At a glance
Count of Interlink Express consignments that missed their service-day delivery promise in the period. Interlink (DPD-group premium tier) sells time-definite SLAs (Pre10:30, Pre12, Next-Day, 2-Day, Saturday). “Late” is judged against each service’s specific cutoff time on the promised day. Each shipment that overruns scores 1.
Calculation
Calculated automatically from your Interlink Express data. See the At a glance summary above for what the metric tracks and the worked example below for a typical reading.Worked example
A UK B2B medical-supply merchant: clinics, pharmacies, care-homes are the primary customer base. Interlink Pre10:30 is the contract carrier (medication must be on shelf before staff start morning rounds); Next-Day is the secondary tier for non-time-critical accessories. Reading taken at 09:00 GMT on 16 Mar 26 for the trailing 7 days (09 Mar 26 to 15 Mar 26).
The card reads 45 as the headline; 3.9% of total is below the 5% alert. Five things to notice:
- Money-back-on-late candidates: 45 domestic premium shipments. Interlink’s Pre10:30, Pre12, Next-Day, and 2-Day Parcelforce-fault failures all qualify for carriage refund. At an estimated £10 average refund, that is £450 of recoverable carriage if filed within Interlink’s 14-day window. (£15+ on Pre10:30 specifically; lower on Next-Day.)
- B2B clinic Pre10:30 misses are the most expensive misses. Clinics may invoice contract penalties of £25 to £100 per missed pre-shift delivery. Eight Pre10:30 misses × £50 average penalty = £400 of B2B-customer financial exposure on top of carriage refund. Track Pre10:30 with extra scrutiny via
interlink_pre10_30_sla. - 8 day-2 Next-Day misses are the worst customer-experience cohort. Next-Day consumer DTC at 4.4% is borderline; receiving the parcel on day 2 is a clean broken promise. Likely £20 to £40 goodwill credits on the order itself.
- Filing window discipline matters more on Interlink than Parcelforce. Interlink’s 14-day window means these 45 misses must be filed by 23 to 29 Mar 26. A weekly review cadence is the only way to consistently file inside the window.
- 3.9% headline does not fail the 5% alert, but is uncomfortable on B2B medical accounts where clinic-customer NPS hinges on delivery reliability. If headline is at 3.9% week-on-week, look at dispatch-cutoff slippage on the merchant side (see
int_route_otd), and at Pre10:30 specifically (seeinterlink_pre10_30_sla).
Sibling cards merchants should reference together
Late count is a count, not a rate. To act, pair it with these:Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard
Where to look in Interlink Express’s own dashboard: Interlink Express MyDPD Business → Reports → Failed / Late Deliveries. Filter by All services / All depots / Last 7 days. Per-consignment audit at Track and Trace → Failed Deliveries. Why our number may legitimately differ from Interlink’s portal:
Cross-connector reconciliation:
Known limitations / merchant FAQs
Why does Interlink have a 14-day filing window when Parcelforce has 30? Different parent groups, different ops cadence. Interlink (DPD-group) operates a tighter claim-resolution loop: faster decisions in exchange for tighter merchant filing discipline. Most merchants transitioning from Parcelforce or running both alongside under-file Interlink because the Parcelforce 30-day muscle memory is wrong. Set up a weekly review tied to this card andint_open_claims to file inside the window.
Pre10:30 misses cost more than Next-Day misses; how do we surface that?
The card is a count, not a value. Use interlink_pre10_30_sla for the dedicated Pre10:30 view, int_open_claims for the financial-recovery view (B2B contract penalties dominate), and interlink_xc_otd_by_channel for the channel split. A 5-shipment B2B Pre10:30 miss may carry more business risk than a 50-shipment Next-Day consumer miss.
Why does Interlink show “delivered on time” but the customer says it was late?
Three usual reasons. (1) End-of-day vs customer-expectation: Next-Day’s promise is “by end of working day”; a 19:30 delivery is contractual on-time and customer-late. (2) Predicted-window vs actual-cutoff confusion: customers receive a 1-hour-window SMS but Interlink’s contractual SLA is the cutoff (10:30, 12:00, end-of-day). (3) Out-for-delivery scan loops: drivers may scan “out for delivery” multiple times if the route is long; the actual handoff datetime is what scores.
During Q4 peak, the count triples; do we widen the alert?
No. Widen the seasonal context in your weekly review instead. The alert is a fixed threshold so the system does not “learn to ignore” Q4 degradation. Pre-position dispatch capacity in October and update checkout copy. The count card is intentionally honest during peak.
Saturday-uplift consignments: how are they counted?
Saturday-uplifted Next-Day consignments are scored against the Saturday-cutoff promise (still end-of-day Saturday). They are pooled into the headline; if Saturday-uplift is a meaningful share, watch interlink_pre10_30_sla and int_route_otd separately for Saturday-cohort drift.
Multi-account merchants (Interlink + DPD on the same network): how does the count work?
Each account has its own credentials. The card surfaces consignments under the connected Interlink credentials only. DPD-account consignments live on the DPD connector. A merchant running both needs both connectors connected and reads two cards in parallel.
B2B clinic contract penalties: how do we calculate exposure?
Per-clinic contract terms vary. A reasonable rough estimate is £25 to £100 per missed pre-shift delivery on care-home and clinic accounts; lower (£0 to £30) on B2B reseller accounts. Multiply Pre10:30 miss count by your average penalty rate; track on a finance-team spreadsheet alongside this card. If the merchant’s exposure trends above £500 weekly, the issue is structural and an account-team conversation is overdue.
The headline 4% is below alert but our customer-service queue is buried; why?
Weekly load. 4% on 1,000 weekly consignments is 40 misses; that drives ~80 customer-service contacts (initial complaint plus follow-up plus refund processing). The CS-team workload scales with absolute count, not rate. Use this card for capacity-planning the response.
How does this card reconcile against int_otd_rate?
Mathematical mirrors. If late count is 45 and total shipments is 1,155, OTD rate = (1,155-45)/1,155 = 96.1%. The two cards differ in time window (this card 7D, OTD card 30D) and response. Counts trigger CS-team capacity decisions; rates trigger account-team conversations.
Compared to APC and Parcelforce, where does Interlink land?
Roughly: Pre10:30 SLA Interlink = APC = Parcelforce ExpressAM at 97 to 98% target. Next-Day Interlink benefits from DPD-group automation (tighter customer-experience predicted-window comms); Parcelforce wins on rural coverage; APC wins on regional B2B in pockets. Multi-carrier merchants pick by destination cohort, not headline performance.