To think 7am is way too early for a delivery?

[Peaplant20]

We’ve started getting way more deliveries at around 7am since the pandemic started - possibly couriers have extended their delivery times or maybe it’s just a coincidence. It wakes me and DH up every single time as it’s usually a Saturday! And today for example we are both off on paternity/ maternity leave… I’d literally just got off to sleep after a feed and the doorbell went. I notice on DPD’s website their delivery hours are stated as 7am-5.30pm - this seems so antisocial to me, wouldn’t it be better to go later into the evening - so say 8am-6.30pm? I say I think it’s antisocial because I’d never go knocking on a neighbour’s door at 7am! What do you think?
Reasonable - yes it’s too early, I’d rather they delivered later (e.g. 8am-6.30pm)
Unreasonable - it’s fine as it is, I am up and about by 7am!

@ClumpingBambooIsALie totally agree with you I think most people are probably still asleep then (especially on a Saturday!), but wasn’t sure so interesting to know you found the same when looking it up! Possibly most mumsnet users aren’t reflective of the general population.

Would be fab if they offered the flagging option! Then everyone’s happy. I know for some Amazon parcels you can do something a bit like this.

I'd order for things to arrive a different day.

You don’t normally get a choice though, until they text you to say when it’s coming and then you can rearrange if you won’t be in. But OP wouldn’t have been able to rearrange if they only texted her on the day of delivery.

Totally agree and it appears the local DPD courier agrees too, he was super apologetic when he knocked me awake at 7am the other week and said he’d rather still be in bed too! Haven’t had this with any other courier, just DPD. Oh and Royal Mail occasionally delivers at 8 on a Saturday which is also a bit annoying.

7am is not reasonable! Loads of people are still asleep at 7am, or at best hauling themselves into the shower. It's like getting a delivery at 11pm — a good chunk of the population is going to be in bed or close to it

But like every other 'what time is it reasonable to' discussion, people's lives vary and it's simply not possible to find a time to suit everyone, or probably even the majority.

At 7 am, some people will be still in bed.

Some people will be awake but in the shower, getting dressed, feeding babies or in the process of all manner of other tasks where the arrival of a parcel would be an inconvenience.

Some people will have already gone to work (like our DPD worker and all the people who were in the depot sorting the parcels that they have just collected, believe or not, not everyone works Monday to Friday, 9 to 5, with a commute of an hour or so).

Some people will have just gone to bed after being on the night shift.

Leaving probably only a minority in a position to receive a parcel without being inconvenienced. So the parcel people have to get on and deliver their parcels at a time that works for them, the people who are expecting them will do well to designate 'safe place' alternatives if possible and then everything else will have to be dealt with using the dreaded 'we tried to deliver' card.

In normal times I would be up at 06:30 and leaving for work at 07:15 - I would love to get deliveries before I left for work!

Now I am working from home I'm up at 05:30 and starting work at 06:00, so that would make the delivery around coffee time.

I ended up getting one of those video/intercom doorbells, so if someone presses the button at something ungodly like 6.43am, it comes through to my phone and I can ask the delivery person to shove the parcel behind the bin while semi-comatose and starkers. Me, that is, not them. I assume.

Totally fine, if you really don't want to be disturbed (shift worker/baby etc) just put a note on the door.

And surely you don't need to receive the delivery in formal dress, they must see plenty of people in their dressing gowns at that time of the day . Alternatively don't order so much, I rarely have deliveries and seem to live a perfectly normal life.

Sure Barbara, people's lives vary, and there's no universally good time to deliver a parcel (and even if there was, it would be impossible to deliver everyone's parcels at that time), but it makes sense not to routinely deliver parcels at a time of day when (from what I can establish through a quick Google) the majority of people will be asleep and woken up by a knock on the door — you wouldn't expect a company to routinely deliver at 11pm either (although for me personally that would be very convenient). The existence of shift workers doesn't change that. MNers seem to be atypically early wakers, which is unsurprising given the demographic.

Try ordering things from places where you have a bit more control over the time and you can choose a slot to better suit your schedule

I love early deliveries. I do sometimes leave a note on the door or safeplace message if dh is working nights though, just asking them to leave it. If it really bothers you do that.

