Do Courier Services Pick Up from Home?

Sending out a couple of parcels now and then is of course not a big deal..

But if you are consistently dealing with sending a large volume of parcels along with the other processes and tasks at hand, you may be looking for a more convenient option. 

Opting for a home pickup service might be the perfect solution in this situation, as long as you understand its prerequisites and process right. Let us go ahead and understand why home pickup services are so helpful in the first place.

Why Choose Home Pickup Services?

When you are running a business whether from a commercial establishment or from the comfort of your home, you may not always have the time to take care of every little thing. Time can quickly start seeming like a luxury especially when you want to take on routine or mundane tasks that do not directly translate into any kind of revenue for your business.

This is when opting for a courier service that picks up from home is a good idea. These services pick up parcels from your doorstep rather than you having to go to their doorstep. What’s more, in most cases, you will be able to schedule a pickup time that is convenient for you without any additional effort.

The best part is that when you opt for home pickup services, you need not worry about operational hours of the courier service, or staff availability. The courier partners will typically reach your location within 24 hours of scheduling your courier pickup (excluding weekends and public holidays) which can even prove to be beneficial for urgent shipments.

Pickup from home courier services can be especially beneficial when you are dealing with special shipments that might warrant complicated procedures. You will be able to navigate the shipment of such parcels with assistance from the personnel collecting your parcel rather than understanding everything independently.

How To Prepare Your Parcel for Shipping at Home

Now that you know about the primary benefits you can achieve by opting for home pickup services for your courier, you should be aware of the next step. Let us look at the considerations you have in mind, and how you can prepare your parcel for shipment if you are getting it picked up from home.

Utilise Secure Packaging

Depending on the parcel that you are trying to ship out, you should utilise the right kind of secure packing for your shipment. After all, securing your parcel with the right packaging is the most primary way for you to prevent any kind of damages that may occur while your shipment is in transit.

Right from being loaded on to a transportation vehicle, to being sorted out at a facility and then to being delivered, your parcel is going through several stages where it can incur some form of damage. To prevent this from happening, you should opt for sturdy packaging materials that are of the right size considering your parcel.

If your parcel is fragile or breakable, you should bubble wrap it for cushioning. Once your shipment is packaged, ensure to seal it securely with a strong and pressure sensitive tape.

Add Labels To Your Parcel

Needless to say, labels are important as they contain important information about the parcel, courier service company, tracking information as well as delivery information. Your label should at the very least contain the recipient’s name, their full address and their contact information. 

It is also recommended that you include the return address, and relevant contact information on the label so that it can be used in case of a parcel return. Most airmail and postage courier services will insist that you add all the related phone numbers so that deliveries can be facilitated easily.

Weight and Dimension Information

Your shipping costs would depend on the weight and dimensions of your parcel, and hence should be calculated properly. In fact, the weight of your parcel will be the most important parameter based on which your shipping costs are built, and the type of service you will need.

Ensure that you weigh your parcels using a reliable and calibrated scale. While you can easily use a kitchen scale for smaller parcels, you may need a heavy-duty scale to weigh larger or heavier items. Remember that if the weight falls somewhere between two numbers, it is a good idea to round it off so that you do not have to deal with any kind of surprise fees later on.

You can estimate the exact shipping cost once you have calculated the exact weight of your parcel. While different pick up from home courier service will charge you differently for home pickups and parcels of various weights and dimensions, you can get a strong estimate of the money you will have to spend while sending a shipment.

How to Pick the Right Courier 

Once you have taken care of all the considerations that go into preparing your parcel for shipment, the next aspect you should focus on is choosing the right couriers that pick up from home. You need an effective courier service partner that offers home pickup services to associate with after you check a few important details about them.

Before you go about choosing a courier service, it is important to understand the specific requirements that you may have for your shipments. You need to ask these pertinent questions in the process:

• Is the parcel you are trying to send valuable, financially or emotionally?

• Do you need the delivery to be carried out urgently? Do you need priority courier services?

• Is it a standard shipment that does not require any kind of special handling?

You will often find courier companies that specialise in a specific aspect out of these, and then there will be some who will offer all of these services and more. With that in mind, the most important thing to consider is the alignment between your shipment needs and the services offered by a specific courier company.

Schedule Your Courier Pickup

One of the advantages associated with using professional courier companies for sending out your parcels is that you can schedule your courier pickup according to your convenience and urgency. You can easily schedule your courier pickup so that you can prepare the shipment properly, and ensure that the whole process goes smoothly.

Online Scheduling

Most courier companies will provide you the option of scheduling your courier pickup online through their website. Such companies will either have an online portal, a form on their website or a mobile application that you can use to schedule the home pickup of your courier. All you have to do in any of these cases is log into your account, enter your shipment details, and confirm pickup details such as the date, time and location.

Call Customer Service

If you are not comfortable with scheduling your courier pickup online or if the service is not available in your area, the other option you have is to schedule your pickup by calling up the customer service. This is the more traditional method, and is also considered the more reliable one as you can get an immediate confirmation, and also address any questions you may have about the process.

You will be able to utilise this option by calling up the toll-free number provided by the courier company you are opting for. Remember to have all the shipment details such as its weight, dimension, destination and other special handling instructions ready when you call the customer service for scheduling the pickup.

After they have all the pertinent details, the customer service representative will help you schedule a pickup time for your courier based on your needs and convenience.

Enable Real-Time Tracking For Your Couriers

Once you have dealt with all the steps leading up to sending off your parcel successfully to its destination, you may want to need assurance of its safety during the transit. While people could only send their parcels and hope that it gets delivered on time without any sort of additional update, the real-time tracking feature offered by courier services today has changed this scenario. Every courier company will provide you a tracking number or link once your parcel is shipped, which you can then use to gauge its location and safety.

Wrapping Up

Regardless of whether you are an individual or a business, if you have consistent courier service requests, and lack time to take care of them, home pickup services might help you out in the process. By enabling home pickup for your couriers, you can ensure that your parcels are sent out on time, safely, without too much hassle on your end.

You can also use this online postage calculator to get an accurate estimate of the costs associated with sending your shipment.