Rights over lost delivery?

[gaz]

I suffered from a bit of a delivery faux pas a couple of years back on an internet order. I can't remember the courier company involved, it definetly wasn't DHL.

An e-mail arrived confirming my goods had been delivered to my address, but no goods, so I e-mailed back.

A further e-mail came back with a picture of the front door it had been delivered to, the problem being that it wasn't my front door, nor did it belong to either of my immediate neighbours. An e-mail expalining all this was then sent back in reply.

A new e-mail arrived, the picture turned out to be of the door where delivery had been attempted but the goods had in fact been left at a different house (they told me which one) and a "left with your neighbour" card had been popped through the letter box of the mystery door.

Since it turned out they'd managed to get the street right I called in on the way home. The owners of the mystery door had already tried to claim "their" package. Fortunately they'd accepted it was a mistake once they'd been shown that the package wasn't addressed to them even though the card had been put in their letter box.

I particularly remember that the courier wasn't DHL because that's who the owner of the mystery door works for.

Somewhat embarassing but I did get my goods and an apology.

I've also had Halfords (unknown courier) deliver to a neighbour when I was actually in. No knock on the door, no card through the letter box, just on-line tracking confirming it as delivered. The neighbour brought it round before either Halfords or their courier got back to me.

[Tangled Metal]

That's what I find confusing, if they had delivered to a neighbour I'd already have the parcel. We might not be friends but we take in parcels for each other regularly and have them over without fail. When we take in a parcel for a neighbour it sits in the house, hallway or dining room table. It's in the way and we want to get rid of it. So as soon as we spot the neighbour getting back we go round with it. Our neighbours seem to have the same approach.

So why would they suddenly keep a parcel intended for me? Against their usual habit.

[RickH]

We quite often have trouble with deliveries not finding us without clarification of our location. Ironically, our row of houses is marked & named on large scale Ordnance Survey maps going back to the 19th century so the place hasn't suddenly spring up recently.

(slightly OT: Google Maps seem to have moved us too - if you put our postcode in it used to locate us within a few feet. In the last couple of weeks our postcode now shows as the middle of an unbuilt area some distance away! )

Recently we had the reverse where a parcel was left in our porch (as per the delivery instructions attached) but the postcode on the label wasn't ours - the letters matched but one of the numbers was a 5 where ours has a 6 & is about 3 miles away. Fortunately the label had the recipient's email address so I could make contact. He came over to collect it but, unsurprisingly, had difficulty finding us (but did in the end so it all worked out OK).

[thirdcrank]

I hope you get a satisfactory result with this and I hope you will be able to let us know what had happened. Although individual courier drivers vary in their standards, based on my own experience I'd put DPD head and shoulders above the rest. This is the first time I've heard of them delivering outside the time slot they have notified.

[mjr]

Royal Mail are the best here, with UKMail not far behind, then Yodel. The remaining ones like D.Head Logistics, Damaged Parcel Deliveries, Herpes and Oops are much of a muchness - they mostly work but when they fail, they seem to go spectacularly wrong. DPD's tracker is pretty much useless: they're nearly always late, but the tracker will keep forecasting on-time until the very last minute even though they'd clearly have to teleport from halfway across the county.

[thirdcrank]

AIUI, Royal Mail postal rounds (walks?) are allocated by seniority and we have had only three people doing ours in the 43 years we have lived here. Having said that, most of our wrong deliveries have been by Royal Mail either to a nearby street which begins with the same letter as ours, or to another with the same main name but different "Place, View, Drive etc." It only happens on the days when our regular chap is off and somebody is covering.

I've had poor service one way or another from most couriers except DPD, but I think a lot of it's the individual drivers.

The best ever service I've had without doubt was from a chap who used to deliver for whatever firm StJSC used to use (Business Post?) in the days when I was a regular customer. I'd nominate Yodel as the pits, but part of their trouble locally was when they had their last merger several years ago, they had two depots side-by-side so one had to close.

IIRC, I've only had one parcel that never arrived and wasn't accounted for and that was from Amazon. I was inadvertently copied in on an internal email which was rather sarcastic about the driver, but I got into something of an impasse with Amazon who wouldn't act because it didn't fit any of their categories. In the end I spoke to a friendly chap on the far side of the planet who eventually appreciated that the only way he would be able to terminate his shift was to give me a refund.

Compared with the generally excellent service I seem to get, my occasional problems only stand out because they are so rare. Being retired, I take in a lot of parcels for neighbours. On the "real shops are better" theme, IME that's not always the case.

