Is GLS’s subcontractor in your area also Jardel ? This is vintage Jardel behaviour.
Also the variation on the receiving-sms bit or even call before delivery is if you don’t answer they don’t come amd they mark it as a tried but failed delivery. Too bad if you’ve been by your gate for hours in the pouring rain (so phone not with you or gone flat) waiting for them.
Beware of replying to those text messages from GLS - they seem to be trying to turn any reply from you into your permission to leave your parcel without you being there. Even in the rain or just tossed over the gate or wall. And possibly on the wrong day.
Received instructions on Friday from FedEx that my order from Ireland would be delivered yesterday, and a text confirmation Sunday night. Waited in at home all day, when I should have gone to the office. At 4:30 pm, I receive an email telling me it isn’t happening after all and has been rescheduled for today, when I have to be in the office.
Looked at options for delivery at a pickup point - they’re miles away and somewhat incredulously none in the town where I work. Have attempted to have it delivered to office instead. We shall see, but I got an error message on the website saying too many attempts to change things, and then refusing to do anything at all. Their chat bot AI was next to useless.
WELL, it got there. Used DPD in the end as their vans have a GEOPOST sticker on the van doors; they are part of CHRONOPOST who are French…
Cost £10.00 to get to France, then got held up in Customs. But it might have been Chronopost actually- so a further 18.00 euros paid by the receiving party enabled the parcel to get to it’s destination. ( All good, but the van driver delivered it to her old address - not current one. )
Now I know it works, I would probraly use again
This is the first time I’ve had a problem with DHL who seem to have lost the plot. Maybe it’s a Christmas thing.
I ordered online with Noilly Prat for delivery to the Narbonne area. It was picked up on 17th December and went from Marseille to Toulouse via Leipzig and Lyon. It even made it to Narbonne briefly (without being delivered here) on the 18th but then it went back to Leipzig.
As at this morning it’s made it back to Toulouse and is meant to be delivered tomorrow. This is their express service. It would have been quicker to drive to Marseillan.
Never had any problems with Chronopost, until yesterday. I ordered an expensive astro photography camera and took the option to have it sent signed for and insured via Chronopost. I was up, had the front gate open and there is a prominent doorbell next to the boîte. The delivery person just put the parcel in the boîte without attempting to ring and without my signature. Luckily, the parcel was not damaged at all and the camera works fine. However, the drivers actions could have made it impossible for me to claim if there was damage.
Excuse my nosiness but can I ask which one, O AstroGuru™?
Back on topic I have noticed that during the Xmas period (in the UK at least) the actual “delivery” bit of the service has become very perfunctory - ringing doorbells is now optional and dumping things on the porch is the default solution.
Admittedly I do have that listed as an option with both Amazon and DPD, and our bungalow is set well back from the road, but it’s a bit annoying when the “delivered” email says “handed to resident” when they have done no such thing.
I understand that they are under a lot of pressure to deliver a gazillion packages at this time of year of course.
I was thinking of buying one in the next few months and particularly focused on this particular camera or the ZWO equivalent. Then I saw the Player One were offering 15% off until 4th Jan 2026 if bought through their official stockists I bought it a little early. Pierro Astro had the cheapest I could find in Europe and I seem to have got the last one they had. I should have the opportunity to try it in the next few days .
Nice that it’s cooled, has an APS-C chip and has a decent number of megapixels - my ZWO 585Air is only 8MP. I believe the megapixel count matters less with astro cameras than with “normal” cameras though.
Player-One is a brand I haven’t heard of - will be interested to hear how you get on with it. As you know I went for the all-in-one solution, which locks me into ZWO to some extent. I shall probably graduate to a separate camera & controller in due course.
And now back to your regularly scheduled programming…
Yes I used to use an Asiair to control everything but put new software based on Kstars and Indi on it (it’s just a RPi 4 with added power controller) which is more flexible. You’re correct that more megapixels aren’t necessarily better. A larger pixel size and well depth is better but as this one has a large sensor it also has lots of pixels.
