Buying a used bike remotely - couriers?

Paisley Freight

This keeps getting asked and I keep on coming on to say avoid Paisly freight like the plague, pain in the bottom to deal and just lie when something goes wrong rather than trying to fix it .
Parcel Force or Tufnells instead

Whomever the seller trusts. It’s their responsibility to get the bike to you.

Whomever the seller trusts. It’s their responsibility to get the bike to you.

That depends on how it's advertised.

That depends on how it’s advertised.

Indeed. Is this advertised as a buyer collects or is the seller fully up for this?

For context, if I were to advertise as buyer collects I'd be expecting to take a bit of financial hit as I've vastly reduced my audience for an easy life. In that case if someone wanted to send an 'agent' to collect I'd be wheeling them the bike over as a whole bike and it would be up to them to package etc and take the hit if anything when wrong. And it would be sold as seen to the eye of whomever did the picking up regardless of their competence to make that judgement. If I was up for selling it to someone remotely it would be me doing the organising of the courier and packaging and adding the cost to the final fee.

I advertised my previous e-bike; I made it totally clear that it was collection only. A chap got in contact with me and offered me the full asking price if I would agree to post it to to him at his cost. Reluctantly/greedily, I agreed if he agreed to take full responsibility for arranging the courier and any damage that might occur. And so the nightmare began.

After agreeing that he would arrange he then asked me to get it sorted. I reminded him of our agreement. He messed me about for several days, before I agreed to his request that I would book Sendabike as the courier. I should have just bailed out on the sale but the advert had been on Ebay and I couldn't be doing with fees, relisting, etc.

Sendabike sent a massive box, and collected the bike 2 days later. The bike then went missing before being returned to me in a thoroughly crumbled state 10 days later. Who would have though that they would use an airline to transport a massive bike-in-a-box from Stockport to Inverness?!! The airline rejected the suspicious package.
The buyer then suggested he wanted to pull out and would offer me £100 "For my troubles". I made an alternative suggestion!
The buyer then arranged for a local man-in-van to collect. That went perfectly smoothly, although the buyer told me it cost him £260. The buyer was into this for well over £400 courier fees at this point.

Conclusions-
1) Sendabike are probably great for non-ebikes (although they show ebikes on their webpage).
2) Man-in-van service was easy although expensive.
3) If I ever advertise as Collection only again... I'll be sticking to it!

I've use paisley a couple of times, where they provide a box a few days before for the seller to package the bike up

The seller needs to be prepared to part disassemble (pedals off, front wheel off, remove the handlebars) and to package the bike up

Once the box delivery was delayed and the courier came to collect the bike before the box had been delivered. But their email support was quick to sort it out.

Paisley Freight for me used about 3 times zero issues.

For balance, Paisley Freight lied to me, didn't turn up when they said they would, dropped the package from height which bent the dropout, refuse to speak to you because of covid (?)

Quite simply, they (or their West Midlands ARC subby) are worse than Evri, and I will never use them again.

Whomever the seller trusts

Yeah, I used to trust Evri after tons of ok deliveries. Not anymore.
Paisleyfreight have always been good when I've used them - notice though, the default insurance is only £100. Once you put it at a sensible cover amount the price rockets from the standard £34

The buyer then arranged for a local man-in-van to collect. That went perfectly smoothly, although the buyer told me it cost him £260.

That’s steep, I had a motorcycle delivered from near Leeds to Wimbledon for £150. Maybe try one of those.

For balance, Paisley Freight lied to me, didn’t turn up when they said they would, dropped the package from height which bent the dropout, refuse to speak to you because of covid (?)

Sounds familiar. They didn't turn up so often that I invoiced them for wasted time, they refused to cough up, I filed a smalls claim claim and they backed down the day before the case and paid.

Never had any issues with Paisley Freight but obviously heed the info from those that have. I don't think I spotted the insurance bit and I sent a 1.5k bike using them, thankfully it went smoothly.

Thanks all, it’s a 3k bike so with decent insurance none of the options look cheap and it sounds like each have their pitfalls (not to mention not seeing the bike first!)

On a completely unrelated note, anyone need a lift from Bristol to Glasgow or back tomorrow?! 😂