Jessica's posterous

UPDATE Monday 31st October. For those in suspense, yes it finally arrived! The driver retrieved the parcel from the random house he left it at, and left it outside my door. I got a verbal apology but still quite a rubbish experience!

In a weird but useful twist, the driver took a photo of the parcel where he had left it in the porch. Customer Services emailed the photo to me so I could verify that it wasn't my house, enabling us to solve this baffling mystery! So the drivers make the effort to take photos, but apparently not verify addresses or leave cards...

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UPDATE Thursday 27th October: I called City Link again this morning and it emerged that the driver had indeed left the parcel in someone's porch. Just not mine. And not on my street either. Apparently he had got confused and left it at a house in a similar sounding street. Erm...I rest my case.

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First a confession: I’m an unhappy customer at the moment. Why? I ordered some photo frames online and received an email yesterday to advise that they had been despatched via City Link.  This should have been a positive thing but given my past experience with delivery companies, I had a quiet sense of unease. I was given a consignment number to track my parcel – City Link’s website said it would be delivered today between the hours of 7.30am and 5.30pm. This meant that unless it arrived in the first hour of the slot I would be at work when it arrived. Nothing I could do so off I went. Whilst at work I checked the website again and it said the parcel had been delivered at a time which must have been minutes after I left for work. It said the parcel had been ‘left safe – in porch’. I don’t actually have what I would call a porch, but there is a covered area in front of my door. This isn’t a secure place as it is open and visible from the street. So I was slightly worried but assumed the parcel might be with a neighbour who actually has a porch behind a door. On getting home there was no parcel, nor a note to indicate it had been left anywhere else. I have phoned City Link and spoke to a helpful person who wasn’t able to get in touch with the local depot, so no light has been shed so far.

Whether or not the parcel turns up, I don’t understand why delivery companies are poor at providing good service to consumers. This is not an isolated incident. I order plenty of things online so have dealt with most of the popular couriers. Here are my concerns: 

The delivery hours are inconvenient for most people

Without fail these companies will only deliver when many people are at work. In order to combat this, I sometimes opt to have things delivered to my work address but this is not ideal as I cannot park nearby so end up lugging bulky items around or having to drive back to work to pick them up. Not to mention that workplaces shouldn’t be clogged up with people’s personal deliveries.

The delivery timeslot is incredibly long

Even if you do work from home or take the day off especially to be in, who can guarantee to be in for 10 hours straight? Pop out for a pint of milk and you might miss it!

The day items will be delivered is unclear until the last minute

Sometimes the day something will be delivered is crucial to whether I want to buy it in the first place, such as birthday presents. Most websites are pretty good at advising on delivery times, but in the hands of a delivery company things can get delayed and confusing. I had one experience where I was waiting for a gift for weeks, and all I could do was check the parcel tracking details everyday even though the estimated delivery date came and went with no joy. The company had a recorded message on the helpline asking customers to check the website for help, an unhelpful cycle.

Instructions are either not left or might as well not be

Today no card was left, so if I didn’t proactively check the website I wouldn’t even know that delivery had been attempted. Cards I've received in the past are often shockingly unhelpful, not clearly describing where a parcel has been left or simply saying ‘left with neighbour’. Er, which one? One company said they had attempted delivery at 10am and would do so again tomorrow and the next day. There was no way of contacting them to point out that I would be at work every day, so I simply kept coming home to a new, identical card. This led to a visit to…

The dreaded depot

As a result of the above, I frequently end up having to retrieve my parcels from a depot. Usually there is a brief window of opportunity to do this for working people, from about 8am to midday on a Saturday (believe me, there is nothing I would rather do at this time. Definitely not sleeping). The company with the nearest depot to me makes a point of having no parking for customers and stating this proudly on its cards. Whilst I can get there on foot, I always worry about how big the parcel I’m collecting is and whether I’ll be able to carry it home. Having such limited opening times also means that there is usually a queue of people to make the experience even more joyous. Another company have a depot on an industrial estate a few miles away. Having located the estate via sat nav, I carefully drove around until I found the stated address, Unit 1 in about 30 Units. But Unit 1 was empty. I sat puzzled, frustrated and increasingly aware that the limited window of pick up time was drawing to a close. I called the helpline only to listen to hold music for 10 minutes on my mobile. Eventually I started to drive home, noticing a small side road at the front of the estate which I thought I’d better check. Yes, that’s where the depot was. No signpost, but then it’s almost as if they would rather customers didn’t find them.

So all in all there is a pretty shocking lack of consideration for customer needs going on. Perhaps it’s because delivery companies are actually serving companies as their primary customers, not us end users. But the likes of Amazon and every other e-commerce website must realise that your experience with the delivery company sending their goods has an impact on your view of them. Anyway, there is a clear gap in the market for a delivery service which allows customers to select from a range of days and times slots (including evenings and weekends) even if it means paying a bit more or waiting a bit longer. End of rant.