Did Santa lose your Christmas presents?

Like so many surveys we are provided with highlights and not the underlying questions. The questions might be quite simplistic and designed to commercially aid the commissioner of the research , in this case JDA Software.

The selection of the online respondents also is of interest as one assumes that like Which? Connect each company has a panel of people it emails for its surveys. Are people who volunteer, or who are paid to complete surveys, representative of the population?

Particularly where one is paid there exists the possibilty that some people might take on multiple personalities and ages to give responses and earn easy money.

This gives a flavour of the way Yougov works:
“I’ve done Yougov for nearly 4 years. I’ve had one £50 cheque and I’m at the £40 mark now (must have been about one survey a week). They paid promptly.

I prefer them to others I’ve tried because I’ve never started a survey, only to be disqualified – they seem to use your profile before sending e-mails and pay you even if you don’t have to answer many questions.The trick with all these surveys is to remember that they’re all ridiculous and exist only to make profits for the surveying companies and headlines for the media! They don’t use random sampling so their results are completely meaningless – don’t waste time thinking at length about your answers! ”

I have no doubt that there is a germ of truth to most things but I think we the public may be fooled because fundamentally we like to think that these are scientific surveys and that the outlets that use them are concerned that they are accurate.

Incidentally a French survey found that blondes and left-handers are slower surfing the Net. This actually was a scientific survey of 4000 people.

Thanks Sam. I’d have more faith in your poll than, initially, in one that gives such a high proportion of failures. Are you going to repeat last year’s research? It would be interesting to see whether this Christmas was disastrously different. I assume you check the credibility of the YouGov poll before publishing its results?

I so wish the customer could control the consignment. There are several firms I dread discovering are bringing my goods. Time is not usually of the essence but the worst carriers are usually the slowest as well. So many sellers do not package goods adequately these days to cope with the ups-&-downs of delivery practices and the over-the-gate heave-ho that epitomises so many of them.

I agree, it would be nice to know which carrier is being used; would influence my choice of online seller.

I did not have any problem with Christmas deliveries. Just before I went away for the Christmas break I thanked my postman for his efforts. I asked him if Royal Mail had changed since privatisation because I have not seen any difference. He warned me that service standards will fall and gave some reasons. I don’t know if this is true or just resentment to change.

Like Rarrar, I like to know which carrier a company uses. At present my preference is for Royal Mail/Parcelforce because I live close to their depot and it is usually more convenient to pick up parcels than to wait in for a delivery.

+1 for Royal Mail & Parcel Force for me.
Parcel Force guy is very good at leaving items with neighbours, local shop or even at one’s place of work in the small town where I live.