法国大件商品最后一公里配送：为何B2C预约配送是成败的关键一步
介绍
Selling a sofa, treadmill or refrigerator on the internet is one thing. Getting it past a French apartment door on a day when the consumer is actually home is something else again. The last mile has always been the most expensive and most error-prone part of the whole supply chain in Europe, and this friction is particularly visible in the bulky products market when shipping from China to France.
France is one of the most strategically significant and logistically challenging markets for cross-border heavy-freight sellers. The country’s e-commerce industry is mature, its consumers are demanding, and its legislative and urban infrastructure provide a unique set of delivery obstacles that are just not found elsewhere. For Chinese exporters, independent-site (standalone store) vendors and cross-border e-commerce platforms looking to sell to Europe, knowing how B2C appointment delivery works in France is not a good to have information. It’s the operational lynchpin that determines if a shipment becomes a delighted customer, a costly re-delivery or a product return.
This essay decodes the mechanics, the market data, the usual failure points and the logistical structure that makes B2C appointment delivery for bulky products operate in France in 2025. It also demonstrates how working with a specialist such as Topway Shipping makes one of the most challenging phases in international logistics scalable and repeatable.
The French Bulky-Goods Market: Numbers That Define the Stakes
France is no small fish. Last-mile logistics in the country was worth around 15 billion euros in 2025 and is expected to expand at a compound annual rate of more than 3 percent through 2033. In 2024, the B2C category represented 67% of the overall last-mile delivery market in France, driven by 10 years of increasing e-commerce penetration in categories such as furniture, home appliances, fitness equipment and consumer electronics.
The last mile delivery for large e-commerce items is a USD 20.15 Billion market in 2024 and is projected to touch roughly USD 43.2 billion by 2033 at a CAGR of 8.85 percent. Home delivery is currently the preferred option for bulky items for over 75 percent of consumers worldwide. Demand for that sub-segment has seen an increase of over 35 percent in recent years. France is the second largest European market by e-commerce volume for vendors sourcing from China, after Germany, and the appetite for bigger products supplied from Asia continues to grow.
Increased demand doesn’t automatically result into lucrative deliveries. Up to 40% of last-mile expenditures in bulky shipments are due to unsuccessful deliveries and returns. Missing a washing machine or a sectional sofa appointment is not a small thing. It starts a sequence of re-scheduling, secondary transportation, re-storage and customer support charges that can easily erase the margin on a single purchase. In 2023, France’s government platform SignalConso registered more than 24,000 consumer complaints about delivery problems, and a subsequent investigation by the French Directorate General for Competition Policy, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control looked at some fifty companies in the delivery chain. The main problems are failure to meet delivery time windows, leaving products at unauthorised relay points and outright unwillingness to deliver bulky items to upper floors.
This is the situation that every cross border merchant targeting French consumers must negotiate. It makes professional B2C appointment delivery not merely operationally necessary but legally and commercially critical.
| 米制 | 价值 | 来源/年份 |
| France last-mile logistics market size (2025) | ~EUR 15 billion | Market Report Analytics, 2025 |
| B2C share of France last-mile market (2024) | 67% | 魔多情报，2024 |
| Global bulky-item last-mile market (2024) | USD 20.15十亿美元 | Business Research Insights, 2024 |
| Projected global bulky-item market (2033) | USD 43.2 billion (CAGR 8.85%) | Business Research Insights, 2025 |
| Consumers preferring home delivery for bulky goods | > 75％ | Business Research Insights, 2024 |
| Share of last-mile costs from failed deliveries / returns | 〜40％ | Business Research Insights, 2024 |
| French consumer delivery complaints (2023) | >24,000 on SignalConso | DGCCRF investigation, Dec 2024 |
| Ile-de-France share of French last-mile revenue (2024) | 23% | 魔多情报，2024 |
2. What Makes Bulky-Goods Delivery in France Uniquely Difficult
But the problems in getting big portions to French homes are not random. They are the result of a set of well defined structural characteristics that any logistics provider operating in the market must engineer around.
