I usually have no qualms with tiny things but this unsavoury experience with DPD really grinds my nerves.
I ordered a camera lens from MPB this week and paid a good £16 for it to be delivered to my home today - Saturday, 29/04/2023. I needed it tomorrow so I damn well made sure I was at home waiting for it.
At 08:05 I received an email from MPB saying my package will be delivered between 12:52 to 13:52, which was not a problem as I was ready to receive anyway.
However, at 13:03 I was shocked to receive an email back saying they could not deliver my package as no one was at home. What a lot of horse manure! I took a few minutes to compose myself and called their customer service number at 13:11 from my home landline. The number I called was 0901 545 0060. Spoke with a lady, pretty much saying what the hell? She said she does not know what happened and all that she can say that the driver will deliver my parcel at the pickup shop today and I can go collect it once it has been dropped off. I pretty much told her she better be right as I am not happy about it. If I had paid £5 and the parcel was not urgent, I would not have bothered. but I paid a lot of money for the delivery and now I have to go and pick it up myself. Sure the shop is only 5 minutes away from my house but how do you justify me having to pay £16 only to have to go and pick the parcel up myself?
Just as I finished talking (more like ranting) to the poor, apologetic lady, I received a message saying my parcel is already at the shop ready for collection. That was quick!
If you look at the timeline, I suspected that the driver had never intended to deliver my parcel to my home anyway. If you do an online search, you will find this happens to quite a lot of customers, where they waited for their parcels only to be told no one was at home when delivery was never attempted to begin with. It was as though the driver just wanted to leave all the parcels at the Pickup Shop and finish for the day, leaving customers confused.
I wasted no time walking to the shop to pick my parcel up. It was there, amongst a mountain of other parcels. Took a while for the guy to find it as the parcel was allegedly not registered in his system, but he found it nevertheless, after manually looking for it. You can see from the screenshot below I collected it at 13:35.
The lens itself was in good order, just as it was advertised on the website. The experience of having to deal with this DPD nightmare was however very unsavoury.
Geopost, the group that owns DPD UK did got in-touch with me on Twitter asking me to DM them the details so they can investigate. Since I am already ranting about it here on my blog, I will just point them here. I am sure there will be enough information for them should they wanted to do so. I did tell the customer service lady that I shall be writing to their UK CEO, Elaine Kerr, about this. But since Geopost already reached out to me, I shall let them the opportunity to go ahead and look into it. What a waste of my time, and money for that matter!
It's just a weekend rant from me, and of course, some useful information for Geopost if they want to investigate. I am in London, by the way.
The end.
p/s I managed to cook a big batch of Coq Au Vin after I got home from collecting my parcel. It's in the oven and should be ready soon. Yummy!