uShip potential customers – beware.

We recently contacted a service provider through a service called uShip. The concept of Uship seemed really good – a real dragons den of an idea – in essence, service providers (typically ‘van drivers’) bid on jobs posted by people who need stuff shifting. The concept, if it all goes smoothly is excellent. The customer gets to choose between several different service providers, whilst drivers, perhaps with a load going one way can often make money on what would have been an empty van, coming back.

We wanted a cooker that we’d won on eBay shifting from Wales to Yorkshire. We had several bids, and went with the cheapest. As a bonus, the timings looked really flexible and convenient. The service provider had a 5 star service review rating, so we thought we were in safe hands. After a week of messing about and two no shows – one of which we didn’t even hear from the ‘service’ provider until nearly 24 hours after he’d spuriously cancelled the job – we had to start all over again.

What I didn’t know at the time..

Whilst all the reviews are genuine, they are ONLY reviews from completed transactions and do not take cancellations into account. After our second no show the chap cancelled. No worries if it wasn’t going well for him, he’d just cancel. No harm done (to him). I’d argue that the rating is heavily biased to happy customers – ie people who’ve actually had their stuff delivered. It turns out that our Mr. No Show had done similar number on a few other people – as I read about once I’d discovered the rather buried away Cancellations tab within a service providers profile page.

We subsequently started the whole process again with uShip and I have to say, thankfully, second time lucky – we found a service provider who was superb. Uship sux? Parts of it do, but we found that when the Uship service worked as intended, it seems to be a fantastic service but the Start Rating system doesn’t reward exceptional service, or highlight poor service. If you look, everyone seems to have around 5 stars which may look great at first impression and stimulate business, but it’s not really a true rating system by any yard stick.

Uship tip

If you are using Uship service as someone who needs stuff shifting, you may as well ignore the star rating, it’s not worth the digital ink it’s written on – instead, make sure you check out the cancellations tab on the providers profile page. That will hopefully get a good idea of who you’re dealing with based on past rants from unhappy ‘customers’.