthapuram; when they assured me it would be delivered on the 3rd business day. And after a few weeks, I had to send another batch of documents. Because of the high charge low committment service experience, I sent it via DTDC for just Rs 90. DTDC delivered the item on the 3rd business day.

Another experience, I bought an item from ebay in late 2013, my home address is situated out side the delivery area for most courier services. As usual I had to track my consignment using the Blue Dart website and on the 4th day it arrived at the Trivandrum main branch, and it took 24 hours for them to move the item from the main branch to the Ulloor branch. They did not call me to inform me that the consignment had arrived. I made a call to the Ulloor branch as soon as I found out the the item had reached, to inform them that I will collect in person.

I think Blue Dart's main source of revenue is online shopping sites like ebay, Amazon etc. So it does not really matter to them to deliver items on time. Because, its the seller who mentions the delivery time frame.

Please think twice before you send anything by Blue Dart. There was a time years ago when Blue Dart provided exceptionally good service. Those days are long gone. All courier companies call the consignee to inform him/her if they are unable to locate the address or if the address is not serviceable. Blue Dart rarely calls.

So, Blue Dart is premium charges with pathetic service.