Not Diabetes Research - parcel deliveries

SB2015

SB2015

Well-Known Member
Relationship to Diabetes
Type 1
I have recently finished a song for our choir about telephone calls : being put on hold for ages, then put in a queue, then told to use the website. It went down very well and seemed relevant to most of the audience when we performed it on Saturday. So on to my next composition. I am aiming for three pieces on irritations so thought that I would do the next one for our winter concert and focus on parcel deliveries.

Do you have any tales of irritations with parcel deliveries that you could share.
 
SB2015 said:
I have recently finished a song for our choir about telephone calls : being put on hold for ages, then put in a queue, then told to use the website. It went down very well and seemed relevant to most of the audience when we performed it on Saturday. So on to my next composition. I am aiming for three pieces on irritations so thought that I would do the next one for our winter concert and focus on parcel deliveries.

Do you have any tales of irritations with parcel deliveries that you could share.
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What great subjects to put to song @SB2015 :D

A 'we're sorry you weren't in when we called' card when I was in and was waiting specifically for the delivery but no one actually called. Then the follow up please rate us text.

We've left your parcel in a safe place - and a photo of a random doorstep, no distinguishing detail or house number meaning I have to go wandering around the neighbourhood looking for a cardboard box with my name on.
 
Thanks @Flower
Another
We left your parcel in your recycling bin by the back door,
Found the card after the recycling had been out out by a friend and collected!!!!
 
Not delivering my parcel because ‘they can’t find the address’ - even though I’ve written clear instructions on the app (they haven’t bothered to look at that) and have my phone number on it too. Delivering my parcel to the wrong house, being told by the householder that it’s not their parcel and having it handed back to them - and them then recording it as delivered and faking my signature. Ignoring all the instructions about which neighbour to leave my parcel with if I’m out, and throwing it over the fence into my back garden (yes, it was fragile). Leaving my parcel in a random place outside/near my house and including a photo ‘telling me where it was delivered’ but all that’s in the photo is the parcel in their hand and tarmac in the background which could be anywhere.

I could go on! 🙄
 
Thanks @Inka
You have certainly had some memorable experiences with your parcels.
 
I love the ‘delivery slot’ being anywhere between 7am and 11.30pm.

And I second the “You weren’t in” card, when you were in, had been waiting, and were quietly working immediately by the door.

I’m sure ‘can you take this for your neighbour’ followed shortly by ‘oh, can you also take this for your other neighbour’ is familiar to many. Sometimes we have 5 or 6 parcels waiting to be collected.

Retrieving sodden parcels you are in the house waiting for which had been left ‘safely’ by the recycling, with no knock and no note, on a downpour day.

The un-knocked doorstep-and-run deliveries are an increasing feature of drivers having too many drops and simply no time to wait.
 
"We have safely delivered your parcel" .... to a pubic footpath in the pouring rain.
And then there is the demise of the doorbell. Mine is suffering from under use because delivery guys don't bother trying it. As two of us work from home, it is rare that the house is empty but the delivery guys are in too much of a rush to even try the doorbell.
"Could you take this parcel for your neighbour?" ... who you have never met but know a lot about their online shopping habits.

Maybe a (final) verse from the perspective of the delivery guy on a zero hours contract being paid per parcel delivered on an unachievable schedule that doesn't take into consideration the traffic.
I remember reading about an actor who took a delivery job during covid and how he was often the only "real person" some people spoke to that week. We may not be in lock down any more but there are still people stuck at home who miss out on that human contact and the "soft skills" of some delivery drivers that are being wasted.
 
None of the delivery drivers ever check they have the right address, just dump the parcel on the doorstep or in my gas meter. I frequently get parcels for the same house number in a nearby street, and vice versa. One ongoing saga was the parcel which was for a similar address in a different part of the county. I kept returning it and like a homing pigeon, it kept coming back to me. And I never did track one item, which I was assured had been delivered to me, and I supposedly signed for!!
 
My daughter had a corker just this week. Our house does not face the street, we are at the end of a long driveway shared with one other house, so not the easiest to find; we think, however, that you don’t need a vast amount of brain power to work it out. The numbers go 25 then 31 and there’s a gap in between them; what’s up the gap then, oh look, two more houses…
So she got a message to say that a parcel she was waiting for had had a delivery attempt at a time when both she and her dad were in, but nobody knocked or rang the bell. On checking the security camera we have in the window, no person had approached the house at that time. The message she got showed a photo of a nice view along the street taken from the bottom of the driveway, and a dropped pin right at the bottom of the driveway, but nobody bothered to walk or drive up to the house! They did redeliver it the next day, did ring the bell but then just left the parcel outside without waiting for me to open the door. Could have done that the day before then!

And don’t get me started on workmen/delivery people who dump their vans in the middle of the driveway to go to next door and completely block my access. When you ask them to move, they say “oh, I didn’t know it was a shared driveway”. Is our house invisible then? Can you not see that where you are parked is not the end of the driveway, and that there’s a big double garage there that presumably people might want to drive in and out of occasionally?! One such delivery van stopped in the middle of the drive to deliver a parcel next door, fair enough he probably thought he’d only be there a couple of minutes, but then his all electric van suffered a catastrophic power failure when he got back in it and it was stuck there for 4 hours waiting for the breakdown truck - all electric brakes and parking gear meant that he couldn’t even get it into neutral to push it out of the way. Luckily I had been out when he arrived so wasn’t trapped in my drive unable to go anywhere, did have to park on the street for a while though and there isn’t that much room. Grrrr….
 
