Following my post about Colis Privé, I’m now having some first time experiences with DPD, and they’re not good.
I have a relatively expensive order of live plants that was supposed to be delivered on Tuesday. I waited the entire day, and nobody turned up. When I checked the delivery status after 6pm they updated it to say they tried to deliver at 1:30pm (untrue), and then the following status said their SMS/email to me failed (untrue again), but then 15 minutes later, that status changed again to simply state that they were unable to deliver (no reason given).
I rescheduled delivery for today, as tomorrow is a bank holiday, and they say delivery from 8am until 5:30pm. There’s less than 30 minutes to go, and as their depot is an hour away, I seriously doubt it’s going to arrive within the next 25 minutes, which means if it arrives Friday, the plants will not be in a great state having been almost a week in the post.
Rant over! Just wondered how others have gotten on with DPD, as I don’t believe I’ve used them before now, it’s always been Colis Privé, GLS, UPS, LaPoste / Colissimo.
Was poor in the past with my having to go meet the DPD driver about 3km away as “he couldn’t find me”. Judging by the 3 other locals meeting him at the same time, “he couldn’t find anyone”.
I didn’t need to tell him my views on his performance as my near neighbours were tearing strips of him in very rapid French.
Last year or so, it’s been a new driver and he’s been great, even insisting that we inspected a delivery where the very outer packaging was damaged before excepting delivery.
Maybe down to the individual driver then. That wasn’t very good, although if they were new on the job I’d feel a bit sorry for them!
Well my timeslot has gone, and with the bank holiday tomorrow, I guess I will see if they deliver Friday (I wait with bated breath). Not sure how well my collection of plants is going to hold up sliding around in a stuffy hot van for several days.
I strongly suggest you get in touch with the sender as I would be rejecting the delivery on arrival - write endommagé cours du transport or sonething on the form - ie reject delivery as damaged by transport, take photos of course if anything visible. Don’t accept it or open it as otherwise it gets messy just send it back as plants damaged in the course of transport. I suspect rejecting this way means the sender doesn’t lose out as DPD then liable but as a courtesy I’d try to contact the vendor to discuss and agree first.
That’s if they even turn up on Friday of course as middle of a long weekend. Very possibly also a subcontractor which often makes performance worse.
Do a DPD suivi and keep screenshots after clicking the + sign for the detail. Their Customer Service tel is
0970808566 but I’d suggest holding off calling them till you’ve agreed the approach with the vendor.
They seem to treat their vans like a premature baby does its mother’s womb, they really do not want to get out and ask directions, I once had a small package from California make its way in 24 hours from there via Frankfurt and Nantes to Bordeaux but was not delivered here until 3 days after that. The driver reported we weren’t in, which of course was untrue. Some weeks later I noticed someting sticking out of the mail box of a holiday home just down the hill. It was the ‘unable to deliver because of absence’ note the lazy sod had stuffed it into.
We only got it because, after 3 failures I told them to come to the middle of the village and ring, and then went down and met him.
On the other hand, every now and then I get a text message saying something along the lines of ‘tried to deliver but won’t fit in the box’ and asking me to click a link to get my parcel. This on days when I know I haven’t anything outstanding so I delete it immediately. Not hard with a non smartphone and an unclickable link.
When I was living in the UK, DPD once ‘delivered’ a parcel into the dustbin placed outside my house that morning to have the rubbish taken away. Rubbish with said parcel was removed by the bin men a few hours later whilst I was at work. Fortunately, I got a card in the postbox telling me where it had been put. It still took lots of effort to get compensation but I did.
A curates egg for me. DPD are either very good or very bad, tho more bad than good imo.
For example, I ordered an LP last summer, waited for the delivery person to deliver but didn’t turn up. I found later in the day that the well packed disc was left at the gate in 35 degrees. Fortunately the disc wasn’t affected by the hours left in the heat. Usually the delivery people leave a note in the letter box saying that nobody was at home so the package needs to be picked up at a specified shop or whatever, even though I was at home. They have a busy workload and so have to cut corners to save time.
No experience of DPD in France, but in Sud-Angleterre initially they were shocking - always claiming they “couldn’t find the address” or I “wasn’t there to sign for it”. etc.
This despite me having given tons of details via their app, including my mobile number, a photo of the front gate, notes about where we are in the street, and even a What Three Words location accurate to within 3 metres.
My theory is that the drivers were relying entirely on the postcode, which is centred 100 metres up the road by a kid’s play area. When they got there and couldn’t see our house they were bu99ering off to their next delivery.
Admittedly it doesn’t help that our road is too posh to have house numbers.
After a few missed deliveries and some complaints someone at the depot seems to have got it sorted - we now have a regular driver called Ty who knows where we live, and even the alternate drivers mostly get it right.
A similar thing happened with Amazon when they started up their own-brand deliveries, but nowadays they too are pretty reliable.
I think if you can catch the driver who usually does your “route” and explain where you are, that may t least partially solve the problem.
They didn’t arrive with my plant order yesterday, and because they didn’t deliver Tuesday or Wednesday (no reason given) it’s now impossible to reschedule for Friday, because I guess you can only have one redelivery attempt? Being a bank holiday I can’t reach anybody at DPD, so it’s now looking like Saturday or next week. Some of the plants are small and will be in a terrible state.
I might have to take your advice @KarenLot , and refuse the parcel. I have reached out to the seller to express my concern, but again being a bank holiday, I’m not sure when I’ll hear back.
@David_Spardo - that’s a vivid way of describing it. It is infuriating when they pretend nobody is in.
@hairbear - rubbish bins on delivery days; not a good combo! I imagine it was a hassle chasing that one up.
@Peter_Bird - I guess too much heat could warp the vinyl, glad your LP didn’t suffer.
@ChrisMann - It’s a relief when you get a good regular driver who knows you and your address, but these days I find even my postman/lady is changing on a regular basis. It’s not that unusual for my post to end up at a neighbour’s address instead!
@Moray - I had the choice between using DPD or Colissimo, but as my last two orders from the same company were from DPD, and arrived when stated, I thought they’d be no issue. Regret not using Colissimo now.
Having in the past needed to search for customers’ addresses in both town and countryside my view is that all properties should be required to display a number.
If I now have to visit an unknown address I check on streetview (GSV) to locate and identify the property before travelling…
DPD are just about the worst of a very bad bunch. La Poste are fine but you can guarantee there will be issues when it’s anyone else. Expected a delivery today from DPD, they said they tried to deliver at 7.45 am when I was sitting right by the door. Useless bunch.
In the past, I’ve had chronopost pretend to deliver too. I guess it’s a common ploy; an annoying one when you’re know their lying.
DPD delivered to me on Friday thank goodness, and surprisingly my plants were all in a pretty good condition. I thought they would have suffered a lot more.
Yes. I was really giving a shout out to my local postie who tends to try to deliver a few times during the day if I’m not in. Glad to hear your plants arrived in good condition.
It has been known for representatives of many companies, not just postal, to ‘sneak’ up to homes and deliver a ‘nobody at home’ note, in order to avoid contact for whatever reason.
Reprehensible behaviour.
It is infuriating when they pretend nobody is in.