It baffles me that “delivering” packages like this is a standard practice over there. I’m in the EU, and if I’m not home by the time the delivery is attempted, the company would call and ask when is a good time to try again, or would leave the thing to be collected at an office.
It used to be that they would not leave packages unattended at a residence, they would leave a note on the door about an attempted delivery. I suppose with the rise of online shopping things had to change. I don’t see American delivery companies bothering with trying to contact you/retrying deliveries, they just want to get out as many packages as possible… and there is a LOT they have to deliver in a day.
You do have a lot of choices in how you want your items delivered depending on the delivery company. Most of the have apps/websites where you can choose to have them hold the package, or deliver it to a specific location on property. By default packages will be left at the door.
Personally I have never had a problem with porch pirates, and if a package is expensive or important I will have the delivery company hold it and pick it up there.
Yeah, same up here in Norway. If I’m not home they will offer to leave the package at a collection point, or drop it off at my place of work. As far as I know, they’re not allowed to just leave it at my door step and hope for the best.
The seller can mandate a signature. I’ve had to sign for valuables like laptops, phones and ammo. (That last one was to prove I’m American.)
So it’s possibly cheaper for the seller not to require a signature (since it’s an extra service), but it’s no biggie if the package gets stolen? Seems logical…
Well yeah, if it only gets stolen 1% of the time, and the cost of that service is more than the replacement cost when things get stolen, it makes sense to not require a signature. It’s just like retail, they just factor in a certain amount of loss into the price of the items they sell.
The other thing that’s quite common is to require proof of delivery. Always fun because now the delivery driver has to take an awkward photo of me holding the box.
Don’t worry, it’s shit in places in the EU as well. One delivery guy just left my whole apartment complex’s packages, for thousands of households, in front of one apartment.
Do they send an SMS/email to ask for feedback after that? If they do, you probably don’t need hints to know what to do with it.
No, after trying to contact them for multiple days because they only left me the name of the neighbour I had it with - I don’t know all 2000 of them by name - they were so gracious to give me a house number. This was a 2000 EUR laptop btw.
They also routinely pretend I’m not at home so they don’t have to come up with the elevators, and I get to go on an adventure to get it from a delivery point in the city. Which is its own lovely thing, since the one nearest is a tobacco shop, and the employee there routinely pretends that the “machine is broken, come back in the afternoon” so they don’t have to deal with finding my package among the others, and can dump it on the afternoon shift.
This is DHL in the NL btw.
In Germany you have to give permission in the tracking menu to have them drop the package off somewhere else. I live in an apartment building so I usually tell them to drop it in the hallway of the building, since there’s usually someone at home to at least open the door downstairs if I’m not at home. I’ve seen packages outside the front door only once here and it is not a place I’d ever choose.
In my region, I see packages in front of doors in a lot places 😂 guess I live in a peaceful country.
We can even leave cars unlocked, and they don’t get stolen, but we don’t, out of fear that a kid may loosen the handbrake in play…
It’s not so much a matter of the region itself, I live in a pretty decent area of my city. It’s more that the houses here are all apartment buildings so in most cases the packages will get placed in the hallways instead of the front door of the building. There’s just not really a need to ever have them drop it off there.
TL;DR: if something not from Amazon is delivered by Amazon Spain, it’s a PITA and the recipient has no control over delivery.
I recently had one delivery sub-contracted to Amazon Spain, it was a nightmare. I was not able to choose a different date (only the original delivery company could, but they didn’t answer me at all), not able to choose a pick up point (for the same reason), not able to correct the address that was slightly messed up. They emailed me that the parcel is up for delivery in 10 days, and delivered it next day after the email, probably 1 and 10 are close enough.
It’s a lucky thing they even called me, I was away for several more days and couldn’t receive the parcel. The support said they will usually make three delivery attempts and then send back, but that they may do more or less attempts. Also they responded that I should give the seller some time to respond to my inquiry about moving delivery date, but they will continue to try to deliver and maybe fail and send back.
By the way, the original delivery company never replied at all, if I were unable to finally catch a delivery I would be out of luck. Also, the delivery window is 10 AM to 10 PM, no details, just wait and hope
Most of us wouldn’t buy from someone who made us jump through hoops like that.
It’s not really a lot of hoops to jump through, and this seems to be standard practice by DHL, UPS, FedEx and others, over here.
I actually appreciate getting the options on delivery day. E.g. I usually get to choose what collection point they leave the package at (so I can pick a spot I pass by going home from work or whatever), or if I want them to come back the next day, or have it dropped off at my office (not always an option, kinda seems to depend on how stressful a day the driver is having). I certainly prefer it to risk having the package stolen, then reporting, waiting for a new delivery…
Of course, if the package is large, heavy or otherwise unwieldy it might be a pain not having it delivered directly to the door, but if I’m expecting such a thing I try to be home to accept delivery.
Call it what you want; anyone who changed their policy would go bankrupt overnight as they lost 95% of their sales volume, because no one else does that silly nonsense.
You’re free to waste time going to pick up “deliveries”, and this has more or less always been the case. But that’s a dealbreaker for the vast majority of the population, because no other competitor will pull that nonsense.
It’s literally never happened to me and, if it did, is still less inconvenient than waiting for a delivery one single time. It’s as simple as contacting the retailer and getting a replacement shipped in a day or two for anyone big. The worst case is maybe a week.
All of that is better than going out of my way to go to a pickup location or staying home waiting for a package.
Welcome to the rest of the world mate. This issue here is another “no way to prevent this, says only nation where this happens” as The Onion would say.
OK, in the rest of the world you have dogshit service. Why is that relevant to the fact that Americans are unwilling to do business with companies that don’t respect our time?
Stolen packages aren’t an actual problem at any scale, and I’m willing to bet shrinkage from theft is meaningfully lower than it is in physical stores. Expecting people to sit around all day waiting for deliveries is a terrible trade off for a rounding error worth of loss to the retailer.
I would not buy from someone who used a parcel service that just dumped my stuff outside.
