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Ben's imaginary package
Apr. 10th, 2006 07:11 pmWell, apparently both the manager and the adviser I spoke to at the delivery office last Friday were totally wrong about the package. I'm not sure why I'm surprised that they were totally incorrect and unaware of what was going on, given the past history, but somehow I am. Somehow I expected that they would be able to read their tracking system and give me an accurate answer, but no.
My package is not in Beeston, Nottingham, but in Belfast, Northern Ireland, at the National Returns Centre to be precise. This is because last Friday, when the website said they'd tried to deliver it to me, what it actually meant was that they were returning it to the sender. When I was at the delivery office, a helpful lady called Angie told me to phone up first thing on Monday and ask for her, and she'd take the item from the driver in question and hold on to my package so that I could collect it in person. Imagine my annoyance when, after having got an early night and got up early to phone up, Angie checks for the package, can't find it in the office, asks someone to look it up, and then tells me it's gone back to the national returns centre. For some reason I didn't yell WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL ME THIS ON FRIDAY YOU RETARDED BITCH, and somehow we got onto discussing why it had been marked as a delivery attempt to me when it clearly wasn't one at all. She responded by claiming it says it's been returned to sender. No it doesn't, I say, and she insists that I am mistaken. No, I am not mistaken, it's just that your website is telling me the wrong damn thing.
Here, gentle readers, what does this look like to you? Tell me honestly: does that look like they returned it to sender, or returned it to the national returns office in Belfast? Or does it perhaps look like they tried to deliver it to me, and have it at my local delivery office? Royal Mail workers apparently have some privileged sort of system that gives them the real information, as opposed to the largely randomised stuff available to the general public, but they can only share this real information with you at the 2nd time of asking, nor do they ever see what you see so they don't understand why you have a problem.
Given that I have not got a card posted through my door about this parcel since the 22nd of February, I have to rely on the website to see if they've even attempted to deliver it. Now I know that, not only do they not bother scanning things sometimes, but that even when it is scanned, it's sometimes completely misleading. Great.
I rang up Customer Services (requiring 7 calls to get through - did I mention how shocked I was that a large company in the 21st Century doesn't even have a call queuing system?) and yet again I get an irritatingly evasive 'adviser', who pretty much tells me that I'm not allowed to complain about my local delivery office because I'm not the one paying for the deliveries in the first place. So I've started talking to Postwatch about the possibility of getting a complaint filed on my behalf, since they get taken more seriously than I ever will by these people.
My package is not in Beeston, Nottingham, but in Belfast, Northern Ireland, at the National Returns Centre to be precise. This is because last Friday, when the website said they'd tried to deliver it to me, what it actually meant was that they were returning it to the sender. When I was at the delivery office, a helpful lady called Angie told me to phone up first thing on Monday and ask for her, and she'd take the item from the driver in question and hold on to my package so that I could collect it in person. Imagine my annoyance when, after having got an early night and got up early to phone up, Angie checks for the package, can't find it in the office, asks someone to look it up, and then tells me it's gone back to the national returns centre. For some reason I didn't yell WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL ME THIS ON FRIDAY YOU RETARDED BITCH, and somehow we got onto discussing why it had been marked as a delivery attempt to me when it clearly wasn't one at all. She responded by claiming it says it's been returned to sender. No it doesn't, I say, and she insists that I am mistaken. No, I am not mistaken, it's just that your website is telling me the wrong damn thing.
Here, gentle readers, what does this look like to you? Tell me honestly: does that look like they returned it to sender, or returned it to the national returns office in Belfast? Or does it perhaps look like they tried to deliver it to me, and have it at my local delivery office? Royal Mail workers apparently have some privileged sort of system that gives them the real information, as opposed to the largely randomised stuff available to the general public, but they can only share this real information with you at the 2nd time of asking, nor do they ever see what you see so they don't understand why you have a problem.Given that I have not got a card posted through my door about this parcel since the 22nd of February, I have to rely on the website to see if they've even attempted to deliver it. Now I know that, not only do they not bother scanning things sometimes, but that even when it is scanned, it's sometimes completely misleading. Great.
I rang up Customer Services (requiring 7 calls to get through - did I mention how shocked I was that a large company in the 21st Century doesn't even have a call queuing system?) and yet again I get an irritatingly evasive 'adviser', who pretty much tells me that I'm not allowed to complain about my local delivery office because I'm not the one paying for the deliveries in the first place. So I've started talking to Postwatch about the possibility of getting a complaint filed on my behalf, since they get taken more seriously than I ever will by these people.
