Cycling UK Forum

Delivering a bike in a bike box from near Brighton to Dundee with the "48" service.

It took 41, so result.
Hang on... that's days rather than hours, maybe not so great after all...

If that was Yodel or Hermes you would be still waiting or told it's been delivered and you signed for it

Thats 41 posties riding 12 miles a day.

yakdiver wrote:If that was Yodel or Hermes you would be still waiting or told it's been delivered and you signed for it

We had various stages of incompetence. Most of the time it was in Mystery Location X somewhere in a depot at Gatwick and was probably saved by it being a pretty big box and thus hard to lose completely. Once it finally made it to Perth the tracking noted it had gone out for delivery but then changed its tune to we'd requested another date (we hadn't). What was a pleasant surprise was that we could call the actual Perth depot and talk to an actual employee there rather than an anonymous call-centre, and it turned out our house was no longer occupied (on the one hand we are in a satnav confounding enclave, but on the other you can say "we couldn't find it" rather than make up stories). Having assured the chap the address was correct and also very much lived in we were promised next day, and it duly appeared. Shame about the previous 40 days wandering through the wilderness...

Pete.

Have other couriers found your place hard to ... er .... find?

I went to replace an oven door at a house once in Nottingham, the postcode took me to a dead end cul de sac! Drove round for half an hour looking as there was no phone number on the job sheet. Finally saw a postman who told me how to get there. Apologised to the customer for being late, the chaps reply.....'Well we never have any trouble finding it!!!'
Easy when you live there!!!!

I've never had a problem with Parcel Force

philvantwo wrote:I went to replace an oven door at a house once in Nottingham, the postcode took me to a dead end cul de sac! Drove round for half an hour looking as there was no phone number on the job sheet. Finally saw a postman who told me how to get there. Apologised to the customer for being late, the chaps reply.....'Well we never have any trouble finding it!!!'
Easy when you live there!!!!

Some years ago (before Google Maps) everyone relied on the paper maps such as the Red and Blue books

Unfortunately our street was left off the data and didn't appear in any of them..... caused a lot of problems

If it makes anybody feel any better, the problems can be just as great if you are on every map there is (and I'm also on Streetview, but with my face blurred out.)

As the crow flies, I'm a few hundred yards from the DHL/ UK Mail depot. I've just had a package despatched from Germany on 31 December and even allowing for the B Hol it arrived at the DHL local depot on Friday 4 Jan., where it has been left until this morning, although I got a message on Saturday morning to say it was out for delivery. Either the satnav took the driver by a very long route or the tracking has been fiddled.

thirdcrank wrote:Have other couriers found your place hard to ... er .... find?

Quite a few over the fullness of time, but rarely more than the once, and where there have been issues it's been a case of get in touch and ask questions rather than decide the house is derelict apropos of they CBA... And this is (I thought) part of the Royal Mail, whose posties pretty clearly know where we are.

Pete.

Our Royal Mail service is excellent, and we're far from a big city. I suppose it helps when you have a conscientious postie..

Cours wrote:Our Royal Mail service is excellent, and we're far from a big city. I suppose it helps when you have a conscientious postie..

We've lived here since 1975, and as I must have posted before, during that time we've had three post people. I use that expression because one of them was a lady. I understand that Royal Mail rounds (walks?) are allocated on seniority and they like our area because people are neighbourly over things like accepting parcels. Our most recent postman hung up his postbag just before Crimbo and will be missed. We're in the suburbs BTW.

I live at the end of a rough track in the mountains of Snowdonia without any signage for the track nor the 4 inhabited dwellings up at its end! The centre of the postcode is a mile and a half away and there are a lot of other remote properties within it. There is no mobile phone coverage.

Mike the Parcel Force driver calls me on his personal phone as he leaves Deeside depot and is presumably on the A55 coming to start his 'round' down our way to let me know roughly what time he'll be here and if it's inconvenient he drops the parcel off at the local village PO some 3 miles away. He's a lovely man.

The local Royal Mail posties are also truly wonderful - nothing much has changed since Vince's cheapo sell off privatisation - they still deliver newspapers from the local village siop for nowt and look in on remote elderly 'clients' to make sure they're ok and often share a cup of tea and a chat.

Everyone knows everybody by their first names it still works and is socially respectful and very 'care'ful

Happy human contact/knowledge days still here in baradwys

I always fear and never recieve a so called first attempt??? delivery by UPS above all others for some reason - possibly because their rapid driver retention/turnaround - and therefore knowledge of remote Welsh parts don't fit 'our' remote model

I had a fence post spade delivered today. It was coming by Royal Mail and had a Royal Mail postage label on. But it was delivered by DPD ? Looks as if Royal Mail are using other couriers to do the final leg, or may be longer. I am in a rural area so perhaps they can't justify sending a van out to me. The 2nd class 2 day delivery took 4 days. Can't really complain as the first one I ordered never arrived and that was coming via an unspecified courier, eBay refunded me pretty quick. Local postie's are very good here as well, always got time for a bit of banter. The local Yodel man is good too and recognises us on the Tandem, always polite and gives us plenty of room. On one occasion a few years ago we were chased on the Tandem by a PO parcel van who saw us heading home and went out of his way to complete a delivery as we were out when he first called. Everyone recognises the Tandem.

I ordered some stuff from amazon....was shown out for delivery by their courier, I then got an update saying it was delayed....it finally arrived a week later delivered by Royal Mail.