We also have an issue that our road joins another one and there are no signs up to tell you where one stops and the other starts; in fact if you look at the house numbers I think there is a block of 3 or 4 houses each side where they actually overlap, and most sat navs think that the next road starts before you get to our driveway, which is wrong. So we get quite a lot of deliveries for our number on the other street and vice versa. We did put a sign up on our garage with our full address on, to try to help any confused drivers, but they still don’t see that half the time! We have nearly taken delivery of at least two fridge freezers, a weekly Tesco shop, takeaway curry and all sorts of other things and once I had to go knocking on the door of the other house looking for a parcel for me! Can sort of forgive them for that one, it is a bit confusing. Perhaps I should start hassling the council to put some signs up!
 
Sally71 said:
We also have an issue that our road joins another one and there are no signs up to tell you where one stops and the other starts; in fact if you look at the house numbers I think there is a block of 3 or 4 houses each side where they actually overlap, and most sat navs think that the next road starts before you get to our driveway, which is wrong. So we get quite a lot of deliveries for our number on the other street and vice versa. We did put a sign up on our garage with our full address on, to try to help any confused drivers, but they still don’t see that half the time! We have nearly taken delivery of at least two fridge freezers, a weekly Tesco shop, takeaway curry and all sorts of other things and once I had to go knocking on the door of the other house looking for a parcel for me! Can sort of forgive them for that one, it is a bit confusing. Perhaps I should start hassling the council to put some signs up!
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My problem exactly
 
I have just thought of another one, Maybe not the fault of the delivery driver but a consequence of online shopping.
It's the "I know our website said the item was in stock but it lied. Your delivery will be a week later than estimated."
Then, a week later, "There will be a delay in your order because it is still not in stock but we will get it to you next week."
Then a week later, "Really sorry, that item that we said was in stock when you ordered it and then we said it would be with you within a week and then we said it is still delayed. Yeah, that one. We will deliver it next week. "
Then a week later (more than a month since you ordered it), "Very sorry but your order has been declined. You should expect your payment back within the next week."
By then, Christmas is well and truly over and you need the payment back to buy a (late) alternative present.
 
Or when delivery company leave card saying parcel left at local shop ( pump supplies )., and you know another batch of pump supplies due next day. So pop down to local shop to collect but they decided to close early. No problem you think. Next day Scan the Qr code on delivery note to be told 2nd parcel waiting at another shop. Drive to other shop.( not accessible by foot or publictransport)...to find no parcel. Shop say to contact delivery co. So phone them to end up in an automated loop telling you the parcel was collected by someone else, no option to get through to actual human. So phone pump manufacturer who checks and tells you that the 2nd box of supplies has not yet been despatched

Moral is don't stress about QR code !
 
helli said:
aybe a (final) verse from the perspective of the delivery guy on a zero hours contract being paid per parcel delivered on an unachievable schedule that doesn't take into consideration the traffic.
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Thanks Helli
I very much like the idea of a final verse on the plight of the drivers. This is likely to be a duet but I fancy the whole choir coming in to support the drivers plight.
 
Well this has opened a can of worms.
Thank you all for your input.

This will be for our Christmas concert 2025 so a bit if time to work on it, but it takes me ages so that is good.
 
We had a photo of the front door sent with the delivered item sent by e-mail when no item had actually been left. We had checked everywhere as they sometimes throw stuff over the side gate or leave it behind or even in the bin. But I suddenly realised that it was not our front door.
A bit of detective work located it to the same number house but in the next street. Other half went an knocked on the door to find a very perplexed elderly lady who was house sitting so hadn't realised it wasn't for them.
 
Or the coffee pod rack that they insisted had been posted through our letterbox - impossible given the size of the thing. I subsequently discovered that it had been delivered to 3 houses down where another Patti Evans dwelt (though our house number was clear on the parcel). She and her husband were in Spain for 3 months so her Italian neighbour had signed for it. She brought it round 2 months later, by which time I'd had a refund from the supplier!

Always worth reminding suppliers that under Section 15 of the Sale of Goods Act 2015 goods are the responsibility of the seller until such time as they have been received by the buyer.
 
PattiEvans said:
under Section 15 of the Sale of Goods Act 2015 goods are the responsibility of the seller until such time as they have been received by the buyer.
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That sounds like a ready-made refrain for you @SB2015 :rofl:
 
PattiEvans said:
under Section 15 of the Sale of Goods Act 2015 goods are the responsibility of the seller until such time as they have been received by the buyer
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As @everydayupsanddowns suggested this could be a good refrain. I can hear the basses droning on about this underneath the duet in higher voices. I can’t wait to get started on this.
 
SB2015 said:
Well this has opened a can of worms.
Thank you all for your input.

This will be for our Christmas concert 2025 so a bit if time to work on it, but it takes me ages so that is good.
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Will you be uploading it to the forum @SB2015 ? I’m intrigued now :D I keep imagining you as one of the ladies from Fascinating Aïda, and humming “Cheap Flights” every time I see this thread :rofl:
 
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