Doorstep phone delivery from Parceline

A home delivery service tailored specifically for the mobile phone market has been launched by express carrier Parceline. It is aimed at phones sold with service contracts, and is said to allow suppliers to get users connected up to a day earlier than previously — improving the service offer while gaining a day’s potential call revenue.
The first user of the service, which is branded contractpak, is Complete Mobile Communications, the official national distributor for Vodafone Connectis. CMC also distributes phones for Orange.
The service scores because it combines Parceline’s established data-gathering capability with a new system for managing contract exchanges on the user’s doorstep.
Parceline was one of the pioneers in the use of handheld terminals to gather doorstep delivery data and transmit it back to the depot in nearrealtime. Under the contractpak service, confirmation of delivery is captured and posted on the Parceline Web site through its track and trace system within an hour of delivery — providing confirmation that the end
user has signed up. This means the user can be connected to the mobile network little more than minutes after receiving the phone.
Underpinning this process, Parceline has developed an innovative system for the physical handling of contract documents. A special twocompartment delivery pack is used to keep the paperwork separate from the phone itself, and allows the phone to be despatched in one section and
the signea documents to oe retrievea in the other. They are sealed in place the doorstep before the phone is actually handed over, then taken back to base and despatched onward to the supplier by premium next-day delivery service.
Drivers are said to have been put through special training to underline the importance of handling the whole transaction correctly.