Published
Aug 27, 2019
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Click and collect fails many shoppers, £228m of parcels uncollected

Published
Aug 27, 2019

It may come as something of a surprise given the rapid rise of click and collect as an online delivery method, but large numbers of parcels for pick-up are remaining uncollected in shops, a new report claims.


Happy click and collect customers will buy more products in-store



Around £228 million worth of uncollected products have been left in shops in the last year, with customers doing so not because they don't want the items, but because collection points have been understaffed and queues have been too long.

That's bad news for retailers who not only have to refund what could have been a completed sale, but also have to spend time and money on processing both the deliveries and the returns.

The report comes from Barclaycard, which said over 70% of UK consumers now use click and collect but 15% are not collecting their items.

Click and collect a seems like an ideal option for shoppers whose workplaces don't allow them to take personal deliveries and who won't be at home when parcels arrive. As a result, Britons sign up for a click and collect order twice every month.

But the Barclaycard survey of 2,000 people found as many as a third of them describing the collection process as a “hassle” and preferring to wait for their refund to come through rather than bothering with collection. On the plus side, at least many of them do then reorder the items for delivery direct to their homes.

Clearly, retailers are missing a trick here. We already know that consumers who visit shops in order to pick up their parcels frequently do some extra shopping in the store at the same time. And in the survey, as many as 40% of respondents said they would visit shops more often if the click and collect process was smoother, offering huge potential for add-on sales to be made on the way.

Looking again at the reasons for consumers not collecting their orders, Long waiting times at collection points was seen as a problem by 25% of shoppers and the same number claimed too few staff at the collection points added to the hassle. Some 17% even said that they even struggled to find exactly where they should be collecting the parcel and 15% didn't like the fact that they were charged for click and collect.

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