[Tangled Metal]

I hope you get a satisfactory result with this and I hope you will be able to let us know what had happened. Although individual courier drivers vary in their standards, based on my own experience I'd put DPD head and shoulders above the rest. This is the first time I've heard of them delivering outside the time slot they have notified.

TBH I rate DPD very highly too. They've changed their system in the time I've been getting deliveries made by them. The driver who apparently was called shaun even called me once to say he was an hour away. They also delivered to a neighbour but left a card saying which house number. Now they only do that if you change your delivery options and actually specify which neighbour. If that neighbour isn't in they don't deliver I guess.

I suppose this tightening of their system is to prevent issues with claims against them, like mine.

As soon as I know something I'll post here. It's good to give an outcome to threads like this.

Thank you for your comments and advice. I appreciate assistance through forums like this but like most don't always thank posters.

[[XAP]Bob]

Had a DHL driver ask me to take a parcel in for my neighbour... fine, I do that a fair amount.

I checked the label though - he’d got the wrong street...
Out road changes name at a T junction, both roads start at 1 from that t junction.... he’d gone the wrong way, so missed by no more than 100 yards

[NATURAL ANKLING]

Hi,

Had a DHL driver ask me to take a parcel in for my neighbour... fine, I do that a fair amount.

I checked the label though - he’d got the wrong street...
Out road changes name at a T junction, both roads start at 1 from that t junction.... he’d gone the wrong way, so missed by no more than 100 yards

Very common, When I refuse they get narky
Even when I say that its wrong address, no apology, off in a huff.

[Airsporter1st]

Hi,
Couriers take pictures nowadays, good retailer will send replacement pronto if they want to deal with you in the future.

As far as the law is concerned, I would hazard a guess that undelivered to you means just that you never saw it so its undelivered.

Even signed for RM have started to leave parcels with no sig.
I accept them in my porch, that's pretty secure as if taken would be theft from a property, not likely.

Yes the retailer is liable (just checked) delivered to you, we are fobbed off by the courier etc .....................see your parcel man.........NO!

Contact retailer, if you paid for delivery time and you do not have it on time they will have to compensate too.

https://www.moneywise.co.uk/scams-rip-o ... go-missing

"Under the Consumer Rights Act, when you buy goods from an online retailer, they are responsible for the goods until you receive them. So if the courier loses the goods you ordered or they are damaged, the retailer is responsible for putting things right, not the courier."

Your contract with who.......the retailer....

Unless things have changed, it can only be theft from property, insurance-wise if accompanied by "violent or forceful entry or exit". Opening the unlocked(?) door of your porch is neither violent nor forceful.

[mjr]

Out road changes name at a T junction, both roads start at 1 from that t junction.... he’d gone the wrong way, so missed by no more than 100 yards

Yeah, our road changes names three times through the neighbouring two villages to our north, finally settling on a very common name around here (325 Norfolk streets with the name according to OSM - probably an overestimate but half of the world's total)... but the numbers continue rising through all three names. Then I think the southern end of our village only has named houses on this road and no numbers. And finally, at the boundary with the next village south, the numbers restart from 1 but the name doesn't change. I can't think why we have so many problems with deliveries(!)

[NATURAL ANKLING]

Hi,
I used to live in a cul-de-sac, terraced houses down one side 1 -9, other side of road was 1-9........just a different name, two names one road.

[Tangled Metal]

Finally the investigation period is over and the retailer is able to claim against the courier. So they sent out a replacement Friday. Same courier. So I immediately changed delivery to a drop off point. It's arrived there so I'm off to Halfords tomorrow on the way home (not got a car today and it could be too bulky for my pannier).

Apparently the driver no longer works for the courier, whatever that means I don't know. It's a fair result and I'm actually happy with Outdoor Gear UK 's help clearing this matter up.

[thirdcrank]

I'm pleased you got a satisfactory result but I'm intrigued about what happened to the original parcel. Unless it unexpectedly turns up eg it's been left with a neighbour who was waiting for you to collect it, we'll probably never know.

[Tangled Metal]

They don't know which neighbour. The driver was in the right area at some point on his route so it could have gone to a neighbour. No note and the driver was no longer working for the courier so can't ask him.

I don't know enough of my neighbours to be ok with knocking on door after door in the hope of finding it. I do trust my immediate neighbours to drop a parcel round if they had taken it in. They certainly have been reliable in that respect in the past. Plus we take stuff in for our neighbours.

Neighbours further away I don't have contact with. We've all got our own lives and you rarely meet to get to know them.

We'll never know where it went.