Stopping DHL leaving packages with neighbour?

Del2005

mdebets wrote: »

All these problems you mention are direct results of privatisation and the way the delivery industry is run these days.

In the good old days (and it's still this way today with letter services) you had a postman, who covered a relatively small area, which he walked/cycled every day, probably going through every street at least once a day. Obvious, he would know his area very well, even houses that are hard to find (that's the reason why you still get letters delivered today correctly by An Post, which addresses that have only a small resemblance to the real address). Of course this is expensive and requires a high volume of mail, too employ enough postmen to keep the areas small.

Come on privatisation and you suddenly have a few additional companies, which deliver only a fraction of the volume An Post does. Obvious, they have less employees and thereby larger areas, through which they not only don't walk, but drive in a van and probably have certain areas, they only visit once every few months. Therefore the delivery drivers don't know as well as the postmen did, which means they have to search longer for house that are out of the way (Postcodes would only help to a certain extent with that).

An additional problem is the way delivery drivers are paid (normally per delivery, not per time). If a delivery driver gets paid 10€ per delivery and he would on average take 10 minutes per delivery (figures plugged out of thin air), he would make 60€ per Hour on average. If he now has to search for a house for 30 minutes, wait another 10 minutes for the recipient to get to the front door and take the package, he would have lost half his wage for this hour. It's therefore easier just to pretend to have rung the recipient, not reached him and left the parcel with neighbours or in a shop. The delivery company would probably also ok with this, as they have already received the money and the sender would be unlikely to switch for future deliveries, as probably not too many people would switch their business to another company, based on their choice of delivery company (and the others wouldn't be any better anyway).

There is no easy solution to this problem.
Possible approaches would be that more people need to complain and make it clear to a shop that they only buy from them if they have a reliable delivery company (hard to get the numbers up for this and it would probably mean either solution 2 below or a huge increase in delivery costs).
Another approach would be to go back to the old days of a monopoly for deliveries.
A totally new approach would be to split the delivery in two parts. The sender selects a delivery company that delivers to a center (could be in larger cities) and the receiver can then decide if he wants it delivered from a second company (where he can choose the service he wants) or collect it himself.

Post codes are an ancient system for making mail delivery and sorting easier. What we need are location codes, like Loc8, but an official one. Locations codes will make deliveries simple and allow the real cost be paid by the receiver, who won't be happy if the live rurally, and allowed companies to pre plan routes, like UPS in the US does with no left turns, to improve efficiencies.

BTW AnPost with their geo directory are one of the reasons why we're so far behind the rest of the world with postcodes. As AnPost where on the team that set the tender criteria for post codes we are going to get a useless system still based on AnPost's sorting offices not a location code so emergency services, it's not just couriers who can't find houses in rural locations, and deliveries will still be difficult.

Brylee Sticky Housetop wrote: »

None of this is the fault not the receiver. If couriers have problems with schedules and routes then they need to sort it out. We could all start a business and not fulfil our end of the service if we got a way with it.
I have never agreed when buying something that I would be there at a given time. That said, I have always waited at home when I know something is due. The basic fact remains that many couriers don't know where they are going and take short cuts and lie about trying to effect delivery.

The basic fact is that couriers wages are being cut to the bone and they aren't earning enough to spend hours driving up and down boreens looking for houses. If you want it delivered to your house it'll cost you a lot more than you are being changed now, how can it cost the same for an item to be shipped to me in South Dublin to someone in the back end of Kerry or Donegal?

Vojera

Brylee Sticky Housetop wrote: »

This exact scenario is very commonplace. I have lost track of the number of times I was told they had phoned when they did not.

Same here. I was waiting on a DHL delivery last year and from tracking it on their website I could see it was out for delivery. I was home all day, deliberately didn't ring anyone in case they were trying to call me and there was nothing. That night the status of my order went back to being at the depot. The following day IN THE POST I got a letter to say there was no answer and my phone number was incorrect. What a load of crap! No one knocked on my door or rang the doorbell. No one rang my phone (incidentally, the number listed was correct). So I had to go to the depot to get it. And I live in Dublin 9, about ten minutes from their Dublin depot, not in a one-off house ten minutes from the nearest neighbours.

Davy

With DHL you can request it to be left for collection at the depot before delivery if you wish, just phone them or email them. It has to be in Ireland before they will act on it.

UPS wont hold or redirect until after the first attempt.

Shelflife

The basic fact is that couriers wages are being cut to the bone and they aren't earning enough to spend hours driving up and down boreens looking for houses. If you want it delivered to your house it'll cost you a lot more than you are being changed now, how can it cost the same for an item to be shipped to me in South Dublin to someone in the back end of Kerry or Donegal?

As Srameen said that's not the concern of the recipient or the sender, they have paid for a service and they are not receiving it.

Charge the price for the job to be done properly and let the market decide if it wants it or not, its very easy to undercut a competitor if you're going to do a half arsed job of it.

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

Shelflife wrote: »

The basic fact is that couriers wages are being cut to the bone and they aren't earning enough to spend hours driving up and down boreens looking for houses. If you want it delivered to your house it'll cost you a lot more than you are being changed now, how can it cost the same for an item to be shipped to me in South Dublin to someone in the back end of Kerry or Donegal?

As Srameen said that's not the concern of the recipient or the sender, they have paid for a service and they are not receiving it.

Charge the price for the job to be done properly and let the market decide if it wants it or not, its very easy to undercut a competitor if you're going to do a half arsed job of it.

That's the whole point. If they can't afford to provide the service then quote for it properly. As I said earlier, anybody can undercut in a business if they are not going to do the job required.
They can stop making excuses about not affording time to find houses and either get on with their job or shut up. Sounds like more of their lame and untrue excuses for not doing what they have been paid to do.