Some parcel delivery people prefer not to come to your home, we now know why and, above all, how to resolve the problem.
With the boom in home deliveries, particularly for the holidays, it is not uncommon to be confronted with very annoying situations, such as losing your package, receiving damaged products or… receiving an email delivery confirmation even though the package never arrived ! Problems which can be explained by the intensive pace with which delivery people have to work.
In a recent article, Le Télégramme highlighted certain curious practices which impact consumers. The newspaper interviewed a Chronopost deliveryman who confided that “covid was a small revolution for express transport” which overloaded the schedule of these professions. He explains that he must deliver up to 200 packages per day, with penalties in the event of delays or errors in filling out the delivery slip.
Delivery man for La Poste, Abdelkader El Baz explains that these penalties “serve to bring certain service providers into line” and force them not to hang around. According to him, Chronopost forces independent couriers to deliver as many packages as possible in a short time. A constraint which sometimes pushes them to skip deliveries to have the fewest penalties or to opt for a solution different from that required by the customer to make their journey more efficient.
For journalist Cyril Brosset from UFC-Que Choisir, interviewed by Le Télégramme, the service of all delivery companies is increasingly degraded. “Software provides plans for delivery people to follow, they are permanently geolocated. Sometimes, delivery people have more interest in not delivering than in doing so… They prefer to say that the person was not at home instead of doing 20 minutes of driving to deliver a single package to an isolated house. They’re trying to catch up.”
However, companies, which are affected by the increase in energy prices and are seeking to lower costs, are increasingly resorting to this form of subcontracting with independent couriers for the delivery of packages. In the Paris region, for example, around 95% of delivery would be carried out by subcontracting.
In summary: “The world of delivery is a world of killers, where everyone holds on to the goatee!”, indicates a delivery driver interviewed. The search for competitiveness means that “the last delivery person may be a micro-entrepreneur who will only earn a few euros on a delivery, he has no time to waste, the pressure takes precedence over the quality of the service”, according to Cyril Brosset.
In order to avoid this kind of inconvenience as much as possible, there is still a solution, even if it is not perfect. Mr. Brosset recommends having it delivered directly to a Relay Point. A solution that serves both the customer and the delivery person, whose work will be made somewhat easier. The journalist adds: “When you have a Relay Point nearby, it’s worth it and it’s safer!”