Urban Housing Density and Apartment Access
France has one of the highest rates of flat living in Europe, particularly in Paris, Lyon, Marseille, Bordeaux and Lille. To get a 120-kilo massage chair or double-door fridge into a sixth-floor apartment in Haussmann-era Paris takes a lot of work in stairwells built in the 19th century, never designed with goods in mind. Many lifts when they exist cannot hold a conventional European pallet. Delivery personnel need to evaluate access restrictions prior to arrival, schedule lift reservations ahead of time, and frequently disassemble or pre-dismantle things to fit through some doorways. The chance of a failed birth is very significant without an appointment with this pre-coordination.
This is even more acute for cross-border retailers, as goods are shipped into international warehouses or container ports with no inherent way to contact customers or plan access. This is the sole responsibility of the last-mile carrier, and that is why the choice of the last-mile partner in France is disproportionately important.”
Consumer Expectations Have Shifted
The French consumer has become a lot more demanding on the timing of his deliveries. Studies across European markets demonstrate that the lack of a desired delivery option ranks as one of the top three reasons consumers leave carts during checkout and the French, in particular, put scheduled home delivery as their top preference for bulky goods. Most shoppers no longer settle for a fixed window of “deliver between 8 AM and 6 PM on Tuesday.” Winning conversions that others are missing out on include sellers that offer specific 2-hour delivery windows, text alerts and the chance to reschedule online.
This is end to end. What the merchant promises at the point of sale sets consumer expectations at the point of delivery. For example, if a Chinese cross border seller states “45-55 days delivery, appointment required” on the product website, then the logistics partner must be able to provide such a delivery service in Paris, Toulouse and Strasbourg.
Customs, DDP, and the Tax Complexity of France
As part of the EU, France imposes import VAT and customs charges on goods entering from China. B2C cross-border shipments include a lot of administrative intricacy. The EU VAT amendments that became effective after 2021 removed the EUR 22 low-value exemption barrier, therefore nearly all commercial imports from China to France now require VAT clearance at the point of entry. Large-sized products usually are also of a value that gives rise to customs duty obligations.
Sellers who try to ship without solid DDP (Delivered Duty Paid) terms risk having their goods stuck in customs, delayed for weeks, and eventually returned by consumers who get hit with unexpected tax bills. A single customs clearance failure on a 200-kilogram package is more than just a delayed order, it occupies space, consumes agent time and often incurs daily storage fees. The French customs authority (Direction Generale des Douanes) has become more attentive on undervalued business shipments, and for a cross-border vendor, the reputational cost of a customs detention is high.
The Specific Demands of Super-Large Freight
Not all bulky items are the same. The logistics industry breaks shipments down into different categories by weight and dimensions, and the niche Topway Shipping operates in, which they call “super-large” freight, is at the far end of that spectrum: single items up to 8 metric tonnes, with a longest side up to 8 meters and a height under 2.57 meters. This tier is completely different equipment, various types of vehicles, different arrangements of the delivery team than a regular heavy parcel.
For comparison, a standard treadmill for home use weighs 80-120 kg. An mechanised Mahjong table weights roughly 100 kg. A commercial ice cream machine can reach 250 kg. Some industrial equipment or outdoor lighting structures can weight many tonnes. For each of these categories, the last mile delivery approach in France is completely different and the logistics provider needs to have the infrastructure, the abilities of the crew and the appointment management system to be able to manage them.
The Anatomy of a B2C Appointment Delivery for Bulky Goods in France
If you execute it right, a B2C appointment delivery for heavy products in France is not a one-hand-off event. It’s a choreographed series of steps that begins long before the delivery car arrives at the customer’s address.
The process is normally activated by an outbound call or an automated SMS to the consignee immediately after the goods hits the domestic French distribution hub. The pre-notification stage is to get the recipient ready for what’s coming and to begin the dialogue about scheduling. For super-size items it also enables the carrier to ask vital access questions: Is there a ground-floor entrance with direct access inside? Is there a service lift? Do you need to schedule in advance to get goods into the building? For older French structures the answer to all three queries is often no. This is where the delivery team needs to plan accordingly.
Once appointments are scheduled, route optimisation is performed which for bulky products implies grouping appointments within a geographic zone on a given day to reduce the vehicle dead distance between stops. Parcel delivery is different – one driver can do 80 to 120 deliveries in a day. A bulky goods delivery team – usually two people – may do 6 to 10 deliveries a day, depending on what they are delivering and how easy it is to get to the drop-off point. Therefore, route efficiency is an important cost lever.
