My parcel hell
I remember during the time of the recent strikes by Royal Mail workers that a lot of people were convinced that the demise of Royal Mail would be no bad thing; and others, including that braying toad Ken Clarke, said that the strikes would hasten a much-needed privatisation.
But I think Royal Mail are head and shoulders above all the other home delivery companies available, those supposedly wondrous firms praised to the rafters during strike time merely by dint of the fact they weren't part of the evil Public Sector.
You don't realise how good Royal Mail are until you get something delivered by someone else - and now it's Christmas time, and a lot of things are arriving by mail order, the horrors begin. And at least with Royal Mail there's the chance to pop around to a collection place that isn't on the dark side of the Moon in order to get it. With the others, well...
I think the first thing that gets my back up is the fact they love telling you they've 'tried' to deliver to you. "We made an attempt to deliver to you today, but YOU WERE OUT and so it's YOUR FAULT for having a job you dirty bastard" is pretty much what you get, albeit on a crinkled piece of rain-soaked card stuffed through your letterbox and almost inevitably lost underneath a hundred pizza menus. I don't want to be obtuse, but you 'tried'? Well try a bit fucking harder. How about 'trying' to deliver when people are actually indoors, rather than waiting for the time of day when they're the least likely to be there? How about finding out when people want things to be delivered, and deliver it then? You tried? Oh good for you. What do you want - a fucking round of applause? How about I whine to you about a series of unsuccessful 'attempts' to pay you the money I owe you? How about that? How about I 'try' to pay you when I know you won't be there, then tell you to bog off to Tierra del Fuego to collect your money - what then? Would you think that was all right? I'm guessing probably not.
And if you want something redelivered to a different address, perhaps your work address or to someone you know who will be in all day, waiting by the letterbox - well just make sure you call them between 3.30pm and 3.31pm in order to do it, otherwise it'll be far too late for them to change their plans. How you're supposed to know that you've had something not delivered to you, when you're still at work and haven't yet arrived home, is beyond me - but no. You're meant to somehow know that the card has arrived in your house and be able to ring up, guessing the 58-digit identification code without which you won't be allowed to do anything, before the ridiculously early cut-off point.
There will be other 'attempts' to redeliver, of course. Having discovered that you weren't in during the day the first time, they will naturally try and redeliver at exactly the same time the next day, and still be mystified as to why you aren't there. "Why it's almost as if quite a lot of the population appear to be doing something during the day, isn't it?" the drivers must say, scratching their heads and wondering why this keeps happening, all day every day throughout their entire careers. "But what on earth could it be? That's a puzzler. Still, I am sure that they'll make plans to change their entire lives around during the 9-hour window during which we may, or may not, 'attempt' to deliver those things they're waiting for. And if they don't, well they know what to do."
We do indeed know what to do - if we're lucky enough to be getting a delivery from someone who doesn't just 'attempt' once and then send it straight back, saying "Sorry, I did my best". We know that we will have to drive about a 40-mile round trip to a windy industrial estate in the middle of nowhere, where there's no parking and gruff shouty truck drivers in hi-vis jackets will bark at you if you dare try and leave your vehicle for five seconds in the wrong place, in order to try and retrieve those parcels whose delivery has been deemed to be a failure. Make sure you turn up between 6.43am and 6.44am in order to retrieve your parcel, or you will just find a load of metal shutters and a shoulder-shrugging work experience boy saying "Sorry, can't help you." There, you must bring an incisor tooth from a Siberian tiger, a unicorn's smile, 527 different forms of identification, and the actual real-life version of the golden statue from the pre-credits sequence of Raiders of the Lost Ark. If you don't have all that, don't even bother coming because you're not going to get it.
They will hold your parcel for five-and-a-half minutes before sending it back to whomever it was you ordered it from. I mean they've done their best. They've 'attempted' to deliver it to you. What else were they meant to do? Why the hell weren't you indoors all day every day? Why weren't you waiting, on running blocks, for when the card came through the door so that you could catch them in time? How dare you be so bloody selfish!
Royal Mail may well have a lot of faults and it probably is a bit more expensive than some of these other companies. But I do like them and do you know what? I don't mind if my taxes are going there, if I get a slightly better service when I'm trying to have things through the post. I may well be in the minority, of course, but there you go. All I know is my heart sinks when I'm told something won't be arriving by Royal Mail, and I fear for a future in which they're privatised or everything comes through private companies. I can't see it being any better. Cheaper, perhaps, but not better.
