We recently had a leaky bathroom basin mixer to return to the supplier, and so unsurprisingly took it down to the Post Office. It was a relatively bulky package, about 5Kg, and to insure the content up to £100 and send it to Manchester was going to cost £27. Absolutely ridiculous! So I went to the local DHL depot to see if it would be any cheaper. Apparently not - they wanted £30.

To cut a long story short, we ended up at Parcel2Go. They claim to be the largest online parcel delivery service in the UK. You don't need to go to a depot, you just book it up online, pay by credit card, and it costs £10 instead of £30! Better still, the parcel actually ships via DHL. It would have been even cheaper, but we paid a slight premium because the value of our item exceeded £50. Otherwise it might have been closer to £7 to ship it. There are several such "online parcel" services - well worth checking out.

Is it just me, or does this make no sense? £30 if I take it to DHL and put it on the counter of their depot, or for £7 they will send a van to my door, collect the item and ship it... well, whatever! Maybe they just don't want members of the public inconveniencing their staff by making things too easy.