Yodel becomes the latest victim of a cyber 'incident' Delivery company Yodel has found itself the latest victim of a cyber "incident" that has disrupted services. Rooted firmly to the bottom of the table of best and worst courier firms by consumer campaigner Which? Yodel has gained popularity and, perhaps, a bit of notoriety in recent years as consumers turned to courier …
Plus a mechanism for learning from incidents so they don't recur. In over two decades of consulting I've never seen a DR plan that explicitly required (or even formally provided for) such learning for the future. They've all just stopped at bringing the organisation back to normal this time round.
To dream the impossible dream
To fight the unbeatable foe
To bear with unbearable sorrow
And to run where the brave dare not go
.
To right the unrightable wrong
And to love pure and chaste from afar
To try when your arms are to weary
To trace the untraceable parcel
.
This is my quest
To follow that parcel
Ooh, no matter how hopeless
No matter how far
To fight for the right
Without question or pause
To be willing to march, march into hell
For that heavenly cause
.
And I know
If I'll only be true
To this glorious quest
That my heart
Will lie peaceful and calm
When I'm laid to my rest
.
And the world will be better for this
Oh, that one man, scorned and covered with scars
Still strong with his last ounce of courage
To trace the untraceable, the untraceable
The untraceable parcel
.
Yeah, and I'll always dream
The impossible dream
Yes, and I'll trace
The untraceable parcel
Yodel has gained popularity and, perhaps, a bit of notoriety in recent years as consumers turned to courier companies rather than venture into physical stores.
Aren't the consumers the companies selling the tat rather than the people (hopefully) getting the goods?
Icon because end-consumers have little choice -->
Yes. The sellers are the consumers of Yodal services. The buyers rarely, if ever, get a choice in which delivery method is used. I have, in the past, cancelled my order at the online checkout when presented with Yodal as the only delivery option.
One one experience with them was ordering a TV. I paid extra for next day delivery. It turned up after 5 days, having sat on the other side of the country in a depot in Liverpool for 4 days. Their excuse? It takes two people to delivery something that heavy!. Well, duh! Don't accept next day consignments if you can't delivery them on time! My phone call to the supplier ended up as a three-way with the Yodal rep. Both apologised and I got the extra money back I'd paid for the next day delivery with a confirmed delivery data. I should have asked for more since 5 days was even outside the so-called "normal" delivery duration. On the plus side, the driver did knock at the and deliver it as agreed and didn't throw it over the fence, or put a card in the door and run away.
Twice recently I have Yodel lie about failed delivery and leaving a card - at a time when I was at home and had my front door under observation. When the packages eventually arrived (after several days, not 48 hours) the plants they contained were dead. I've told the firms concerned they'll have no more orders from me until they change their courier.
In the meantime I wish Yodel as much cyberhavoc as possible.
Now I've got your attention....
In the area where I live Yodel is one of the better courier companies.
But then we also get good service from RoyalMail and BT.....
Whereas Amazon think they can turn up at 23:00hrs and UPS think it's clever to deliver to a farm 5 miles away as a 'green alternative'.........
Then you should have chosen a delivery site you frequent more often so you can retrieve your parcel while shopping etc. Our local Coop has both an Amazon locker stack at the back and takes parcel deliveries from some firms too. My next pair of shoes should turn up there.
Paypal has acknowledged the transaction but the site has not. Last pair my size . . .
...why anyone would pick Jodel for delivery. But then, the customer does not select the courier. This is a function of the supplier, who goes for the cheapest, and easiest. It is, however the customer who pays. Double in this case. The price for delivery is buried in the purchase price, and the uncertainty of delivery, timely, or even ever, is bourne by the customer. I recently suffered from Jodell's terrible service, waiting a whole week, for the parcel to leave the local depot. They were terrible before the re-badging, and even woese, now.
I mean, the attack literally took days to notice because the disrupted services weren't sufficiently different from the normal services.
This reminds me of the time many years ago when Apple put out an ad bragging that while thousands of viruses existed for PCs there were next to none for Macs. A virus creator responded with an open letter saying "Yes, it's hard to create viruses for Macs - the market share is so small that they don't propagate effectively".
Back in the Noughties the lab had a communal Mac which ran rather slowly. I had cause to put my Zip disc in it. When I put it back in my Mac tower (I installed the Zip drive personally) I got a notice that it had acquired a virus. The first time that precaution had ever found something. I put an antivirus program on a CD and scanned the offending machine. It was absolutely riddled with nvir.
It had no effect other than slowing the machine. Disinfecting it sped it up considerably.
Being owned by a pair of Billionaire brothers might not help Yodel when it comes to negotiating any ransom price, if that is the attack type.
Not sure what has been going on at Yodel, they used to be great round here, but in the last few months we get parcels days late, fraudulent delivery claims (Yodel themselves had to admit photo and GPS data showed they'd not been within miles of our house) and Yodel staff submitting change of delivery day/address on parcels so they can deliver late.
One company we use a lot are investigating the issues with them now and have switched our deliveries to ParcelForce who thankfully are on a good phase!
I've had them deliver to a house several streets away - slightly similarly named road but different postcode - and leaving the packages on the front doorstep there before letting me know they'd been delivered to my home. I had to go out and find them and cart them back (heavy items).
On another occasion they told me that two items were delivered even though only one was handed over and signed for. I had to use CCTV to show the driver arriving at the door with only one parcel before they admitted the error and delivered the second item a couple of days later.
As mentioned earlier, if they are the delivery option, don't shop there.
Our Evri (they have been renamed) deliveries are excellent. Parcel Force aren’t bad either. Today’s PF parcel was in my paper recycling bin as indicated on the note through the door. Evri do that too. Advantage of Co’s keeping the same people on the routes so they know the houses.
I was waiting for a Yodel parcel and since their tracking wasn't working I had no idea whether it was going to come that day or not so decided to go out and do some work out at the back of my house and enjoy the sunshine. I missed the Yodel driver ringing the door bell but thankfully my neighbour was home and took in the parcel for me.
But no calling card was left to inform me that they had delivered it to a neighbour the the online tracking says its still at the depot, so if I was an unscrupulous type I could just claim it never arrived and get my money back from the merchant. So I expect there will be a lot of missing parcel claims from this cyber incident.
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