Postal Delivery Woes

[shazrasha]

Now I love the Post Office even if their website has become almost completely taken over by things not postal. What I like best is the fact that the delivery depot is only 20mins from my house so if I don't get my parcel straight away, at least it wont be much of a chore to fetch it. Only once have I had to go to the Parcel Force place nearest me and that is on the same road in one of the post offices.

What I hate is third party delivery. Not because they aren't efficient, safe or careful when it comes to deliveries; no, I hate them because it's always a huge palaver to get the parcel. Why? Because the only time they deliver is between 8-5, mon-fri when nobody who has a working week is at home unless they are ill. So they either think that everyone is a business or unemployed...

But my irritation about that in general pales in comparison to this

I got home after having gotten stuck a little longer at work to find a note stuck in the door. A delivery came for me when I was out (not surprising really, the postman only gets me in if he is real early) and they will try to redeliver tomorrow morning, which if their time today is anything to go by will be when I am at work. The unhelpful note also states that they will only make 2 attempts.
Now I am only expecting one parcel and fortunately for my sanity I am willing to fight for it. No one keeps my Doctor Who goodies away from me.

So I called the depot as it was too far away for a dash to pick it up. Gave them the consignment number and quickly established that they could not deliver it to my home address when I was in. I ask the next obvious question. Can you bring it to my work address? "Oh we can't do that." You what!? "Oh, no," the woman said. "You'll have to contact the sender to get the address changed." Now I thought they asked you plenty of things for parcels, what with customs and what not, but I was fairly certain that the number to the sender in the USA would not be amongst them. I was right. The person they wanted me to contact was the delivery company who had sent it to them.

As they explained it: You have to call them as we are a third party that that delivery company has sent the item to and that I will have to explain to the original delivery company that I need to change the delivery address so that they can call the third party to have it changed.
I took the number and put the phone down.
A deep breath later I called the new number. The woman who answered was very nice which made this call much more pleasant than the first if still a little insane. For some reason she was shuffling boxes around and I had caught her in the middle of it. It took a lot of reiteration and explaining, but we eventually worked out the problem. They don't have depots near me so they contract out anything that has to be sent to this part of the country. Anyway she took all my details and my number in case the third party driver needed to contact me. She then promised to call the third party and inform me immediately if there were any issues.


Fingers crossed I'll have my parcel tomorrow.

EDIT: OK now I'm really annoyed. Ive just realised that this parcel is the set of iceskates my brother ordered. I really feel like wringing his neck now. All that effort and it's not even mine.

Comments

[midnightoak.livejournal.com]

Typical Mogran!

I am crossing my fingers that it is a Dr Who parcel and not ice skates but you never know...