Chronopost deliveries

[L Austin France]

What a shower.
Mme was waiting delivery of a new tablet & was advised by Chronopost that it would be here between 1130 & 1230 hrs today.
Neither of us was less than 10m from the front door at this time & even if we were the two door bells are loud enough to raise the dead.
She has received an sms stating the parcel was not delivered because no code was available which was true as driver was obviously on his lunch or something & couldn't be arsed to find our house, which not exactly difficult, to receive the code.
Another sms followed stating it was left in a point de relais box at a local(ish) supermarket & the two required codes given.
Mme has just messaged me to say she now has the parcel but what a p. p.performance from a crap company.

[Chappers51]

I must admit that Chronopost is always my preferred choice for delivery. However, it helps that I live in the centre of the village and always sit where I can see their van arrive at the front gate.

[exile]

No problems with Chronopost but they always hand over deliveries to La Poste - even 29kg boxes of cat food!

GLS used to be dreadful here and always left parcels at the point relais but since a driver change, the service is second to none.

DHL have a 100% delivery performance but that is about 1 delivery per year.

I would not pay DPD in washers. Thankfully we have few deliveries placed in their incompetent hands.

What this all comes down to is in that the countryside that delivery performance from these companies is very often down to the often subcontracted driver. That is not to say that the company is beyond blame. They employ these subbies and set the conditions where it is often more profitable for the driver to drop off than deliver.

[widge]

We live off the main road, in one of two hamlets on a dead end road, which is probably 15-20 minutes detour, this is a lot of time if you only have 1 package, and the drivers are usualy pushed for time, I was chatting to the Colis Privé guy becouse we kept on getting parcel couldn't be delivered, more address details required messages, although the parcel usually arrived the next day anyway, without doing anything. His answer was, often it is imposible to get to everybody, especially with holiday traffic on the road, so they have to choose who to miss that day, but they have to pick an option of why they couldn't deliver, and not having enough time was not an option, so the just pick one of the other options.

[MAD87]

The drivers are under huge pressure to deliver XX number of parcels each day - often impossible - which doesn't excuse the carrier. When we lived in the boodocks, we often had problems with Chronopost, but sinch moving to 'town' there's rarely a problem.

[Wilbro]

Chronopost is fine here. GLS are the absolute pits and DPD are inbetween dependant on the driver. What annoys me are the drivers, probably a third my age, who sit outside and blow their horns for me to go out and collect because they can't be arsed to walk 20 metres to the front door.

[exile]

Many drivers - the subbies - are paid per parcel. They often supply the transport. They usually pay for the fuel. Consequently if a driver has to make a 20km round trip diversion to deliver just one parcel, it is not economical for them to do it. It can also cost them half an hour of their time. So parcels get dropped off at the point relais.

The problem is the system and so blame lies with the companies.

[Blaze]

The problem is the system and so blame lies with the companies.

Agreed and a bit like pushing people to work longer hours, it's fundamentally wrong. It's pushing drivers to go faster to do their quota and far from motivating them, gets to the stage where they say "Why bother ?" when an address is in the middle of nowhere.

I think the point relais idea is a good one but it needs someone to run it, be it an individual, a shop, a post office, a restaurant .... there's a dog food shop that does it not far from us and on a delivery day, the floor of the shop is covered in parcels ! All but the remotest communes must have some central point like a bar, boulangerie, or some willing soul who could run a point relais - they would be paid for it too. That would certainly be an advantage for delivery companies and a huge saving on fuel, but should also avoid the frustration of missing parcels. The only difficulty would be for people who don't drive - but then presumably they are able to find a solution for shopping etc.

[Nomoss]

Our house is on the main road about 500 m from the centre of a small town. The street name is clearly marked; the number is on both the house and the gate to the driveway and garden.
La Poste and associated drivers have learnt to deliver to the kitchen window on the street, as the entrance door is through the garden, but no-one has problems to actually find the house.
Except Colis Privé drivers.

The first time they couldn't find us I sent CP a picture with arrows indicating the numbers on the house, postbox in the garden wall, and entrance gate.
Subsequent drivers threw parcels over the wall or hedge, landing on and damaging pot plants, or becoming hidden in tall herbs.

Recently one of us has sat by the window on watch around 5 pm, their usual time, and seen the driver(s) stop opposite and get into the back of the van.
Parcels then fly out to land in the street until they reappear to gathers them up - our cue to shout and wave.

I was on watch on Wednesday when the house phone rang, so I left my post to answer it. "This is the livreur" - "Where are you" - "Outside" - "Please come to the window"

On returning, there was no-one there, no van anywhere in the street, and the house phone doesn't record numbers, so I could do nothing.
I checked my email later, and saw "Delivery attempted today at 6:11 pm. Unfortunately Colis Privé ran into an issue when attempting your delivery. They will try again"

They didn't.
I managed to find a link via tracking to redirect the parcel to a relais point. They are closed until Monday, but I should get it eventually.

After succeeding in speaking to a person at Amazon Fr. yesterday I poured out the above tale and asked for no more deliveries to me to be made using Colis Privé.
I was told this is not possible, but there may soon be an option to choose delivery companies, and was given the impression that something may be done about CP.

[exile]

I had forgotten about Coli Privée. I have only had one delivery via them - or rather I haven't.

Nuff said?