To ask why parcel delivery services are so terrible?

I live in Germany. We get this too, however, the times I‘ve caught the delivery guy returning from putting the parcel straight in the safe space rather than ringing, it’s always been because he doesn’t speak German.

You can translate anything written, but if you ring the bell, the customer will start talking to you and you won’t be able to reply.

Royal Mail and Evri are both good round here

just saying

I had a £500 parcel left on my doorstep in the rain (it was an electrical item just in a box) yesterday by RM. They didn't ring the bell or knock on the door, I was only aware of the parcel because my neighbour rung the bell I assume about 10 minutes later for something different.

Royal Mail leave your parcel on your doorstep if you designate it as your safe place.

they don’t do this as standard because, well, they view themselves as a higher quality courier than the ones who lob it over the fence.
And they are coming to your house daily anyway, so can easily come back tomorrow.

Also if customers claim it’s not delivered they are entitled to compensation. I can only assume other couriers suck up the cost of this Because they pay their staff so little it’s worth it.

I always pick stuff up at the local drop off shop. They are usually open till late, so no problem picking stuff up.

It’s why I use lockers or drop off at the coop, if you need to be home I don’t order it. The lockers are really good though

TBH Royal Mail is very good here. If there a RM option for delivery when I’m ordering online, I always opt for it, even if it’s £1 more. But our postman is brilliant. I use RM Click and Drop for sending parcels, too.

I’d never choose Evri, after they dumped a parcel on a neighbour’s doorstep several houses away.

The thing with ringing is odd - it seems to be only Royal Mail who refuse to leave parcels on the doorstep but also never bother to try to attract the attention of the homeowner. I understand if you have alcohol or something with an age limit delivered that they need to see you, but Royal Mail often just seem to add to their own work by taking the undelivered parcel back to the depot, meaning angry customers queueing up on their weekend for things that have literally been on their doorstep.

It's the usual story: pay peanuts get monkeys. If you want a reliable delivery service with timed deliveries it will cost more. The consumer could help, by displaying the house number/name where it can be seen from the road, and if you live down a unsigned lane with a house every 1/2 mile use "what 3 words" to give the driver a chance.

This is the one that really pisses me off. I mean just ring the bell. Fair play to Royal Mail though where a few weeks back the delivery person did this so I rang them and said the delivery person didn’t even come to my house or ring the bell and it’s medication ( which thankfully RM could see it was coming from xxx pharmacy)

The customer service person called the local office and got them to redeliver that same day.

However on Weds I was expecting a delivery, and it had gone way past the estimated time, it was just by chance I had to go downstairs to open the communal door for the washing machine delivery and I saw my parcel on the floor.. the RM delivery driver didn’t even bother to alert me or ring my bell to get the signature etc.

Delivery services in the UK is so bad and just getting from bad to worse

I think a lot of the frustration is because they simply don’t do the basic things you mention. Like knocking and waiting. They don’t knock nor do they wait. I had one guy suddenly appear right in front of my window in the small space between my fence and my house, poking around. No idea who he was. I went to the door to ask what he was doing and he muttered something about the bell not working. I asked why he didn’t knock, no answer to that. There’s a bin right next to my front door which would have been a really obvious place to leave a parcel if that’s what he was trying to do, so no idea why he felt the need to squeeze past that bin and start nosying around on my property and alarming me.

I’ve also had RM say they’ve tried delivery without knocking and without leaving a card. So in other words they just haven’t.

Mine are really good! Only had a few failures in years of multiple daily deliveries/sending. I do think it's area specific, and also whether you have a safe place. Lockers have always worked fine for both sending & delivering more theft-susceptible items.

When I bought a laptop from a company hundreds of miles away (UK) I used the Royal Mail collection service, which worked brilliantly. It was exactly like a private courier, at about 100th of the price.

With high-value international purchases, I think you have to go with one of the big names and - for extra confidence - arrange to collect it from one of their drop-off points. We have a little local newsagent that handles DHL shipments, customs requirements managed seamlessly.

All mine are brilliant. Turn up on time, friendly drivers,text just before delivery.

I've had very few problems, nice people generally. My daughter did deliveries for a while, covering local villages at weekends , going all over the place. It's a poorly paid difficult job.

IT IS!!!

I order a fair bit online, and honestly, I've had no issues at all. The various apps have worked well for me, and our local Evri driver is a superstar. We can even message him on our local Facebook page. A local Royal Mail employee from the sorting office nearby is also very active on our local Facebook page, and will go in search of items for people.

Coincidentally I’ve also had a massive saga with the inefficiencies of Royal Mail today as well as over a 30 minute hold on the telephone to talk to someone in an attempt to sort it all out! It’s really not good enough- working people can’t just wait in all day with no idea what time frame there is for delivery. Unfortunately I don’t know what alternatives there are for getting delivery of items ordered. Judging by online reviews I gather Royal Mail is always this bad.

I am totally fed up of evri. I ordered my mum a football shirt for her birthday and evri never delivered it. Royal mail are rubbish too. If i get a time slot between 11:00 and 14:00 i will get my parcel at 17:00 if i am lucky.

It isn't just the delivery lot, whoever packs them are often quite bonkers too. I had 2 separate deliveries of pots in 1 week (from 1 order I made) and both arrived separately smashed to bits. No "FRAGILE" label or tape, zero pading other than newspaper! Guy carrying the box to the front door was the same both times and clearly heard it jangle as he carried it, but still he delivered them after they had separately been driven across the country for several days, only for them both to be returned by me the next. I mean, why?

Maybe it is just a massive front, like the vape shops etc and this is just jobs for the boys to cover a massive cartel?

I'm completely fed up with all of the services apart from DHL at the moment! Evri keep losing things, only gets sorted if I contact them - which to be fair, does always seem to get sorted as a person from the company does always contact me and gets in touch with the depot on my behalf. . Royal Mail have, so far this week, failed to deliver 3 things, plus I've got another 3 things out for delivery today that were supposed to be delivered by an hour ago, still no sign. I'm sick and tired of it -it's not like the service is cheap anymore!
The worse thing is our postman is on holiday, so there's somebody else doing his round and so far this week, he's not delivered anything! So, he's doing a great job - not!

@Badbadbunny I have no settings set up either and mine still randomly goes to the post office

Nope, not set up as these are post sent to my business address for which I've not set up an account. I've checked for my personal account at my home address for which I do have the app set up and that has no re-delivery settings either. So, no, I've never set up either address to default for local PO delivery.

Ironically, just remembered a couple of months ago, a parcel was sent by a client and because there was no one in the office, Parcelforce (part of RM) took it upon themselves to deliver it to a post office in the next village, so that kind of proves that there's no default set up. Still better than having to drive to the sorting office though!

There isn’t always an option offered for this! Where there was, I certainly used it.

Lately, even Amazon has been letting me down. Delivering things a day late or at 10pm at night when I pay for Amazon Prime.