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Why is NR investing in Doddle
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jamesontheroad
Established Member
Doddle has been open at Norwich for a couple of months now. What has been notable is that behind the counter are large flatscreen monitors apparently listing initials or names of parcel recipients who have something to collect. They are always completely blank. Last week a Doddle employee was out on the concourse with an iPad targeting people sitting on benches with a promotional survey.
So far they're only open Monday-Friday, so not competitive frankly.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
Your name only appears on that list when you've checked in, so it isn't ever likely to have more than one thing on there. It was a strange design choice as it makes them *look* poorly used.
How do you know this?
Regardless, loads of the branches aren't in stations and aren't well used. They seem overstaffed and underused, and I can't see them taking off. It's free to get stuff delivered to a locker with prime next day from Amazon for example and there's way more lockers than Doddle stores.
eBay you can get delivered to Argos stores (which again are loads more) for free, etc, etc.
And not everyone uses amazon or ebay for their stuff which is why you will see their 'partners' on their website.
Theres a large courier market out there right now so if they can chip away at that by making it much easier for passengers to get their stuff then why shouldn't they?
They may look empty now but most businesses start out slowly don't they or did amazon just appear one day as a massive multi country shop out of the blue?
Theres a large courier market out there right now so if they can chip away at that by making it much easier for passengers to get their stuff then why shouldn't they?
They may look empty now but most businesses start out slowly don't they or did amazon just appear one day as a massive multi country shop out of the blue?
misterredmist
Member
That's what my initial thought was !
This made me laugh (was interested, never heard of them)
Picked one at random: https://www.doddle.com/locations/city-thameslink
Monday to Friday
07:30 19:00
Weekends & Bank Holidays
CLOSED
Commute & collect
Send, collect or return your parcels, 7 days a week, from the train station.
Picked one at random: https://www.doddle.com/locations/city-thameslink
Monday to Friday
07:30 19:00
Weekends & Bank Holidays
CLOSED
Commute & collect
Send, collect or return your parcels, 7 days a week, from the train station.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
To be fair, the City of London is near enough empty at weekends and most businesses don't open on weekends as a result. Though I agree the statement is quite amusing 
Take Hatfield for instance.. There's plenty of space available in the new retail extension at the station but instead they're opening at the Uni.. So instead of having the large amount of students that use the train plus all the other passengers as potential customers they're now just getting students..
But eBay and Amazon make up a very big proportion of parcels in the UK. And Amazon just culled Collect+ - I am sure they will be more than happy to get rid of Doddle as soon as they've got enough Amazon Lockers.
The point isn't whether Doddle is a good service or bad, it's that NR are investing a load of public money on it instead of actually doing their job.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
Doddle can, of course, be used even if the supplier don't support it - you put your customer number in the address, have it delivered there, and pay them their 2 quid (or whatever it is) directly. That's one big difference from the other services, and one they don't seem to be shouting about particularly well.
Give me 5 minutes to reply as Im just off to tell royal mail that their business model is not going to work because Amazon lockers are going to do away with them....
My local Doddle is great. It's open 7 days a week, 6 of them until 20:00, and the staff there tell me the plan is to expand into 24-hour collection service via a pickup window they can gate off from the rest of the shop. They've installed Amazon Lockers in the potentially-24-hour half, so even if they decide not to do the staffed collection window, they can still make the lockers available 'round the clock.
They've even just had a changing room installed, so that you can try things on that you bought online and return them if necessary.
I mostly use it as a free Amazon collection point, but have used their paid-for collection service a few times also.
I think it's a great idea to put them near the stations that people commute through anyway, just like how major stations have express supermarkets in or adjacent to them.
This may be a bit off-topic, but I think click-and-collect is going to save the high street and it's nice to see NR innovating in this way.
They've even just had a changing room installed, so that you can try things on that you bought online and return them if necessary.
I mostly use it as a free Amazon collection point, but have used their paid-for collection service a few times also.
I think it's a great idea to put them near the stations that people commute through anyway, just like how major stations have express supermarkets in or adjacent to them.
This may be a bit off-topic, but I think click-and-collect is going to save the high street and it's nice to see NR innovating in this way.
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Jonfun
Established Member
I actually think it's a very good idea. In the past three weeks I've had to make three separate visits to the Royal Mail sorting office (which is a 25 minute walk into town then a train out to Sandhills, and is only open during office hours) because I was at work when my parcels came. Having it sent to a parcels office at Piccadilly station would mean that I have to take all of a 30 second detour on my way down from the office to the train home.
If they open one in Leeds, I will be perfectly happy to pay £5 a month or whatever and have all my parcels signed for, ready to pick up on the way home, rather than have to worry about waiting in or getting flatmates / landlords to sign for and potentially open my stuff.
Goldfish62
Veteran Member
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I use Doddle and find it really useful - no more waiting in for couriers not to turn up.
Because there are a load of news stories around when they trialled it on their own employees in Milton Keynes. It wasn't split off into a separate independent company until the trial was successful.
Just because the initial concept was aimed at railway commuters doesn't mean they can't open elsewhere. In fact, they have recently announced a change in strategy to open less outlets at stations then they planned to and introduce an agent based model.
myByBox offered this service for a number of years. You gave your delivery address as their warehouse in the Midlands and then they redirected it by the next morning to your chosen locker at supermarkets, petrol stations etc. I used this a few times but this was not very well publicised and it closed earlier this year, probably due to intense competition from Collect+, Amazon Lockers etc. It was good because you could use any retailer, but I expect that they closed because the competition was more visible due to being listed as delivery options at several major retailers.
Also, delivery firms are now leaving parcels at neighbours a lot more, reducing the need for these services.
There are a number of locker firms now, but they seem to concentrate on business to business deliveries.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
For some. I want them *not* to do that, as it tends to result in a lot of faff trying to be in at the same time as the neighbours.
very much this ^^ of course our neighbours on both sides and across the road that we would trust to take in any parcels, also happen to have jobs and are out when the postman comes round
Well, as i expected they've pretty much went bust, burning thru millions of taxpayer money (thru NR) - on top of the lost rent as i guess they gave them preferential slots and rent deals (though that is complete speculation). Public companies should not be behaving as venture capital funds.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
The concept was going to work...the local shops just got there first.
BestWestern
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But it didn't work, though! Surely a decent strategist would have forseen that the competiton was better?
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
I worded my post badly...the corner shop version came slightly later.
BestWestern
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But it was, surely, inevitable that the concept would be expanded (and, thus, bettered) by more flexible competition? NR would probably have made more money by just allowing Amazon to install banks of their lockers at stations? In fact, presumably they probably now will do!
The business inside article is staggering. The first year they lost £11m on sales of £16k. The second year wasn't much better. At the trends they're going they'd need probably hundreds of millions of pounds to even break even, assuming they ever got there.
Tbh this always happens when you get crazy investment money with no sales. It's too easy to burn cash. It's ridiculous that NR burnt £30m+ on this terribly ran business when there are so many uses for that money rather than playing Peter Jones.
Tbh this always happens when you get crazy investment money with no sales. It's too easy to burn cash. It's ridiculous that NR burnt £30m+ on this terribly ran business when there are so many uses for that money rather than playing Peter Jones.
Do you have a link to the article? Thanks!
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