Last three items delivered by DPD have missed their delivery date, despite giving a time slot and paying for the “before noon” service. Bit annoying as they don’t refund the extra charge if they’re a day or two late.

This time I came up with a cunning plan of sending the item to the local pickup shop in case their drivers dislike my street, but it’s not made it there either. Interesting that you no longer get the van location on the tracking these days…

Been spot on here still the best option by far.

Maybe it’s a perception thing for me, simply because they used to be so much better than their competitors. It’s interesting that if you call now you get quite a strong passive-aggressive message from their customer services manager about polite conduct before being put through.

They appear to have solved that problem though by not answering the phone at all. On hold 1hr 20mins at the moment (left phone on speaker out of idle curiosity to see how long the wait is).

Track record for deliveries has been 100% over say 20 deliveries for us.

I still get tracking info – and they’re 100% as far as I can remember

The texts and email me a 1 hour time slot then I can track the delivery progress online.

head and shoulders above any other national service. Only other company I would rather see is DHL

probably get 2-3 deliveries a week and have done a good while now. Might help that they have s depot close by

Our last driver was a prick.  He would come into my shop , say he had a parcel and expect me to get it off his van for him.

I also saw him deliver a box into the consulting room of the local chemists while someone was being examined.

Our latest one is the happiest person alive and a top boke.

*small voice*

Just realised it’s Saturday. D’oh. Must have been scanned onto the van in anticipation of delivering Monday.

Would also explain the missing tracking. Apologies to DPD, as it’s hardly their fault that I’ve lost 24 hours somewhere.

Our DPD guy is great. We get 3 or 4 deliveries a week on average. All on the date expected within the 1 hour time slot.

My DPD and DPD Local blokes are both great. Never a problem but I live in a little village and it’s not an issue to leave anything in a “safe place”, bigger stuff he drops at the neighbours. I get a lot of stuff delivered.

Just realised it’s Saturday. D’oh. Must have been scanned onto the van in anticipation of delivering Monday.

With Amazon Prime, I have had plenty of Saturday deliveries by DPD.

They don’t deliver to pick-up shops on Saturdays, though, which I cheerfully admit completely slipped my mind when I chose that option for delivery.

Never had an issue with them myself, but a guy in a shop in town was complaining the other day that in spite of giving very specific instructions for driving to his shop (it’s in one of those old pedestrianised alleyway type areas but there’s vehicle access if you know where to go) he got a text saying “unable to find address” and then the driver had buggered off, not even waiting for him to come out and guide him to the shop.

They sent a message saying they’d try to deliver again on Monday and he was like “well if you failed to find it on Friday, how will you find it on Monday? Give the guy a map reading course over the weekend, send someone competent…?”

It depends on the driver and the place. DPD are by far the best courier where I am in Yorkshire, but I hear nothing but griping and contempt about them from friends in London.

My favourite bit of incompetence so far has been UPS tracking: go to site, punch in number, site says tracking requires registration. Register, then get “We will send your login code by post”. The letter arrived the day after the parcel, opening “Welcome to our innovative new tracking service” 😀

I saw a van of theirs recently, wheelspinning down a pedestrianized shopping street. I guess that’s how they deliver on time.

Update: they *are* a bit shit.  They’ve lost it.  Not been seen since Friday.  It’s a new phone so suspect it may have fallen off the back of the van, so to speak.  EE’s customer services seem to think so, anyway.

Out of curiosity, does the cooling off period for a phone contract start when the phone is delivered, or when the account is activated?

My local one is bang on with service – latest example being Mrs Lex’s new phone delivery on Friday at 5 pm precisely; the text prior had given an timing of 16:59-17:59.

Never had an issue with DPD, Royal mail and Yodel on the other hand…

Normal DPD seem OK still… DPD Local, however, seems to suffer from the same issues as the other ‘lowest price point’ providers (see also Yodel, Hermes, Amazon Logistics) – no inclination / local knowledge to find an address which isn’t at the precise location of their “centre of post code” pin on their sat nav.

I had a nightmare with DPD a few months back. The parcel got stuck in a loop at their depot.

The week after, another DPD parcel arrives, & my regular driver says “ I found this parcel in the depot, recognised your name, so threw it on the van for you” He had been on holiday, and the stand-in was dreadful. It’s all about the driver, and our local guy is brilliant.

I’m assuming it’ll turn up, but I suspect the driver scanned it off the van at the depot and then took it home by mistake. With any luck they’ll discover it when he’s back at work.

Yeah, in the last week or two, but this is a seasonal thing IMO. We take about 4-5 deliveries a day DPD are still my chosen courier if I get the choice. Royal Mail always deliver, but who knows when, they also often deliver without updating their tracking info which is ‘fun’. Yodel are a complete nightmare in every respect, DX only slightly better (although their secure mail is near perfect).

But every year coming up to the big shopping frenzy before Xmas they do two things that cause problems – 1) they employ a tonne of temps who are poorly trained and demotivated 2) they don’t stop accepting orders even if they haven’t a chance of completing them because they’re so busy.

Last November I had to come into work on my day off to accept a vitally important delivery, I tracked the guy for 3 hours, he drove around and around at different stops, but mine was always next according to the tracker, then he stopped in a Housing Estate and stayed their for an hour when I finally spoke to them, they gave me some boiler plate about him not getting an answer, even though he didn’t come near us. Turns out he’d gone home for the day with my very expensive, hard to replace bit of kit in the back of his Van.

When he finally got to me, he admitted that they had twice as much work on as they could ever do, they were spending ages loading up in the morning, the vans were probably over-weight, they often couldn’t fit it all in and they were only paid to work certain hours, they often worked OT for no money, but still had to take packages home with them.

Update: DPD never discovered where it went.  Eventually EE agreed to send out a replacement… which has also “gone missing” at the depot.

They’ve gone well crap here.

Last item was ‘delivered’ while we were out – literally thrown on the driveway.

I’m wondering if the box (Huawei Mate 20 Pro) is easily identified through the packaging.  IIRC EE just send them in polythene bags so it wouldn’t be difficult to figure out that they’re high value items. Suspect it’s going to be a bit more difficult to convince them to give me a third one though.