Many calls to the call centre and 2 days later I had enough. No amount of asking to speak to a manager or anyone I spoke to managed to resolve the situation. I found the email address of the CEO of UPS on https://www.ceoemail.com/ and proceeded to write him an email explaining the issue, the effort I have made to try to resolve it as well as the incompetence and inability of the staff to resolve the problem. Note this email was very professional and stuck to the facts, the only emotional bit maybe being me highlighting that I honestly expected better from a company such as UPS.

I did not expect anything to happen honestly. However 15 minutes later I received a reply from him saying it will get taken care of. 20 minutes later the manager of the distribution centre that caused the problem gave me a phone call apologising. 2 hours later a driver came to pick up the parcel and refund me the money I paid in error. I received 2 more calls from the distribution manager and that person provided their personal contact number in case I ever have any issues again.

I personally do not like going the social media route by default. I would only consider it if I have exhausted all other options and am honestly left with no other choice which seems to be the situation you were in and that is completely understandable. Maybe give the CEO email option a try next time as I believe your success was due to someone high up being forced to recognise your issue. If that then fails I would hit the social media option for sure.

I try to avoid buying physical stuff in the internet now, way too much stress.

IIRC DHL is especially prone to this. I think the drivers try to catch up time or whatever.

But I also have a DHL driver doing the opposite: you stay at home all day and nobody rings; then you notice that the parcel is marked as delivered on the website. What? You get outside and you see the parcel was thrown in your yard over the wall/fence/portal. You go back to DHL website and you download the receipt, to discover a beautiful fake signature of yours forged by the driver.

So he just didn't bother to ring the doorbell to save 20 seconds. He saves 20 seconds and you lose several hours waiting for him...

Also, in this subcontracting company, the drivers have very bad equipment, they do not have winter tyres (and we are talking about a mountain area...), they do not have enough large enough vans, so the drivers try to ditch as many parcels as possible in any 'possible' way because otherwise they have no room for pickups...

The driver even showed up one day with a regular compact car... He had to come back.

IN cases like that, I would have a very hard ethical time in pushing that issue of fraud onto the driver. To be honest, I haven't done that... but the thought would definitely cross my mind.

And we were not only pressed for time. We were paid by delivered parcel. Nothing else counted.

And we had to deliver the packets that were not successfully delivered to the central logistics station by 6pm.

So if we didn't perform we were f..ed.

How long ago was that? Maybe the service has gotten worse because the pay/reward system has gotten worse.

Depending on carrier, this has hellish consequences for customers who end up having to file loss/damage claims against the carrier. Your signature attests that you received it and it's intact, so when the signature is forged attesting to such, any claims filed are summarily denied.

(Consumers usually get their money back from the shipper as a matter of customer service, but the shipper still eats the loss.)

When you call dhl you only get lame exuses. "Maybe you doorbell isn't working?" Sure, DHL, sure.

Royal Mail delivered a £560 multimeter to the wrong address and to a signature which wasn't mine. Never saw it again. That took a nightmare battle from hell to get sorted.

It's pretty hard to get back to a seller and try to explain him the delivery company he is using is potentially scamming, especially as it only affects me (the receiver), not the shipper.

Which makes me feel bad for the drivers, really. I'm gonna guess that they have some very tough schedules.

Keep an eye out for them, if you can.

1. request a delivery at work, let the receptionists at your office sign for the package and very politely thank them each time (and don't do this too often)

2. place the order to be delivered at your home address, knowing that you won't be there and that you'll have to pick up the "you were out..." slip, and duck out of work and cross town later in the week to the post-office sometime during opening hours and suffer the queues there.

The reason I use the word "awkward" is that I feel like I'm misusing some facilities no matter what I do (expecting a receptionist to handle my packages, or making a postman bring a package all the way to my flat and then all the way back home and fill out forms etc).

These temp lockers are such a great idea.

Everyone in my office does this, although we don't have a dedicated receptionist and the job normally falls to the office manager instead. It doesn't even cross my mind as a misuse of company resources. Is this something that would be considered inappropriate in other places?

It could be that this is all fine and I'm overthinking it - so maybe take what I"m saying with a pinch of salt :-)

The problem though is that most of the time I can not choose the delivery company, and I've only seen La Poste having the lockers.

Just flash the barcode from the email, and it opens the appropriate locker. It even lets you open multiple ones with a single barcode if you received multiple packages the same day.

So :

* small company where everyone takes care of (his own) deliveries: OK.

* smallish company company where there is a receptionist: OK because it does not happen too often.

* middle-sized company: not OK.

