My parcel hell
I remember during the time of the recent strikes by Royal Mail workers that a lot of people were convinced that the demise of Royal Mail would be no bad thing; and others, including that braying toad Ken Clarke, said that the strikes would hasten a much-needed privatisation.
But I think Royal Mail are head and shoulders above all the other home delivery companies available, those supposedly wondrous firms praised to the rafters during strike time merely by dint of the fact they weren’t part of the evil Public Sector.
You don’t realise how good Royal Mail are until you get something delivered by someone else – and now it’s Christmas time, and a lot of things are arriving by mail order, the horrors begin. And at least with Royal Mail there’s the chance to pop around to a collection place that isn’t on the dark side of the Moon in order to get it. With the others, well…
I think the first thing that gets my back up is the fact they love telling you they’ve ‘tried’ to deliver to you. “We made an attempt to deliver to you today, but YOU WERE OUT and so it’s YOUR FAULT for having a job you dirty bastard” is pretty much what you get, albeit on a crinkled piece of rain-soaked card stuffed through your letterbox and almost inevitably lost underneath a hundred pizza menus. I don’t want to be obtuse, but you ‘tried’? Well try a bit fucking harder. How about ‘trying’ to deliver when people are actually indoors, rather than waiting for the time of day when they’re the least likely to be there? How about finding out when people want things to be delivered, and deliver it then? You tried? Oh good for you. What do you want – a fucking round of applause? How about I whine to you about a series of unsuccessful ‘attempts’ to pay you the money I owe you? How about that? How about I ‘try’ to pay you when I know you won’t be there, then tell you to bog off to Tierra del Fuego to collect your money – what then? Would you think that was all right? I’m guessing probably not.
And if you want something redelivered to a different address, perhaps your work address or to someone you know who will be in all day, waiting by the letterbox – well just make sure you call them between 3.30pm and 3.31pm in order to do it, otherwise it’ll be far too late for them to change their plans. How you’re supposed to know that you’ve had something not delivered to you, when you’re still at work and haven’t yet arrived home, is beyond me – but no. You’re meant to somehow know that the card has arrived in your house and be able to ring up, guessing the 58-digit identification code without which you won’t be allowed to do anything, before the ridiculously early cut-off point.
There will be other ‘attempts’ to redeliver, of course. Having discovered that you weren’t in during the day the first time, they will naturally try and redeliver at exactly the same time the next day, and still be mystified as to why you aren’t there. “Why it’s almost as if quite a lot of the population appear to be doing something during the day, isn’t it?” the drivers must say, scratching their heads and wondering why this keeps happening, all day every day throughout their entire careers. “But what on earth could it be? That’s a puzzler. Still, I am sure that they’ll make plans to change their entire lives around during the 9-hour window during which we may, or may not, ‘attempt’ to deliver those things they’re waiting for. And if they don’t, well they know what to do.”
We do indeed know what to do – if we’re lucky enough to be getting a delivery from someone who doesn’t just ‘attempt’ once and then send it straight back, saying “Sorry, I did my best”. We know that we will have to drive about a 40-mile round trip to a windy industrial estate in the middle of nowhere, where there’s no parking and gruff shouty truck drivers in hi-vis jackets will bark at you if you dare try and leave your vehicle for five seconds in the wrong place, in order to try and retrieve those parcels whose delivery has been deemed to be a failure. Make sure you turn up between 6.43am and 6.44am in order to retrieve your parcel, or you will just find a load of metal shutters and a shoulder-shrugging work experience boy saying “Sorry, can’t help you.” There, you must bring an incisor tooth from a Siberian tiger, a unicorn’s smile, 527 different forms of identification, and the actual real-life version of the golden statue from the pre-credits sequence of Raiders of the Lost Ark. If you don’t have all that, don’t even bother coming because you’re not going to get it.
They will hold your parcel for five-and-a-half minutes before sending it back to whomever it was you ordered it from. I mean they’ve done their best. They’ve ‘attempted’ to deliver it to you. What else were they meant to do? Why the hell weren’t you indoors all day every day? Why weren’t you waiting, on running blocks, for when the card came through the door so that you could catch them in time? How dare you be so bloody selfish!
Royal Mail may well have a lot of faults and it probably is a bit more expensive than some of these other companies. But I do like them and do you know what? I don’t mind if my taxes are going there, if I get a slightly better service when I’m trying to have things through the post. I may well be in the minority, of course, but there you go. All I know is my heart sinks when I’m told something won’t be arriving by Royal Mail, and I fear for a future in which they’re privatised or everything comes through private companies. I can’t see it being any better. Cheaper, perhaps, but not better.
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