Diary of a parcel delivery

Ever wondered what it’s like to have a laptop, but not a suitable charger for it? “Quite annoying” is the answer. Luckily, thanks to the wonders of the modern Internet, this sort of annoyance is easily solved by placing an order on the manufacturer’s website for the correct part. It’s a simple as that.

Or is it?

This post documents my experience trying to order a laptop charger from a well-known PC hardware manufacturer and have it delivered to me by a well-known parcel courier company. I haven’t provided the brand names because, in my experience, most courier services are similarly bad, and so this could occur wherever you buy from.

16th October 2023

I’ve placed the order, recieved an order confirmation email and been charged the correct amount.

So far, so good.

17th October 2023

I’ve been emailed a parcel tracking number. Unfortunately I’ve been given only a tracking number - I’ve not been told which courier it relates to, making it a bit pointless.

Thankfully, by the next morning, the website has updated to provide this information.

19th October 2023

Apparently the parcel is “On the Way” and due for delivery today between 9:30 and 12:30.

I’m not going to be in at that time, but there is an option to redirect to a collection point. In order to do this I have to register for an account and provide my address. I don’t have a problem with this concept - it makes sense as a way to verify that only the person who is supposed to be recieving the parcel can redirect it. But there is a “Country” selection dialog where the only option is United States. It also claims my postcode is invalid, presumably because it’s not a US ZIP code.

I manage to get around this by registering for an account through a different part of the website and providing my UK address there - but I’m then told I can’t redirect the parcel until a delivery attempt has been made. So why even give me the option?

It turns out that none of this mattered anyway, because the website was wrong. As far as I know, no attempt was made to deliver today.

20th October 2023

Apparently the parcel is “On the Way” and due for delivery today between 9:30 and 12:30. This time, I am going to be in.

It never arrives, though. In fact, it doesn’t appear to have moved at all - it’s sat in a depot in Castle Donington, wherever that is. Eventually the time estimate on the website disappears.

21st October 2023

Apparently the parcel is “On the Way” and due for delivery today between 9:30 and 12:30. Once again, I am going to be in. Surely this must be the real deal, because this time I even had an email to tell me it would arrive today.

Does it actually arrive today, though? Nope. It’s still in Castle Donington.

This is now the third completely incorrect delivery estimate I’ve been given, so I try to phone the courier company and see if they know what’s going on. It has a speech recognition system which asks me to read out the parcel tracking number and then mishears some of the digits. It doesn’t give you any way to correct individual digits, it makes you read out the whole thing again, so after several unsuccesful attempts to get it to understand me, I decide I can’t be bothered and give up.

23rd October 2023

Apparently the parcel is “On the Way” and due for delivery today between 9:30 and 12:30. And again, it doesn’t turn up.

I phone the courier company again, and this time I persevere. Turns out if it gets the tracking number wrong enough times it just gives up and puts you through to customer services anyway. It takes about 10 minutes for the guy on the other end of the phone to look up the parcel and tell me it’s in one of their depots and should be on the move shortly.

Sounds promising, I suppose, but it’s suspiciously vague…

24th October 2023

Apparently the parcel is “On the Way” and due for delivery today between 9:30 and 12:30.

Does it turn up? Of course not.

This is quickly becoming very annoying. My laptop battery keeps dying as the charger I am using is far too small to fully recharge it overnight.

I google Castle Donington and discover it’s in Leicestershire. Why is it so hard to move a small box from there to Sheffield? In the time it’s taken them so far, I could quite literally have walked there, picked the thing up, walked back and fully charged the laptop.

25th October 2023

Apparently the parcel is due for delivery today between 9:30 and 12:30. This time, the website actually says “Out for Delivery” rather than “On the Way”.

Surely this must be it? And yes. This is it.

At 11:50, the parcel is finally delivered. With trepidation, I break the tape and pry open the box. Sure enough, I am graced with the presence of that which I have sought for so long: a small plastic box with some cable attached. But I know nonetheless that I cannot truly be out of the woods until I have tested that the charger actually powers the laptop. I plug it in, connect it to the laptop and wait with bated breath.

An LED comes on. The display shows “2 hours 23 minutes until fully charged”.

I breathe a sigh of relief.

It’s over.

Concluding remarks

Though it is factually accurate, the way this post is written is not entirely serious. But I think there is a widely-shared frustration with the shortcomings of parcel delivery companies. It’s well-known by this point that they almost invariably do their work to a low standard and treat their staff poorly - but their customer service is also poor. Providing no less than 5 different incorrect delivery dates is entirely ridiculous, and the dodgy IT systems are the icing on the cake.

Online shopping has in theory enabled a better experience for the consumer than ever before, and huge amounts of effort go into the e-commerce user experience - but it could be so much better if only the “hard” part (in both senses of the word), where the product purchased is actually delivered to the customer, were not neglected.