Rob's Blog

A couple of weeks ago we got a card through the door saying I had got a letter with insufficient postage, and needed to pay 30p plus a £1 handling fee. Not knowing who it was from I paid the money in case it was important.

The next day the letter was delivered, and I was disappointed to discover it was some junk mail from “Visit East Perthshire” (I think they got my address when we visited the Outdoor Show). They had simply not put a stamp on it!

Obviously I wasn’t pleased so I decided to ask the senders of the letter to reimburse me the £1.30 that Royal Mail had charged, and I also added the same £1 handling charge, making a total of £2.30.

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I’ve received a few parcels recently where I’ve been asked to sign a touchscreen device as proof of delivery rather than a piece of paper. Not one of these time has the squiggle on the screen looked anything like my signature. This isn’t because it’s hard to sign the screen, it’s just the sensor doesn’t correctly sense where it’s being pressed.

As an example, here is the signature reported as my proof of delivery from Parcelforce this morning:

This is one of the better ones I’ve seen recently, but it barely resembles my real signature (I won’t post it here in case some clever identity thiefs try and use it).

The proof of delivery on their site also states it was signied by “R FARRAR”, despite the parcel being addressed (correctly) to me, and me spelling my surname to the driver. Again, this is one or the better interpretations, having had “FARA” in the past!

Why do they even bother using these touchscreens since they clearly don’t work? When they were testing the system did they say “well, it doesn’t work, but we’ll use it anyway”!? It would be very easy for me to claim this delivery never arrived!

Why is it that delivery people find it so hard to use doorbells? You’d have thought they would be more experienced than most, but they seem incapable of pressing that little button. Maybe it’s something missing from their basic training.

I suppose they are too used to doorbells not working, but surely people wouldn’t bother installing doorbells if they didn’t have a use for one. Why not knock and ring?

The reason this is such an annoyance for me is that I work from home in a log cabin at the bottom of the garden. This means I can’t hear anyone knocking on the door, which is why I installed a wireless doorbell. I’ve missed a lot of deliveries because of their fear of bells. Citylink seem to be the worst offenders, but I missed one from Royal Mail today.

I think I need to get myself a “Please Ring” sign, but I am reluctant to have to put up instructions for such a simple device. Maybe something like these from Dave Gorman’s Flickr set:

(see also this Flickr Group)