lunedì 14 dicembre 2015

Receiving your parcels ordered online, what to know and what to do...

Distribution, 

home delivery, 

on-line ordered things on Amazon, E-Bay, Alibaba.com, Chinasources.com and other local and international selling systems is mainly done because you folks need to go to work, thus have no time to go shopping, most of the time you do this on the way home, in the train/bus/tube, using your smart-phone or tablet, sometimes you do it from home with family around your laptop, but that is a rare family reunion occasion.

Any medal has two sides, and the revers of this medal is not looking any better than the front of it, same lack of time that urges you to buy on-line is also preventing you, most of you, to be home when the delivery arrives, and here is where the trouble starts.

How many times you had your delivery days or even weeks late due to a single factor found on the "we have being here attempting to deliver" note, with a big "X" right on the "we still have your goods, you were not home to receive it" pre printed line?

How may times the neighbors refused to take your delivery for they have being fed and had enough...  how about parents and relatives?


How many times the parcel have being left on your doorstep, in your rubbish bin or even worse, chuck over the fence in your garden, exposed to theft, rain, deterioration, due to a desperate attempt to deliver in your absence?

Did you ever read on your "we were here" card things like "in your blue bin" than the parcel stinks like rotten, maybe you just ordered bananas...

Or even "your parcel is delivered in the safe place" printed line completed by hand with "ups... top of your roof"  sorry.

I need to remind you here that the delivery driver works for 8 hours paid, any extra hours are not paid, also I need to remind you here the driver has to do between 130 and 230 drops a day most of the times, and has 1 (ONE) minute alone to do that each single drop, any wasted time with ringing the neighbors, looking for a way to hide the parcel so you can find it, makes him work late, for free, unfed and with no access to the bathroom, add rain and cold to this, just for fun.

Why would you not take a step forward to help them help you out?

How? 

Think like a delivery driver for 5 minutes, time to go from a drop to the next one,

 1. look into the Satnav (G.P.S.) to see how is the access (an many times the Satnav is wrong, thus if that is the case please include in your notes the best access for them , the way you use to come home and park your car, could be a totally different street leading to your rear garden, instruct the delivery driver in the notes please, do that in the purchasing process)

2. drive there through traffic, sometimes in reverse for 100 yards (it takes what it takes...)

3. find a way to park their van (many times there is no room to drive, not to talk about parking it, simply because all folks living there for simple laziness are parking on the street by the kerb) So the driver might park on the sidewalk and if there is a grass strip will park on it ruining the grass.  Don't curse the driver, curse yourselves and do something about it, like buying some cavity pavement
to grow the grass through and put them on the grass, of course neighbors will take advantage to park, but if you park your car there, neighbors can't do it, and if there is no room on the street to park anyway, at least the van driver can use your driveway (no neighbor will dare parking there)

 4. You have no driveway because you keep it as a grass surface?  put the cavity pavements there too, so you have grass yard and driveway in the same time.

5. You might not be home for the delivery?  If you have a shed for the meters or else, install on the door a push button code lock like this and give the code in the instructions for delivery, change the code regularly both on the lock and in the instructions.

6. Your shed/Cabot/green house/rear porch is not in front of the house?  Diver has no legal rights to deliver there regardless the notes on-line or on paper glued to your door, but INSTRUCTIONS for delivery can be given at purchase moment, this allows them to legally go in your property and put tings in your rear garden shed, otherwise they will just ignore the notes, they do not want to spend time in jail for helping you.
 Talking about putting instructions for delivery, some sites make it easy, some not.  Amazon is a negative example for instance, they are giving some standard options that are not matching the reality 80% of the case, so people just pick the nearest option and add a few words, it helps but not always, so in that case just hit the Customer Service button on your purchasing page, this puts you on LIVE TALK with a person that can put in your profile instructions that you cannot, as long as the instructions make sense, are legally doable and present no legal risk for Amazon, as company, for the driver as a person and for the goods themselves ("throw the parcel over my fence" is not a good instruction for instance, but : "enter my back garden via gate on left of the house, entry code is 1234XY than turn knob to right, and put the parcel in my shed", they will consider this a good instruction)  You can ask them to put there a PERMANENT instruction like above, without the code, and each time you change the code just change it in the delivery notes on-line too.

7. You don't have a porch in the front, nor in the rear, no shed, no Cabot, nothing, no problem, just buy a suitable size Postal Delivery Box, have it installed (bolted in the floor or on the wall for safety) somewhere the delivery man can have access to it.  What is that?

Truth is they do not exist but in way to small sizes generally, but here you can find something suitable, large metal boxes waterproof, theft proof, with push button coded lock that you can change the code as you wish and when you want, they might seem ugly to some but they certainly do the job.  If you want them nicer they can be personalized for a price, cladded in timber or painted in various colors, or simply you can plant decorative bushes all around leaving an access path for you and the delivery man, can be a grass path with cavity pavings or a concrete block path, your choice, in the first case do not forget to trim the grass once a month please.

8. Las but not least, render your house findable, how?  Put a darn door number that is visible from a mile, on a high position, make it from L.E.D. light so Santa can see it from the sledge in the night.
Delivery drivers hate houses with no numbers, it's confusing for them, they also hate big ceramic plates that reflect light back in their torch, with a bounty floral motifs all around and a small door number in the middle that they can only see after getting off the van and walking for 2 minutes, when they are one foot away from it.

Make your door number one foot tall, write beneath the street name, and place it above your SUV height on your wall so they can see it from the van while driving when your SUV is parked in front of your door, and if your house is 10 yards or more away from the street, put another set of door number with street name on it just by the sidewalk on a post so drivers can see them form 5 feet while driving.

 9. Bonus tip, buy the largest box you can fit, if large enough you can place in it permanently a pit deep freezer on a side, and have the Iceland groceries deliver your frozen food ordered on-line in your absence in the safe box.  P.S. do not forget to bring a power line in the box and plug the freezer in that thingy, just so it has a light on when you open it, for no other reason at all.

Happy shopping on-line folks.




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