The staff will arrive within the stated timeframe on delivery day. If it takes two people to carry the item, or special equipment, they both need to be ready. For objects that need to be placed in the room of choice (which is the norm in France for furniture and appliances), the team must have protective mats, corner guards and in some cases basic tools for partial disassembly or reassembly. In the premium delivery tier it is generally expected that packaging be removed and disposed of . This is especially true for appliances when the consumer expects the item to be operational immediately .
Proof of delivery is documented digitally post delivery, generally by means of a customer signature on a handheld device. This digital confirmation is fed back into the tracking system, giving the seller real-time closure on each shipment – critical for e-commerce systems that manage order status updates and customer satisfaction rankings.
| 交付阶段 | 关键活动 | 关键成功因素 |
| Pre-arrival notification | SMS / call to recipient; access assessment | Contact rate and response within 24-48 hours |
| 预约安排 | Agree on 2-4 hour delivery window | System flexibility for rescheduling online |
| 路线规划 | Geo-cluster stops; allocate crew per item type | Route software adapted to bulky-item stop times |
| Day-of delivery | Two-person crew; protective equipment; room placement | On-time arrival within confirmed window |
| 交货证明 | Digital signature; photo documentation | Real-time sync with shipper tracking system |
| 交付后 | Packaging removal; customer satisfaction check | First-attempt success rate >= 95% |
Transit Channels from China to France: Choosing the Right One
The products need to arrive in France before a last mile appointment can be set. For cross-border merchants shipping heavy commodities from China, the choice of inbound transit channel directly affects total landed cost, delivery time and the reliability of appointment windows that the seller can give.
Super-large products are the dominating conduit for ocean freight, and for good reason. It is the cheapest per kilogram, prices are consistent (little changes), has few handling stages, and consequently has less cargo damage rate. The main container entrance points for France are the ports of Le Havre, Marseille and Antwerp (Belgium), which distributes onwards into the French territory. The typical ocean transit period from Shenzhen or Shanghai to Le Havre is about 28 to 35 days. Adding in post-port clearance and domestic transportation to the warehouse in France, the practical benchmark for a DDP B2C maritime service is a total door-to-door duration of 45 to 55 days.
铁路货运 using the China-Europe Express train network is a middle-of-the-road solution with transit times ranging from 30 to 45 days, at a cost between ocean and air. It’s especially good for things that need to get somewhere fast but aren’t worth sending by air. The network links Chinese manufacturing centres such as Shenzhen, Yiwu, Chengdu and Zhengzhou with European distribution sites like Duisburg in Germany, Warsaw in Poland and Hamburg, with road transport beyond into France.
空运 is worth it for high value, time sensitive big items where the premium may be absorbed by product margin. A 12- to 15-day air journey from China to France makes it useful for seasonal marketing or urgent replenishment. But, for most ordinary bulky-goods categories, the cost calculus doesn’t allow frequent air transportation.
From the B2C appointment delivery standpoint, it’s not only the method of transit, but the point of handoff that matters. Products that arrive at a French port or rail terminal must be moved to a domestic warehouse before last-mile scheduling may take place. How fast the appointment procedure can be started when the container is released depends on the locati0n of the foreign warehouse and how integrated it is with the scheduling system and whether it can ship a per order.
| Transit Channel | 典型运输时间（中国到法国） | 最适合 | DDP Feasibility |
| 海运（整箱/拼箱） | 45-55天送货上门 | High-volume, low-sensitivity bulky goods | Strong – standard practice |
| 中欧铁路 | 30-45天 | Medium urgency; electronics with battery | Moderate – depends on route |
| 空运 | 12-15天 | High-value, time-critical items | Strong – customs well-established |
| Overseas Warehouse + Local Dispatch | 5-10 days from warehouse to customer | Repeat sellers with pre-stocked inventory | Strong – local clearance done |
Why the First Delivery Attempt Rate Is Your Most Important KPI
The key indicator in bulky-goods B2C logistics is the first-attempt success rate. Every failed delivery effort for a large item has a cost structure that is qualitatively different to a missing parcel. A ordinary courier delivering a little delivery again will probably add two euro to the cost. For a 150kg sofa, a two-person crew rescheduling to a Paris locati0n, handling storage, re-booking the truck and taking on an additional customer service contact, can incur fees that can be in the hundreds of euros, depending on the item and the distance.
