Delivery companies are getting worse

[simont]

At lunchtime I drove to the delivery company's depot to collect my shiny new iMac, which arrived yesterday but (surprise) couldn't be delivered since I was out at work.

Driving to the depot is normally my favourite way of collecting failed parcel deliveries; the depots are usually either easy to find in Cambridge or are in nearby villages like Bar Hill, and the latter has held no fear for me ever since Philip's got round to publishing an all-Cambridgeshire street atlas. So it's not too much effort, and it means I get the parcel at my convenience rather than having to arrange myself round the delivery company's convenience (which is even harder when they can't generally tell you in advance whether they plan to deliver at 09:10 or 17:20).

In this case, however, the depot was at Stansted Airport, and the combined faff up and down the M11 stretched my lunch break into an hour and a half without even providing me with lunch. Under these circumstances I would normally have tried a bit harder to arrange an alternative delivery, and indeed I did try having the parcel redirected to my office. No such luck: the courier company refused to redeliver to a different address, not because their own procedures were inflexible but because (apparently) Apple had given explicit instructions that the delivery address should never be changed on their packages. At this point I was faced with driving to Stansted, or taking an entire day off work for the delivery, or repeatedly phoning both Apple and the courier company and trying to get them to communicate to the point where a redelivery to my office could be usefully authorised; so I decided just getting in the car was the least of the evils.

I swear, this is even more hassle than it used to be. The delivery companies aren't getting any more flexible: they still seem to expect people to be in during the day to take deliveries. I suppose if I had a stay-at-home wife that would be fine, but I have no wife at all and even if I did I doubt she'd be a stay-at-home one. But when I ring up, they ask ‘well, will somebody be in?’ (like who, my invisible friend?) and ‘what about leaving it with a neighbour?’ (fat chance, the only neighbour I trust works normal hours as well) and ‘can we leave it in the garage?’ (just because I can afford an iMac doesn't mean I can also afford 100 times as much to have a house with a garage; and furthermore you sent someone to my house yesterday so you could have known this already). Absolutely anything rather than, say, learn to deliver in the evening. I mean, they couldn't do that, that would be useful.

I suppose half the problem is that I'm not the courier company's actual customer; that's Apple, and it's not Apple's problem how much hassle I have to go through to get my delivery, because it doesn't get fed back to them. If only it were Apple's problem that delivery companies are unhelpful to recipients, then they'd have an incentive to give their money to the least unhelpful of them and improvements might be seen.

Still, on the plus side I have actually taken physical possession of my shiny new toy, so things could be a lot worse. On the minus side, my car was ailing noticeably during the excursion; I feel another long lunch break coming on tomorrow, this time to go to the garage…

Comments

[aldabra]

This annoys me too (and driving to depots is less fun with a small child in tow). And I can't even aspire to a wife 8-( Actually, I think that's what I need, more than anything. But yes, they deliver at 09:30 on three consecutive days when I'm at work and then say I have to go and collect it from some random depot in the next three weeks or they'll send it back. (The last lot left theirs at the local post office, which was surprisingly witful. Some such local drop-off system is clearly needed, in this Brave New World of unreasonably expensive houses which are empty all day.)

[simont]

The last delivery I had was actually left at my local post office, despite not being a Royal Mail delivery. I hadn't known that was possible, but it was certainly an improvement on trogging out to Bar Hill (or Stansted!).

Presumably they can't all do that because sometimes they really need the recipient's real signature before they're allowed to let the parcel out of their sight. I can only assume this lot were thus constrained, if they weren't even allowed to deliver to a different address where I'd be waiting with photo ID...

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

The ability of companies to assume that every dwelling in the country contains a husband, wife and 2.4 children knows no bounds. I'm sure there can't be that many delusional people in the world that these companies can put on the end of a phone line. They must train it out of them at bigot camp or something.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

In fact having thought about it, considering the pay of you average phone monkey or delivery person, they must live in households where nobody stays at home all day. You cannot support more than one person on a salary like that. This world is insane and I'm starting a new one.

[simont]

Yeah, but on the other hand if they can't afford enough money to keep a second person on, they probably also don't mail-order large computers terribly often, so it won't surprise them that they don't themselves satisfy the assumptions they make about me...

[fluffymormegil.livejournal.com]

Humans are vastly less rational than they like to think they are.
Also, anyone with the brains to think "outside the box" almost certainly can get a better job than "call centre droid".

[enslore.livejournal.com]

This is one of the reasons Michaela and I are always saying we need a wife. We thought we'd find one and go halves. Do you want in?

