SHANGHAI-BASED delivery firms HTO Express and ZTO Express joined Beijing's ZJS Express as the slowest last month, China's post management authority said yesterday.
Some 20 percent of HTO's customers had lodged complaints about late parcel deliveries in June, followed by ZJS's 15 percent and ZTO's 14.7 percent, the State Post Bureau of China announced on its website.
"The hot weather affected the efficient of deliverymen while continuous rainstorms in east and northeast China last month cause the surge in delivery delays," a regional customer service manager with HTO said.
However, Shanghai's STO Express, the firm involved in a scandal in 2011 where workers at its Jinqiao branch were seen kicking and throwing parcels around, some marked "Fragile," was the Shanghai firm most complained about overall, with 27.3 percent of its customers unsatisfied in some respect.
The branch was fined 60,000 yuan (US$9,780) and told to halt work for a month in January 2011.
The bureau received a total of 12,634 complaints across the country about courier firms in June, some 10.5 percent lower than in May, the bureau said.
"Delivery delays, attitudes of deliverymen and the loss of parcels remained the top three complaints among Chinese customers, accounting for over 84 percent of the total," an official said.
Two Guangzhou-based courier firms, UC and Sure Express, were the most complained about overall in June. Some 42 and 35 percent of their customers had lodged complaints about them.
China’s weekly story
(2013.7.5-7.12)