Stephen Abel found a way to save a lot of money shipping parcels and went on to find a solution to save himself time as well. In 2005 he founded P4D | Parcels for Delivery to share his ideas with others and on their sixth birthday this month, P4D is now a well-established, successful million pound company.
The Business Model
P4D is a courier service with a twist. They’re one of only a few official partners of the major courier companies like City Link, DHL, TNT, YODEL, Parcelforce and Palletways, offering heavily discounted parcel and pallet delivery prices to smaller businesses and individuals. They built their own booking systems in-house with an aim to keep them as easy to use as possible and they can integrate your shopping cart with your shipping account to make deliveries simpler still – no more manual entry ever again!
P4D differs from the competition because they’re a software company at heart looking to make the parcel delivery process hassle free, but as well as low prices they also pride themselves in offering exceptional customer support – especially when things go wrong. They answer emails quickly and oftentimes out of hours, plus they’ve a dedicated Customer Service team to take your calls.
The Software Solution
In 2008 Stephen teamed up with Chris Black – Chief Geek! P4D already offered cheap deals, but Chris designed systems that were instant, intuitive, and for regular senders took away all the admin headaches. Customers sending more than 200 parcels a month became P4D Pro customers with even cheaper tariffs and a courier service to suit their business, plus access to online invoicing, file uploads for delivery addresses, and full customer support as well.
P4D now offers a wide choice of courier services – whatever it is you want to send they’ll do their best to find you a solution, but for regular shipments their website quote tool simply works it all out for you. They can link up to any online shop, not just eBay, and have their own API (you’ll know one if you have one!) for technical bods wanting to integrate their shipping account with their sales.
They even offer their customers the opportunity to carbon offset their deliveries with a clever bit of code that calculates how long your shipment spends on the road or in the air, and you can also ‘round up your pound’ for their chosen charity, which changes every three months.
Find out more
If you’d like to find out more about P4D, Steve or his Account Managers will be more than happy to chat with you. They’ll get to know your business and work out how low they can get your tariff, plus determine which courier service best suits your needs. Otherwise, you might find the answer to your question already listed on their website in the FAQ section.
If you’re not a regular sender, but you’re looking for great deals and an easy booking system, you can get an instant quote online 24/7 for the very next parcel you want to send or get some advice from a P4D Customer Service Guru on 01295 267200.
Keep in touch
P4D have a strong online presence with a growing community around the web. Find them on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and many smaller networks.
Be sure to meet their Superhero and introduce him to your friends! .
