Post.NL and other completely inept courier services

This morning I found a response to a tweet I wrote on Friday about the arrival, finally, of my little grandson’s Christmas present, which was sent on December 16th by Dutch postal service Post.NL. This poor guy has far more experience than I with their blatant lack of professionalism and thanks to his blog post I’m never using them to send internationally again. Once bitten and all that…

Bear and I sent a box of Lego Duplo to our little grandson in England on December 16th from our local Post.NL post office, whose wall poster proclaims that Post.NL will get your Christmas packages to their destinations in two to five working days. ‘Brilliant’ we thought, ‘that means at the latest it’ll be there on the day before Christmas Eve’.. perfect.

Except that proclamation is a complete LIE.! We sent it with Track and Trace, and kept an eye on where the package was every few days. On December 16th it was at the Post.NL depot. On December 18th it was STILL at the Post.NL depot. Huh.! Shouldn’t it have been moving by now.? Apparently not. On December 2oth, STILL at the depot… and on December 24th… and on December 27th… and on January 1st.

By this time I’m incendiary and about to embark on a murderous rampage, swearing an oath to decapitate every stupid, inept, unprofessional, moronic postal worker, their manager’s, bosses and CEO’s… Bear meanwhile is on the phone enquiring politely whether they could please get their heads out of their asses and explain to him where our package is and why it appears to still be in Eindhoven.

He was cordially informed that was because it still was in Eindhoven and they are far too incredibly busy to get to it straight away but they’ll try to find the package and get it sent as soon as… It was New Year you know.! 😠 Bear thanks the smarmy attituded b*tch and hangs up… while I’m intent on reaching across time and space and slamming her dumbass face into her desk with a great deal of force… Who me, intolerant and overly aggressive.?

Well, yes actually, they’re two of my better qualities, along with a marked lack of patience when it comes to the inept. If, as a courier service, you promise people a certain time limit, keep to it.! Don’t tell them you can do something, when you can’t. Christmas is an annual event, and has been for centuries, if you haven’t got your shit together by now, there’s not much chance you ever will, and you need to bow out as gracefully as possible and make room for the courier services who are capable of getting the job done right.! Not that there is one. 😦

Not BS people with lame excuses and lies, and get an attitude when they have every right to be full on furious and intent on killing you for being the pathetic excuse for a courier service’s customer care assistant that you are.! DHL are no better, they still haven’t delivered a box sent from Utrecht on December 10th… although UPS did manage to get a package to me from Northern Ireland in four days and that included the weekend… for everyone else they’ve been a massive pain in the ass too, as has Parcel Force.

Finally on January 2nd, Track and Trace showed that our package had finally been sent to England… it hadn’t arrived there, it had just been sent… 15 days late. It arrived on January 3rd and then sat in the depot until the 6th when it suddenly appeared in London, then in Richmond, North Yorkshire on the 9th and finally delivered on the 10th by RoyalMail. I’m still not impressed.

It takes 10 hours to swim the channel, 96 hours to walk from Dover to North Yorkshire. 106 hours is around 4 and a half days. I could have delivered that present a full twenty days earlier than two Countries postal services did using vans, trucks and a ferry.!