Armed with the local member details for NR6, our collection address, we took to the phones at lunchtime on 20 September for collectiom on the following day.Palletways was the first on the list; the local agent was Jack Richards.
Darren answered th phone after eight rings and told us we needed to fax through the details of the consignment and our bank details for a credit check before we could discuss rates. We sent the fax at 12.15pm and awaited his call.
Meanwhile, we continued down the list. Palletforce is represented in Norwich by Freightforce and after seven rings on the phone we were put on hold before someone in sales took our call. In fairness. it was a painless and fairly swift process and after intial introductions we were asked to send a fax confirmation of the job before we could get a rate for it, though there was no...
releases from various pallet companies, we decided the other three contenders should be Palletline, PalletForce and Fortec.
To continue our research we checked out the websites run by the various networks. As an introduction to the services on offer an effective website can be asignificant draw, and if we simply had a pallet shift we would
considerably after an hour of trawling through the internet. All the websites we looked at gave a quick tour of the services on offer and a simple search for a local agent by postcode, although most seemed to lack
lack customer focus. As a first time pallet network user we were looking for the websites to give us some guidance through the process. In this, some were more effective than others. Palletline, which claims to being
the first UK Pallet network, had the most effective website vistited. The Design is simple, it's quick to load and not over elabotrate. What's more, it's focused on giving potential customers easy-to-use guidelines on what service has to offer.
A freephone number is available for help, although, as with all the networks, first-time customers are channelled to their local
network members to discuss rates and the details of the consignment (more of which later.)
The PalletForce website kicks off with an unnecessary video presentation (which, thankfully can be skipped) and then takes you to another introduction screen with a menu list detailing the different pages. Presumably the priority of any business website should be to hook potential customers, but in this case it took quite abit of digging to get to the information we were interested in.
Of the others, the Palletways site focuses on what the comapny does on what the company does and its history; we had to click through various screens before we could find out how to get our pallet moving and once again had to contact the local members for details.
Pall-Ex, like Palletways, focuses on the network but is short of simple information for new customers. Fortecs website was very difficult to find, but when we did get in it was a simple, straightforward affair and gave good direction for new customers. Bizarrely, when we went back after the test to check the website again the www.fortecpallet.com web address took us through to the Pall-Ex website