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December 2nd, 2009 - 14:45
It's even better when they "try" to deliver to you by not ringing the door bell even when you are in and not actually leaving one of those cards and you only discover how hard they "tried" three days later when the online tracker deigns to work. Because, of course, we're all meant to know who's standing at the door two stories below at all times, and how to read the invisible card they've so kindly left for us. And we're meant to know this so that we can phone during their office hours and reschedule the delivery, during which they may or may not bother to ring the buzzer to inform you of their presence.
And repeat.
Three more times.
December 2nd, 2009 - 14:47
Totally agree, although recently I have seen an upturn in the number of home deliveries we get after 6pm.
Whether the mail order firms have to pay more for that service, I have no idea, but it's almost as if they've thought about the sheer waste of everybody's time – all those van miles to and from the depot, man hours filling in little cards and warehouse space full of undeliverable parcels – and had a bit of a 'lightbulb moment'.
December 2nd, 2009 - 14:48
Brilliant! This made me laugh a lot and shake my head in desperate recognition a lot more.
Parcelfarce (see what I did there?, I'm the new Littlejohn I am) sadly are among the worst, and they're part of Royal Mail. The last time I got something 'delivered' by them, I tried to arrange redelivery to a post office (for a 50p charge of course). There's a post office just across the road from the office where I work, so I thought this would be easy.
But Parcelforce have, or had, a bizarre voice recognition system on their redelivery 'hotline' which not only had difficulty with my comical regional accent, but also only permitted redelivery to the Post Office nearest your home address. Yes, read that again. I was unable to select the Post Office nearest my work address, because presumably Parcelforce's thinking is, well, if he isn't at home during the day, he can pop round to the Post Office nearest his home while he's at work. That'll be 50p please.
December 2nd, 2009 - 15:06
I am indoors all day every day. I've still had plenty of "we tried to deliver but you were out" cards, they roughly translate as "we preferred to sit in the van filling this in, than mess about with rubbish like ringing the doorbell or getting the parcel out of the back of the van."
There is, however, a tremendous sense of accomplishment if you notice the van pulling up and manage to get to your front door just as Ninja Delivery Man is trying to push the Sorry You Were Out card into the letterbox.
December 2nd, 2009 - 15:11
My only bad experience with a delivery company led to me making a complaint. First they delivered the wrong thing, then they delivered the right thing but to the billing address instead of the delivery address and refused to come to the right address (I'd taken a day off work to deal with it). When I phoned to complain I was told they don't deliver or do pick ups on weekends so I told them the only day during the week that I could get off work would have to be the day they delivered the correct item and pick up the wrong one.
When I put my complaint in I was initially told they'd compensate me for the time I took off if I could give them my hourly rate (on work letterheaded paper) and how many hours a day for each day taken off. When I received my compensation it was only for 1 day, they told me that because I'd said to them "You will deliver it on Thursday" I didn't give them any oportunity to arrange a different delivery date/time/method so they wouldn't compensate me (I'm conveniently glossing over the fact that any leave I take from work is actually paid leave and that the compensation was a pretty decent gesture of good will). Bunch of wankers the lot of them I'm conveniently glossing over the fact that any leave I take from work is actually paid leave and that the compensation was a pretty decent gesture of good will)
December 2nd, 2009 - 15:22
Whilst Citylink are still at the top of the shit list (for some postively baroque crimes against good service), the most mistifyingly shit one is the horrendously badly named "Home Delivery Network". You;d have thought that with a name like that, they'd have "work friendly" delivery times, but no, they're just as bad as the rest of them in that regard.
Anyway, you think you've got it bad, I have no car (out of choice). how the hell am I supposed to get a depot outside another town without going on an epic, all-day expidition involving buses and hiking?
Nevertheless, the all–time award for awfulness goes to an individual in the pay of Royal Mail. I wandered out of my kitchen, the door to which was open and which wasn't at all noisy, to see the "sorry" card dropping through the letterbox. The postman seemed somewhat taken aback to have the door opened seeing as he hadn't even knocked once.
December 2nd, 2009 - 15:32
It's even worse than you make it out to be. I work from home – and by that I mean I do work for which I am paid while in my house, not "I'm unemployed", not that it matters – and I ordered something that needed to be delivered by one of these companies. I was in. There's a doorbell, can't miss it, it's on the door. But at midday, according to the card, a man attempted to deliver my parcel.
I assume that this attempt constituted standing a few yards from my door whispering "Hello?" for three seconds before slamming the card through the letterbox and sprinting back to the van. I assume this because I didn't hear him or see him during this manful attempt to deliver my parcel.