* large company with a dedicated mail/parcel/delivery service: I guess it depends on formal work agreements.

Room 40 was a bench behind the warehouse reception.

Of course, there are potential pitfalls here - say, assuming your colleagues to be honest, for instance - but to the best of my knowledge, we never lost a parcel in years. (Which is more than could be said for anything entering the murky depths of our ERP system...)

I have found ordering from B&M's via their websites and picking the thing up at the store bypasses this whole problem.

And anyway you may not want everyone to know what you are buying.

When your package is damaged, some will even offer to add a note to your delivery, without you asking, in case there's a problem later.

I order very regularly from Amazon, and I think I have never had a single problem receiving packages this way, and it's pretty easy to find one on your way from work or somewhere that suits you. Some of them are even open on Sunday, depending on what their main business is, very convenient ...

We are planning a trip soon to investigate our insight.

This shitty company is the worst delivery one I know but for some reason Amazon France uses it to deliver to me (west of Paris).

I either get a "we were there" note when I was home, or nothing.

I complained to Amazon but it is maybe time to get it to social keyword with a #DropThatShittyCompany or something.

Isn't the point of the signature to protect them? You can't just say "I don't need a signature, I promise not to sue you." and expect them to just be ok with that, or have I got the wrong end of the stick here?

Of course, the tradeoff is that if your package gets stolen, they're no longer responsible for it, which is why I've never actually done this.

But in my case/story, it was $5 set of PCBs I had fabricated. Shipping was $20 for what amounted to an ePacket. I took the chance of having someone steal them (unlikely) to tell them to just drop it off at my dorrstep (in reality, a screened in porch).

United States Postal Service allows drop offs without signatures and dropping off at neighbors. I constantly request that my packages are not mailed by UPS.

I'm taking it that the friendly postal person knew it wasn't one of the 'every other Wednesdays'.

For what it's worth, I have ordered many online items (100+) over the last several years, and every one has been left on my doorstep by USPS or UPS. The only time I have had a package stolen was during a summer I spent in a notably dangerous area. The rest of the orders were safely delivered, in my case to a college-town apartment or a suburban family home.

I see them walking past my window, from the front of the building to the back, all the time.

So they must have some flexibility...

Most people don't have hostile neighbours.

I take packages for all my 10 neighbors, they are happy with it, but we live in a civilised city and all our delivery drivers are extremely competent and nice

I went to college in Minneapolis and I knew all my neighbors and most of the homeless people. When I visit my friends in the suburbs they have no idea who their neighbors are unless there is open hostility. Look at Senator Paul.

I just notice that their is a HUGE bias to bash cities all the time. When you live in a city you actually get to know and live with a wide diversity of people, hence the normal more liberal bias. My father inlaw almost dies inside anytime he visits us and can't ever say anything positive about the city (They live in the country in West Virginia and he is a successful contractor). He thinks everyone is on drugs and lives off of $45,000 for the Government. No one knows how much the working poor works these days and West Virginia's drug problem is 10x that of my city. It's just a anti-city bias.

Haggard credited Holloway as a co-writer, entitling him to half the royalties for the song, which amounted to around half a million dollars for Holloway."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_City_(Merle_Haggard_song)

Then the person who got the package posted on an internal facebook page: "I've got a package for 304 in 605" and they would be collected.

The system worked perfectly and there were a lot of packages, I guess many potentially worth a lot.

The only 24/7 occupied house is across the road, and it's the local drug-dealing hangout, so that's a nope as they'll either fence the package or try to snort or inject it.

Most of the transient 'residents' wouldn't remember the day of the week, let alone whether they had been gifted a package.

For what it's worth I know at least UPS has a premium service where you can schedule your delivery to a specific time during the day.

So instead I end up with packages left out in the rain, or slung in the snowbank during a blizzard that I don't find until spring comes...

That said, I work from home on iPhone delivery day. Were I a thief, that would be just way too easy, knowing the day of delivery and an approximation of what the package looks like.

I think home package drop off vaults are going to grow in popularity. Getting one at my office to handle late package deliveries was really useful.

Now I need to actively be registered on N social media sites and harass the company in question until such time as they bother to respond, instead of having just had to connect with the company and directly resolve the issue.

"Making mistakes" and malicious compliance of literally driving by and not stopping are 2 very different things. Shows up on their GPS they were "there".

I was at the house, sitting on my screened-in porch when DHL 'updated' to "Sorry you didnt sign". First, I said no sig needed. Then they didn't even bother to stop. I WATCHED THEM DRIVE BY. They didn't do their fucking job.