April 28, 2004
Parcel Farce
What's the point, I ask you?
I mean, what's the point having a place like this to rant and rave about things, and then not ranting and raving? No, I don't know either, so here I go (though I'll probably post the same rant to Digital Fury shortly). I am, as previously discussed, expecting some books to arrive from Amazon. These parcels, it turns out, are being shipped to me by Parcel Force.
So, on Monday, April 26th, Parcel Force duly came to my parents' front door and put a card through it. They may have attempted to deliver the parcel first — my experience suggests they probably didn't, but let's give them the benefit of the doubt here, since we don't know. That night, then, my mum phoned them up, and arranged that they'd deliver to her workplace the following day instead. This story should stop there. Really, it should. They could have just turned up with the parcel, handed it over, and that would be the end of that. But no.
No, instead they decided to simply do nothing. Absolutely nothing. Because you see, they later decided the address she'd given them was an "incomplete address" — after all, simply knowing that the building was called Clifton Hospital and on Pershore Road, and its postcode, is quite ambiguous. It could be any of the, ooh, 6 buildings that postcode covers. 5 of which are bungalows. Or at least they could have got back in touch, left another card, called her back, or something. Alas, no.
So we fast forward to today. Now today is something of a crunch day in the life of this parcel — if the parcel doesn't arrive today, I'd have been better off taking free delivery from Amazon, since I wouldn't see the parcel for a fortnight or so anyway (because of when Nicky is next likely to visit here, and when I'm next likely to visit her/home). So when it didn't, my mum got back on the phone to them, discovered the above about the "incomplete address", and told me what was going on. I was annoyed. I'm still annoyed, but 45 minutes ago, when this happened, I was annoyed. Anyway, the final outcome of all of this is that Nicky is, being such a kind and generous soul, going to go and collect the parcel for me, from Parcel Force's depot in Leyland, on her way down here tomorrow morning.
As I was getting directions from the (very helpful!) man on the phone at Parcel Force, though, something occurred to me. These directions were very familiar. It was, in fact, as if I'd followed these directions before. In fact, the last time I had something delivered by Parcel Force, a very similar chain of events happened, ending with me driving >20 miles to their depot. So that's 2 for 2 now; Parcel Farce are fast becoming a parcel delivery service that excels at getting a parcel 80–90% of the way there. Maybe they should make that their specialist niche, then; at least nobody would have the right to complain about them.
Posted by James at 19:16
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