Month: March 2013

Sorry folks I’ve just got to get this off my chest before I explode in apoplectic frustration ….

Have you seen the film ‘2001’? Remember the computer – HAL? Did you know the name was a little in-joke by the director because if you add a letter, H becomes I, A becomes B and L becomes M making IBM the (then) biggest and most memorable of computer companies.

So now I’m going to bemoan a courier company, not a little provincial one, but a global name known to most. Let’s call it CGK (work it out!). Here is a company that can prove a committed and sustained level of incompetence that is truly inspirational, indeed the sheer magnitude of its ineptitude is breathtakingly staggering and that takes some commitment. Why?

Because every time we have been unfortunate enough to have an incoming parcel handled by them, they have delayed, mislaid or attempted to deliver to a completely wrong house – all while having parcels that are clearly marked with our address AND phone number. We invariably get embroiled in numerous (premium rate) phone calls trying to track the damn things down. The first bit of glorious stupidity comes in the form of the tracking number. The number that should tell you where your beloved brown box is at any one time … but stops at the border, changes from 12 digits to a new 10 digit number and is known only to some secret squirrel in a call center!

And so it goes on, more phone calls … ‘the name is wrong on the package, but the address is OK’ …… ‘the courier tried to deliver twice yesterday’ ….. ‘they only deliver on a Tuesday or Thursday’ …. ‘it’s on a canoe heading for Nova Scotia’. OK, I made the last one up, but the others are genuine. Frankly, I give up. If these bunch of clowns were the only postal/courier company in existence, I’d buy some new boots and start walking the package to its destination, it can’t be any slower that’s for sure.

Deep breath …..and release slowly ……. ahhhhhhh, I feel so much better now!

UPDATE: 5 minutes after posting, the phone rang …. it was a courier. In the end I got the parcel an hour later, after a 16km round trip to a local village because he didn’t know the area and frankly didn’t want to. So there we stood in the piazza as I signed his 21st century electronic gizmo, him cutting a dash in his corporate sweatshirt and cap while his 20 year old van wheezed and creaked on its springs in the wind. I don’t think it would have survived our road after all!