[simont]

What, so I could have her on days when I was expecting a delivery, and the only thing we'd have to be careful about was that more than one of us wasn't expecting a delivery at the same time? Sounds good. What'd it cost me? :-)

[enslore.livejournal.com]

I'll let you know when we find him / her! Note that in this enlightened age wives may well be male. :)

[pjc50.livejournal.com]

Yes, but what happens if you want your wife delivered?

[deborah_c]

Play safe, send her by Royal Mail. With breathing holes, for preference?

Hmm... Simon wants a wife? *flutters eyelashes*

[sparrowsion]

Given our experiences with the Royal Mail (see below) I'm not sure I'd describe that as "playing safe".

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

Ask her to go to your house and sign for herself.

[geekette8.livejournal.com]

Absolutely anything rather than, say, learn to deliver in the evening. I mean, they couldn't do that, that would be useful.

Or, indeed, give you a slightly more precisely indication of when they would be expecting to come round; even a four hour window would be more useful than "sometime on this day", and I'd have thought a 2 hour window should be easily achievable in reality.

I do find it odd that courier companies have got WORSE at this type of thing as the levels of internet shopping have risen (not to mention the improvement in the available technology like, er, mobile phones, GPS, that sort of thing). You'd really expect it to be the other way round.

[fluffymormegil.livejournal.com]

It has meant that such competence as existed in the industry has been diluted by the increased business volumes.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Send Steve Jobs a bill for the cost of your time?

[deano977.livejournal.com]

There's always the 'work-from-home' option, although this doesn't work for everyone. I think I get on reasonably well at home but I definitely have a different working pattern when I'm there. Depends what floats your boat, I guess...

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Deliver to the office in the first place?

[j4.livejournal.com]

When my parents ordered a 15-inch PowerBook for my sister, the delivery people left it outside on the doorstep. Even if one was naive enough to assume that everybody in the world was honest and nobody would steal a parcel off a doorstep, that's 1500 quid's worth of shiny hardware at the mercy of weather. At least it didn't rain.

Our postmoron just puts stuff in the bin, but at least he leaves a card saying "PARCEL IN GREEN BIN". So that's okay then!

[fluffyrichard.livejournal.com]

Ah. Our postman had been making a habit of omitting to ring our doorbell or knock on the door when delivering parcels, instead opting to leave parcels on the doorstep, in the rain and full view of any passers by, with not even note through the door to announce their presence. I phoned Royal Mail to complain, and received an apology, assurance that it wouldn't happen again, and some free stamps. And the couple of parcels received since then have been delivered in an entirely sensible manner.

Of course, we arrived home today to find the letters sticking out of the letterbox for anyone to grab...

[sparrowsion]

We've had a couple of times when they've rung the doorbell, left the parcel on the step and buggered off. I suspect that what they're doing is then delivering the rest of the street and on the way back (since it's a cul-de-sac) if it hasn't been taken in then writing out the card and throwing it in the bin.

The odd thing is it's only deliveries from Amazon that have wound up in the bin.

[hilarityallen.livejournal.com]

You could of course try whinging to Apple about their choice of computer company. You may of course run into cultural problems, along the lines of 'A 45 minute drive each way to collect your shiny new computer is entirely reasonable'.

[mooism.livejournal.com]

If only it were Apple's problem that delivery companies are unhelpful to recipients, then they'd have an incentive to give their money to the least unhelpful of them and improvements might be seen.

If your bad experience makes you less likely to buy from Apple in future, then it *is* their problem. As Apple have a monopoly on Macs, they are less vunerable to this than PC vendors.

Ideally, online shops would give you a choice of couriers (with a simple range of prices). But I suspect it makes things much easier for the shop to only deal with one delivery company.

I wonder what it would take for a courier to phone *before* making any attempt to deliver, to better co-ordinate things.

[deliberateblank.livejournal.com]

I was expecting the punchline to be that you got there, only for them to claim you had insufficient ID and refuse to hand it over.

[simont]

No, thankfully that one went the other way. They warned me I'd need photo ID; I had already put some in my bag this morning just in case, and dutifully took it along; and in fact they didn't bother looking at it.

[sphyg.livejournal.com]

Even going to Coral Park is a pain. And I don't think I have any valid photo ID atm.

[pm215]

It can be done right. I'm told that here (ie Japan) you can arrange a delivery to within a specified one hour timeslot...

Of course, I don't know whether you can do this for deliveries from companies, where they're paying the delivery company rather than you, but I'd hope that since they have a system for hour timeslots you ought at least to be able to upgrade by talking to the delivery company...

(In the UK my solution to this is to have everything delivered to the office, since that's guaranteed to accept parcels during all business hours...)