So – yesterday was Loz’s Birthday – we spent most of the day in London having a nice time, on driving back from the train station and saw something a little shocking on the front doorstep…
Two boxes from Marks and Spencer Flower Shop – utterly destroyed and in full view of the street. We picked them up and took them inside to look a little closer.
Soo.. the one on the left in the picture above looks like it’s been moved around the warehouse and van with someone’s size 10 boot. The one on the right has been left under the edge of the tiny roof above my front door where the rain has fallen on to it, and sodden the box so much the flowers are falling out of the bottom.
On closer inspection, this is the fuck up of not one, but TWO couriers – City Link (left box) and Yodel (right box). I’ve had run ins with Yodel before – remember when one of their staff stole my Nexus 7? City Link, I’ve not had any memorable troubles with – until today. I looked at the order tracking for both parcels – it looked like the chimp from Yodel left the parcel half hanging out in the rain first –
Yep – the parcel was ‘left safe’ outside the front of my house – in full view of passers by and in the rain at 11.27. Obviously then the City Link dipshit came along several hours later and agreed it was a good place to leave a parcel too.
Yep ‘left safe porch’ – over 4 hours later! It’s not a porch, it’s my fucking doorstep.
The mind blowingly stupid thing about this is, there ARE safe places to leave parcels if need be, the access to behind my house is there, and obvious, and there are several undercover places that could be used.
Thankfully the contents were largely okay – one of the bouquets was wrapped in tissue paper which had turned into sodden slimy mush after being out in the rain for over five hours. It’s not the point though, what kind of dumbass leaves parcels, clearly visable on a doorstep on a rainy day ?
Well, Yodel and City Link I guess!
I’m just thankful for the honesty of my neighbours for not picking up these boxes and wandering off with them!
Have you had any couriers leave stuff in an utterly ridiculous place?!
UPDATE – Well – both Yodel and City Link have apologised, and then promptly washed their hands of it by saying I need to talk to Marks and Spencer. Marks and Spencer have asked via Twitter for the Order No’s which I’ve provided and had no response. Although my Dad who sent one of the bunches of flowers has received a refund after complaining.
Hmm, a yodel driver stole an M&S order of mine once…then left the company before they could investigate.
We live in the middle of nowhere, so in theory leaving items on the ‘doorstep’ might be feasible. However, we’ve had a clothes parcel obviously thrown on the drive by the gateway from a van, we’ve had items left outside the stable door (our back door) with no leaflet and by the time we got home/went out in the morning for work it was dark so no way of knowing it was there for days. And the classic, a package left in a ‘safe area’ – the car port. Sensible area you’d think, except that we’re on a farm…with 3 different households living in different houses on it. the delivery was for me not for the main farm house under whose car port it had been left. But the worst of this…we have numerous dogs who are let out of their kennels most of the day and roam around. One is a labrador who will steal and carry off anything. Needless to say we never found the parcel or any shredded, and the courier company still insisted it had been left somewhere safe.
We also find that companies rarely leave a card to tell us they’ve left something (because we have no letterboxes – we only ever know via a follow up text/email.
We have to tell companies that a safe place is up high – on top of a vehicle, or on top of a high filing cabinet in the car port. Very annoying when ordering and the box for ‘where to leave if out’ options are never long enough to write enough detail!