OK. You’ve decided that you want to send your package to or from Spain by Courier because you want real-time tracking; because it’s valuable and you don’t trust the ordinary post; because you need a time-definite delivery or just because it’s cheaper. How do you choose which of the four international couriers from Spain you are going to use?

Well, if you are a member of the public and you come to the Citibox website for a Discounted Courier Quote (see below) we will make the decision for you so you don’t have to worry. It will be far cheaper than going direct to the courier company and you will have the added protection of using Citibox with its high-level contacts direct into the courier companies.

However, if you are a business sending courier to and from Spain, there are many other factors so here is a little help in making the choice. Nearly every business regularly sending more than a couple of parcels a week will be able to get some discount from the international courier companies (this is far more problematical if you are trying to achieve a discount from the Spanish courier companies, you need massive volume). Most times, a representative will call and will ask to see some evidence of your current spend on parcels. FedEx do not run a domestic service within Spain but the other three international couriers do, so they may take into account both your domestic and international monthly spend. If you send 100 courier parcels to or from Spain every week, you’ve already got a good price but for those who send two or ten or twenty, what do you do?

Let’s look at the four services, one by one, and I’ll give you my opinion of each service. I emphasise that this is purely a personal opinion based on personal experience of dealing with all four. I am giving my impression as a business user and not as a member of the public, Citibox has accounts with all four so can usually give you a discount and I’ll put my least favourite first. It must be bourne in mind that NO service will deliver 100% of the time and the most valuable thing you can have is backup when something goes wrong. Also, some services in Spain cannot offer next-day delivery for your really urgent packages, neither TNT nor UPS offer next-day delivery from Javea in Alicante because they truck the parcels and letters to Madrid whereas FedEx air-lifts them from Alicante airport.

TNT. On the minus side; you will have a regional representative to whom you can ask for help in the event that something goes wrong. You may very well not get through, you won’t get much help if you do, they loose and damage a disproportionately high number of items. Currently we have a customer who has asked to try them out because they are cheaper than FedEx and has had three missed collections in a row. Items in the UK have gone missing, presumed stolen by the van driver, in Spain things have been consistently damaged or delivery has been late (i.e. after the trade show ended the samples arrived). Many of these negatives are down to the franchise system that they operate in many parts of Spain. On the plus side they are very competitive on price within Europe, especially for Eastern Europe within the EU where they cannot be beaten for heavier items.

DHL. To be fair, I haven