In a year when you have a toddler, a 7am delivery will be a welcome intervention to break up a morning that began at 5am

We rarely get early deliveries here, it's usually the same deliver drivers so we can estimate roughly what time they are usually in our street.
Your definitely not unreasonable to put a note on the door though. We did the same when DD was a newborn saying "DO NOT RING THE BELL SLEEPING NEWBORN", we were all sleep deprived and I think I'd have exploded if someone had rang the bell again 😂

7am is too early although I'd say it's not as bad as deliveries in the evenings. In all honesty, if you can't deliver it by 5pm you may as well try again the next day. It angers me that Amazon go up to 10pm these days - who the fuck is still up at that time of night? I mean I guess I am sometimes but if I'm awake at that time I'll be pretty wasted and not really in the mood to answer the door.

Really the hours should be 9am to 4pm for deliveries, with the earlier times reserved for urgent/priority deliveries.

For me it would be great, I would love deliveries at that time because it would be before work and I'd be up and about anyway. Understand it wouldn't be convenient for everyone, but they can't please all the people all the time.

Someone I know had something delivered recently on a Sunday and the driver phoned at 6.15am to say he was on his way

Reasonable to deliver at that time if part of a 2 hour window notified the day before. Unreasonable to have a so-called delivery slot of 7am to 1pm or longer. If it was my choice then if you don't do 2 hour slots, customers have to have the goods free, which would put an end to the practice. Emails and text messages mean there is absolutely no excuse to have wide delivery periods.

7 am is a bit early, state safe place, unless it’s white goods stop fussing, better than late

I switch off the doorbell in the evening

and you could leave a note saying "baby asleep, please don't knock".
7 IS early, but it's not unreasonably early if they have a packed day. We get deliveries from 7am to 10pm these days.

On a weekday it would probably be acceptable but not on a weekend. We had a furniture delivery that I paid a Saturday premium for and their website states 7am-8pm. Sod's law, of course, they knocked on my door at 6:45am. I kicked my husband out of bed and had a very unimpressed, half asleep conversation with them from the top of the stairs.

7a.m. isn't too early. We get our Asda grocery delivery between 6-7am as means its out the way before the rush to get everyone out the house for school and work. I imagine they will catch lots more people at 7am than 8am when many people are already gone for the day.

Choose safe space delivery option so you aren't disturbed in future.

But I know how grumpy I used to get when I had just drifted off at strange times after feeding a small baby so you can cut yourself some slack for being a bit peeved today!

@ChainJane

7am is too early although I'd say it's not as bad as deliveries in the evenings. In all honesty, if you can't deliver it by 5pm you may as well try again the next day. It angers me that Amazon go up to 10pm these days - who the fuck is still up at that time of night? I mean I guess I am sometimes but if I'm awake at that time I'll be pretty wasted and not really in the mood to answer the door.

Really the hours should be 9am to 4pm for deliveries, with the earlier times reserved for urgent/priority deliveries.

5pm?

Given that normally huge swathes of the population will be at work between 9 and 4 why on earth would they restrict deliveries to that time?

I could understand being pissed off if a neighbours deliveries were annoying, but order stuff to be delivered then complaining about it being delivered is really odd.

Leave a note for a safe place or order for collection and problem of the door is solved.

They have to plan a route which has the most efficient use of their time. Most couriers give a time slot and yours happened to be an early one. I wouldn’t mind an early one, then you aren’t hanging around waiting later in the day.

We usually either get very first thing in the morning or very last thing at night as we seem to be at one end or the other of a route. If I've got stuff ordered I'll leave the porch door open if it's a day we're not likely to be awake (fat chance).

I live on a newish estate where we all share the same postcode - there's a (samename ) road,lane, drive and mews...see where I'm going here?
And yes, I met all the no.10s in those places before I met my immediate neighbours. Now, in lockdown, if it's not the Morries delivery van, it's deffo not for me and I can redirect them. Yep, it's annoying if I'm in the shower (or still in bed) but I've developed my lung power no end.