And then he took it to an office somewhere in the same city, and left it there, and because my wife's name was on the parcel I had to take ID proving who both of us were, which doesn't even really make sense considering she wasn't with me when I picked it up. I could have been anyone. I could have been Gordon Strachan for all the fucking difference it made.
December 2nd, 2009 - 15:32
The golden statue appear post-credits in Raiders of the Lost Ark but otherwise, bang on. The shits.
December 2nd, 2009 - 16:01
"…get to your front door just as Ninja Delivery Man is trying to push the Sorry You Were Out card into the letterbox."
They reeeeeeeally hate that
December 2nd, 2009 - 16:20
My worst experiences:
1. Amtrak failed to deliver hundreds of pounds of computer equipment I'd purchased to my address, 18 Terminus Road, instead delivering to *17* Terminus *Street*, because there was no one in at 18 Terminus *Street*. CLEVER!
2. When I took a day off work to take delivery of a package, and no package was delivered, I phoned Parcelforce, who informed me that because their driver couldn't speak English very well, he'd just driven all his deliveries aimlessly around town all day, not delivering any of them, and was then sent home. WHY DO YOU NEED TO BE ABLE TO SPEAK ENGLISH TO FIND ADDRESSES?
December 2nd, 2009 - 16:42
We kind of have an unspoken agreement with our Royal Mail Postman. If we're not in then he'll just leave our parcels in our porch, hidden slightly behind one of the pillars. It's gotten to the point he won't even ring the doorbell anymore – he'll just leave it outside. If it's a big parcel or something then he'll just leave it next door or something for us to pick up. I don't think I've ever really had to deal with private sector postmen before and now I'm feeling very glad actually.
December 2nd, 2009 - 17:40
I've had the same experiences as everyone else with drivers carding me while I was in. Parcelforce (i.e. Royal Mail), on the other hand, delivered a package addressed to me to someone else because I "wasn't in". Whoever that was kept it and Parcelforce don't keep records of where they drop things off. They were very helpful and willing to make things right, thankfully.
I've also had one badly damaged package from them, which has never happened from another company.
I'm delighted to get things sent via normal post but all of the parcel delivery services are shocking.
December 2nd, 2009 - 17:48
I once missed a delivery by a matter of seconds and charged to the front window to get the drivers attention.
I managed to before he crossed the road and signalled that I would come out to meet him. He acknowledged this.
He was halfway down the road by the time I'd got there.
December 2nd, 2009 - 21:50
I personally love the ones that shove a moist card through the door with their mobile phone number scrawled illegibly across it and the instruction that you must call them on it immediately to rearrange delivery. And when you finally decipher the number and call, they don't answer. And then they turn up at random several days later to deliver not only your parcel, but also a stroppy bollocking for not ringing them to rearrange delivery.
December 3rd, 2009 - 00:55
Royal Mail are shitbags like the rest of them. A mixture of careless company executives and negligent staff make them almost worth closing down for good.
I've had packages opened or stolen, with thieving postmen robbing selected pillar boxes regularly.
Yes, there are local depots to collect your parcels from, but more of these close down making you travel further afield to get your bits in the end anyway.
Though I've had more pleasant experiences with private deliverymen, though living in the densly commercial town of Reading probaby helps both in terms of service and nearby colection offices.
December 3rd, 2009 - 08:57
Parcelforce.
Big black boot print on the parcel.
Very expensive musical instrument smashed to pieces.
"Yeah. Wasn't us."
Twats.
December 3rd, 2009 - 23:05
Most of the delivery companies have tried this trick on me: Leave parcel in depot because you can't be arsed to drag it around, instead simply slip notes through doors. You get paid, customer gets parcel (though they may as well not have bothered with mail order). All happy.
I just wish I'd caught up with one before they drove off, though. A few times I've come close, when I've been sitting in the lounge, looking out of the window, seen postie come up the drive, heard the letterbox go (no knock, no ring) and thought 'oh, boring letters' and then only found that it was a 'you were out' card when I passed by the door and looked.
Once I called the post office to complain about our postie doing this. He came around with the parcel sharpish. This time he knocked and I got the parcel, but also an earful from irate postie who'd been in big trouble for not being arsed to carry the actual parcels.
Was tempted to mail myself a couple of bricks every day for a fortnight just to get him back.
December 4th, 2009 - 12:09
Do they still hire students at Christmas to help with the rush?
A mate once caught one of them putting a card though without the parcel and asked him about it, only to be told that this was genuine company policy. When he pressed further, the reason given was that as they were temporary staff they weren't allowed (for insurance reasons) to actually deliver parcels but were perfectly OK to put cards through letterboxes.
Just insane.