Industry data supports the scale of the problem. Failed deliveries and returns make for about 40 percent of last-mile costs in bulky shipments. For a seller who operates on standard e-commerce margins, a first-attempt failure rate of even 10 to 15 percent can turn what should be a viable logistics business into a highly unprofitable one.
What drives first-attempt success are exactly the things appointment-delivery systems are designed to solve: verifying recipient availability, providing a narrow delivery window, providing real-time status updates on the day, and offering the customer a direct way to reschedule without calling a call center. Sellers that weave these capabilities into their post-purchase customer experience typically beat those that consider last-mile delivery as a commodity.
The disclosed DDP ocean delivery performance data from Topway Shipping shows what may be achieved when the whole chain is optimised. Their delivery time analysis for France shows that 91 percent of shipments are signed by the customer within 45 to 55 days from the date they leave China. Only 7 percent are in the 55 to 65-day category, and 2 percent require 65 to 75 days, usually due to extraordinary customs or access conditions. It is this degree of on-time performance, clustered snugly in the intended window, that allows vendors to make convincing delivery claims on their product sites.
Coverage Across France: Why 25-Country EU DDP Matters
France is not one logistical zone. Delivery in central Paris is a completely different operation than delivery in a rural commune in the Auvergne or in an industrial area outside Bordeaux. A logistics partner that exclusively covers large metropolitan areas will force the seller to either limit their targeted market or piece together various regional carriers, increasing complexity in handoffs and fragmentation in tracking.
End-to-end DDP coverage across the whole national territory is the baseline requirement for vendors that seek to sell to French customers at scale. This entails a network connecting Paris, Lyon, Marseille, Toulouse, Nice, Bordeaux, Nantes and the secondary cities, the peri-urban areas and the rural areas which represent a large part of the French consumer population. Just as a furniture buyer in Normandy expects the delivery to be dependable, so a furniture buyer in the 15th expects the delivery to be reliable.
Outside of France itself, dealers shipping from China to Europe often sell to many nations at once. An operationally inefficient logistics design only for France does not serve the needs of merchants with customers in Germany, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands and Belgium. The ability to clear customs once, distribute across the EU from a central hub and do last mile delivery under one tracking and appointment system greatly decreases operational complexity and unit cost.
Topway Shipping’s coverage strategy tackles this head on, with their DDP service covering 25 EU nations including all the major markets that constitute the majority of cross-border e-commerce from China. In volume terms, Germany is normally number one, with France and Italy close behind, then Spain, the Netherlands and a group of Central and Eastern European economies that are developing a taste for imported consumer products at a quick pace. If you are a seller that consolidates your European last-mile logistics with a single provider that has that coverage, you get consolidated reporting, uniform customer-facing delivery standards and a single point of accountability should things go wrong.
Technology as the Enabler: Tracking, Visibility, and the Appointment System
By 2025, French internet shoppers are not merely expecting their thing to arrive. It’s that they’ll be able to see where it is in the supply chain, get a notification when the delivery vehicle is in their vicinity and have the opportunity to reschedule with a few taps on their phone if their plans change, and they’ll know exactly when it’s going to arrive.” That expectation is no longer limited to premium or white-glove service levels. This is now the minimum level set by the consumer experience benchmarks of the major European retailers and logistics networks over the previous five years.
For cross-border sellers shipping from China, this standard entails the logistics partner operating a technology platform that integrates the overseas tracking data, the domestic transport leg, the appointment management workflow, and the last-mile proof-of-delivery confirmation into a single, customer-visible system. Those holes in the system produce the delivery tracking dead zones that generate inbound consumer enquiries, increase service costs and destroy brand confidence.
Topway Shipping has its own intelligent logistics system, which can be accessed by sellers through their login portal. It offers full trajectory monitoring from the pick-up of a package in China to the signing of the client in France. Sellers can create orders in the system, track each shipment in real-time, and have access to proof of delivery paperwork and can manage any exception cases using a centralised interface. For e-commerce sites that execute hundreds of shipments a month, this degree of system integration is a baseline operating requirement, not a differentiation.
Topway Shipping: Specialized Infrastructure for China-to-Europe Bulky Freight
Topway Shipping, founded in 2010, is a competent cross-border e-commerce logistics solution provider based in Shenzhen, China. The founders of the organization have more than 15 years of experience in international logistics and customs clearance, with extensive competence in China to Europe transit. Their solution includes the complete logistical chain: first leg domestic transport and container loading in China, overseas 仓储 and customs clearance to last-mile delivery and client appointment management in the destination country.
