Waiting for the man

Posted by Barbara on December 3, 2023 in Blog, Consumer issues, Living today, Rants | 2 comments

I’m sitting at home, waiting. Waiting for Yodel to deliver the new cooker hood.  It was bought online as when we visited the local store they didn’t have the one we wanted in stock. So we paid online, purchased the product and are waiting.

It was supposed to be delivered yesterday.  Despite the fact that – according to their website – Yodel deliver between 7.30 am and 9 pm, when attempting to track the delivery yesterday the 2-hour ‘delivery window’ was only added at around 1 pm.  ‘That’s fine’ I thought, ‘I’ll be in doing useful things and I will keep an eye out between 15.51 and 17.51, my very own “delivery window”.’

At approx. 17.35 I saw that the number of stops before mine for the delivery driver was down to 2. Excitedly I positioned myself by the front door, alert, responsive and ready to leap for the door handle before the extremely non-dulcet tones of the doorbell had died away. I stood there for several minutes then glanced at my Yodel app to check progress.

There was an update saying Yodel had been unable to deliver my package.  No ring at the doorbell, no card from Yodel put through the letterbox saying they had tried to deliver. Because clearly they hadn’t tried.

Cue for much ranting – what a good thing there was no one else at home.  Once I had calmed down I attempted a ‘chat’ dialogue with Yodel.  After I had assured the bot that I was well thank you but not having a good day and explained the cause of my frustration I received the following reply:

‘I can see that our driver tried to deliver your parcel on 30th Nov 23 at 17:41. Unfortunately, our driver wasn’t able to deliver your parcel at this address. Our driver’s Satnav location doesn’t match with your local area, which may be a result of the driver being unfamiliar with this location. I apologise for the inconvenience caused to you due to this unsuccessful delivery attempt.’

So that’s all right then, as Private Eye is wont to say. Except of course it isn’t because the explanation is completely meaningless.  Now I accept that the driver was human, but the Chatbot answer obviously isn’t. I was under the clearly mistaken apprehension that the point of the Satnav meant that one didn’t have to be familiar with a location – the tech does it for you.

So that was yesterday, and I am now waiting, as I did yesterday, for the Yodel app to grace me with a new 2-hour ‘delivery window’.  The good news is that I have an appointment in an hour which means I will have to go out and I will leave the next stage of this debacle to my other half, who has had the morning off, but knows he is on Yodel duty from 1.30 pm today.

I’ve run out of useful things to do so to cheer myself up and pass the time I’m scrolling through Youtube versions of ‘Waiting for the Man’. There is of course the Velvet Underground or how about the David Bowie version?

Not long to go…