So I missed a parcel the other day because I was out. I arranged the redelivery using the royal mail website to get it redelivered today. I got up early – about 5.30am and had a light on and the TV. My flat is not massive and I have a bell that works. Whoever came by was dead quiet because at 8am I had another redelivery card throught the door! What is with delivery companies and parcels? They seem intent on taking the time out to fill out the ‘You weren’t here’ cards and dropping those through instead of the parcels. I took the time out today to make a complaint but that doesn’t go very far unless I complain a few times with the same reference. It concerns me a little that they must have so many complaints to warrant a 3 times before a real complaint is taken seriously. What it all boils down to is the price. With online shopping at such high competitive levels (even at today’s current credit crunch), the pressure is passed onto couriers to keep prices and overheads low. This results in low pay to the delivery drivers with little incentives and low staff retention and poor performance levels (resulting in a card drop). To cover low staffing levels they hire temporary staff who simply do not care about any company values or targets (resulting in a card drop). Perhaps a better solution would be to totally revamp the whole system so that there are thousands of pick up centres across the UK where we can have our free deliveries, for example use all the corner shops, post offices and supermarkets for convenience. Customers who then want a house delivery can then pay a delivery premium for the pleasure. Even better would be for some clever person to invent a matter replicator and we could just have our online shop appear in our replicator machines. Yeah I know it won’t happen – it’s more likely that in a cost driven market deliveries are just going to get worse.