Topway’s niche in the market is the specialisation in what the industry calls super-large goods: single items with a unit weight of up to 8 metric tonnes and a longest dimension of up to 8 meters. This is the category that most generalist logistics providers cannot or will not handle and it is exactly the category that is growing fastest as Chinese manufacturers of furniture, fitness equipment, household appliances, industrial machinery, outdoor structures and mobility products expand their direct to consumer reach in Europe.
Topway’s products range from residential sofas and dining tables, massage chairs, treadmills and other fitness equipment, electric scooters, refrigerators, washing machines, dishwashers, range hoods, automated mahjong tables, digital signage displays, laser hair removal machines, soft-serve ice cream machines, copying machines, camping structures, to industrial or mechanical equipment. This breadth is not a generalist position, but a deep specialisation in the specific logistics needs of oversized, high-value goods.
Topway’s infrastructure includes domestic warehouses in China, with a standardised storage area of more than 5,000 square meters, and international warehouse facilities in Europe for hub-and-spoke B2C distribution. The company offers both FCL and LCL ocean and rail freight with weekly departures. Their customs clearing capabilities is in-house, rather than outsourced, reducing handoff risk at one of the most failure-prone phases in the cross-border chain. Their network now serves over 1,000 clients, moves over 2,000 orders a month and has over 3 million kilometres of delivered goods.
For French market operations, Topway’s DDP appointment delivery service uses the 25-country EU last-mile coverage outlined above as its basis, with delivery time performance centred on the 45- to 55-day window for ocean-freight shipments. The service model covers B2B deliveries to commercial addresses and B2C deliveries to home users, including the full appointment scheduling procedure for the latter.
9. Common Mistakes Sellers Make with Bulky-Goods Delivery in France
Knowing what may go wrong is as important as being aware of what optimal practice looks like. For sellers new to France, or expanding cross-border activities without revisiting their logistical models, there is a predictable set of mistakes made.
The first and most costly mistake is to approach bulky-goods delivery as an extension of regular parcel logistics. The operating requirements are completely different. A parcel-courier network that works well for a delivery of a 2-kilogram electronics attachment will fail frequently when asked to handle a 120-kilogram delivery of a treadmill to a fifth-floor Lyonnais flat. Sellers who select their French last-mile partner based on parcel delivery pricing and experience are inevitably faced with significant first-attempt failure rates, customer complaints and return charges not included in their financial model.
The second typical mistake is to underestimate the customs complexity of high-value items coming into France. The risk of non-compliance of shipping a container of massage chairs at claimed values not reflecting the true transaction pricing has increased as the French customs authorities have increased their inspection of commercial imports from China. The expense of a customs stay is not just money. It is time. When a package is delayed for valuation review, it can sit in a port warehouse for weeks while the seller searches for documentation. By then, the customer’s delivery window has long past and the relationship is likely beyond repair.
A third problem is not embedding the delivery experience into the pre-purchase consumer journey. The delivery method and schedule availability are a crucial consideration for the purchasing choice for French consumers. A seller with a product page that has “contact us for delivery information” will lose a large percentage of conversions to competitors who have a clear delivery window, explain the appointment process, and offer tracking information from shipment to signature. The marketing offer is the promise of logistics.
Finally, many merchants don’t focus on the after-delivery service layer. The delivery is generally not the end of the client engagement, especially for heavy goods; There are events that can happen days after delivery, such as disposal of packaging, installation questions, defect claims and beginning of returns, and they demand a logistical infrastructure able to respond. A provider who offers claims management, return processing and secondary dispatch as part of the service proposal is much more valuable than one that sees their role as finishing at the signature capture.
Building a Scalable Cross-Border Logistics Architecture for France
For sellers beyond their first few shipments into France and beginning to think about sustainable scale, the decision about logistics architecture matters considerably. The choices around warehousing, customs handling, transport mode and last mile delivery partner add up over time. Get them right early and you build operational advantage. Get them incorrectly and you build complexity that is difficult to reverse.
