Generally no. The seller chooses how an order travels, and for most orders that means their courier rather than yours.
What decides it
The delivery method on the listing, and there are four:
- The seller books a courier — the common case. Their choice, their account, their rates.
- The seller delivers it themselves — local, often for heavy or fragile things.
- You collect — no courier at all.
- You arrange the courier — the one case where it is yours.
The fourth exists but is unusual, and it is set by the seller as an option rather than chosen by you at checkout.
Why you cannot pick
The seller has an account with whoever they use, rates negotiated through it, and a routine — one drop-off, one pickup window, one set of labels. Letting each buyer name a carrier would mean a different process per parcel for a person packing forty of them.
There is also a practical point in your favour: a courier the seller uses daily is one they know the quirks of. A carrier they have never used is more likely to go wrong.
What you can ask
Reasonable asks, which sellers often accept:
- "Could you avoid [carrier]? They have never found my building." A seller with two accounts may well switch.
- "Could you hold it until Monday?" Before dispatch, usually fine.
- "Could you mark it fragile?" Free for them.
Unreasonable asks: naming a premium carrier at their cost, or asking them to ship outside their normal method for one order.
If a particular courier genuinely cannot reach you, that is worth saying before you bid rather than after you win.
If you want control
Collect it, where the seller offers collection. Nothing is in transit, so the carrier question disappears entirely — and for anything fragile or valuable that is the better answer anyway. Can I collect instead of having it posted?
Buy from local sellers who deliver themselves. Common for furniture, plants, food and anything awkward.
Arrange it yourself, where the seller offers that option. Then the carrier, the cost and the tracking are all yours — and so is the risk in transit, which is the trade.
If a courier keeps failing you
Tell the seller, with specifics. "Your courier has marked two of my parcels delivered when they were left at a shop two streets away" is information they can act on, and sellers do change carriers over it.
More: how delivery is charged, nobody was home for the delivery, how do I know it has actually been posted.