The most scalable architecture for China-to-France bulky commodities in 2025 is a dedicated ocean-freight route with generally weekly aggregated departures to a European overseas warehouse as the customs clearing and distribution hub. Single orders from that warehouse are shipped on a shipment level to the French consumer, with the appointment scheduling workflow triggered within 24 hours of the order being allocated to the outbound manifest. This design decouples the China-to-Europe transit time from the consumer experience: once goods are in the European warehouse, the delivery time visible to the consumer is 5 to 10 business days instead of 45 to 55 days, which vastly increases conversion and satisfaction metrics.
For sellers not yet at the level to justify dedicated warehousing in Europe, the practical starting point is the consolidated ocean shipment model where items are merged with other sellers’ shipments in an LCL container. The unit cost is greater on a per-kilogram basis but the capital and commitment needs are lower and it allows sellers to develop volume before transitioning to FCL shipments with dedicated warehousing.
In both circumstances the last mile appointment delivery system has to be designed for the French market and not adopted from a generic European model. Access to French urban dwelling is more difficult, French consumers have different scheduling preferences and French cultures have different DDP needs than in Germany, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. Logistics partners who use a playbook tailored to France achieve measurably greater results than those who follow a one-size-fits-all European strategy.
结语
The last mile is when promises meet reality – and in France, the reality is demanding. Narrow stairwells in tall apartment buildings, consumers who demand exact delivery windows, customs authorities who are ratcheting up scrutiny on import values and a regulatory environment that increasingly holds sellers – not carriers – responsible for delivery failures are not the kind of obstacles that will get easier with time. These are characteristics of the French market that any serious cross-border vendor targeting France has to design for.
In this setting, B2C delivery of large goods by appointment is not a premium add-on. It is the bare minimum standard. Sellers that understand this, and engage in a logistics partner that has the necessary infrastructure to execute it consistently, will discover that the French market rewards that investment lavishly. Those that misunderstand the complexity, or attempt to handle it with general purpose carriers, will find themselves dealing with a constant stream of re-deliveries, returns and customer disputes that make the market seem much more difficult than it needs to be.
Topway Shipping’s built the cross-border infrastructure, customs knowledge, foreign warehousing network and last-mile appointment delivery competence this market demands over the past 15+ years. The clarity on DDP, 25-country reach, full-trajectory tracking and 91 percent delivery time performance rate in target window combination is a logistics foundation that’s really hard to build independently, and easy to activate through the right partnership for sellers moving super-large goods from China to France and across the EU.
常见问题
Q: What counts as a “bulky” or “super-large” item in cross-border shipping to France?
A: In general logistics classification, large items weigh under 150 kilograms with a longest side under 4 meters. Super-large items, Topway Shipping’s primary specialty, weigh up to 8 metric tons with a longest side up to 8 meters and a height under 2.57 meters. Products like sofas, massage chairs, treadmills, electric scooters, refrigerators, and industrial equipment typically fall into this super-large category.
Q: How long does DDP door-to-door delivery from China to France typically take?
A: For ocean freight, the practical door-to-door timeline is 45 to 55 days from the date of collection in China. Approximately 91 percent of shipments via Topway Shipping’s DDP ocean service are completed within this window. China-Europe rail takes 30 to 45 days, while air freight can achieve 12 to 15 days for high-priority shipments.
Q: What does DDP mean, and why does it matter for selling to French consumers?
A: DDP stands for Delivered Duty Paid. It means the seller takes full responsibility for import duties, customs clearance, and VAT at the point of entry into France. For B2C consumers, it means they receive their goods without any surprise tax bill. Given France’s post-2021 EU VAT rules that apply to virtually all commercial imports, DDP is effectively the mandatory standard for a professional cross-border seller.
Q: Can Topway Shipping handle deliveries across the rest of Europe, not just France?
A: Yes. Topway Shipping’s DDP appointment delivery service covers 25 EU countries, including Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Poland, Sweden, and 17 additional markets. This enables sellers to operate a unified logistics architecture for their entire European customer base rather than managing separate providers per country.
Q: What happens if a French consumer is not available at the scheduled appointment time?
A: A professional appointment delivery system will attempt to reach the consumer in advance, typically with SMS or phone contact the day before and on delivery day. If the consumer is unavailable despite a confirmed appointment, the item is returned to the regional hub and a new appointment is scheduled. The cost of the re-delivery depends on the service agreement, but with a well-executed appointment workflow, first-attempt failure rates should be well below 10 percent.
