Online shops witb late despatch time

They shouldn't be having to type anything into their satnav, given that parcels are scanned into 'the system' and transfer from one to another as they are scanned. And the drivers download their daily routes into an app on their phones. There must be a glitch in someone's database if you get stuff misdelivered.

Or, where your address appears on the delivery route. If yours is one of the last deliveries on a round, you get the result of all the delays and problems the driver has encountered up to that point.

Ebay sometimes wins outright. I wanted a part for a classic car. I found it for £X + P&P on a reasonably local supplier's website. I looked for it on ebay too. I found it available from the same supplier for the same £X but this time it was including P&P. So I bought it from ebay and saved the P&P charge.

I once ordered something by mail order for a relative who doesn't have internet access so I gave my email address on the order screen. It would be posted via Royal Mail.

RM sent me an email saying it would be delivered on a date (a Wednesday). I let the relative know. They stayed in all day and nothing arrived, and I got an email saying "tried to deliver (at a time) - no answer". We both knew that nobody had tried because the relative was in all day and has a dog which would have barked if it heard the gate opening.

I checked with the relative and was told that they had an appointment in the following morning so could I defer delivery to Friday. I went on the RM website and asked for a Friday re-delivery.

I got an email Thursday afternoon saying "tried to deliver (at an afternoon time) - no answer". I checked with the relative, who had got back home at 11:30am and had been in all afternoon, and there had been no attempt to deliver at the time provided and the dog hadn't barked.

Friday arrived and nothing happened for most of the day. At about

Now, if it went through the letterbox when it was finally delivered, why all the nonsense of "no answer" in the previous days? There was no answer when it was finally delivered either, because it had never been necessary to open the door.

You know and I know that what that means is 'I'm clocking off, and the parcel will go on tomorrows round, and I need to supply a reason that lets me off the hook'

I find eBay sellers often take a couple of days to drop-off stuff to the evri counter ...

I used to sort home delivery rounds for a fleet of lorries. Difficult at first & good geographical knowledge required but gradually it becomes second nature.

I often get a 'Your item has been dispatched' notification within hours of buying an Ebay item. I take this to mean the item has been packed & is ready for collection although that may not actually happen for several days & the item gets delivered some 5 to 10 days later.

You can easily eliminate the worst routes, but identifying the best is nearly impossible.

Starting with the nearest next destination at any given point is one algorithm that isn't bad...but the isolated sod miles from anywhere always gets the short straw if time runs out...

However, as with all things in life, the amount of time trying to get the best exceeds the time lost making do with 'good enough'...

Yes. As I understand it, the seller gets a pre printed label to attach to the goods. This triggers the first message when it is downloaded. Then you should get another trigger when that pre printed label is scanned by whoever you give it to next. In my case the local post office. Then the next trigger SHOULD be when the goods are delivered to you, or delivery fails.

The same process applies to returned goods. in most cases a refund happens when the goods are delivered back to [somewhere]. A signed for turn is necessary for valuable returns.

As an aside, for those who remember my woes with ORYZOM, my bank sent me a letter saying they had recovered the payment via chargeback from ORYZOM's bank account.

So that is a last ditch way to recover payment.

I eventually ordered a Henry cordless vacuum instead, and its pretty decent piece of kit. As with all thins Numatic, there is nothing fancy about it, but its well built and does the job remarkably well.

If you like Henry's and want a cordless, its not cheap but its pretty nicely put together and has several useful (as opposed to shiny Die Soon type gloss) features.

That's about how it seems to work, if something is not time-critical, or if it means I can buy half a dozen, rather than a gross of something, I'll use an eBay seller ...

I have found that most of the better online sellers, whilst slightly more expensive than other online sellers, do provide very good service.

I use Ebay a very great deal for little orders that are not time critical. And Aliexpress.

Amazon for when I dont really care to find a better price :-)

When I did agency van driving for a couple of years in the early 2000s one of the jobs was delivering water for water coolers around Coventry, which went a lot better once I started sorting the delivery notes into postcode order.

The most annoying notification is being told that the carrier is "awaiting the package" which usually means that only a tracking number has been assigned. The package then takes days before it gets to the carriers incoming hub. This is not necessarily Ebay but recently I purchased something directly from a UK company and I got the "awaiting package" at approx 5pm the same day as ordering. On subsequently checking the tracking nothing else appeared for another 5 days - it was then transported 300 miles overnight and delivered the next day.

I don't have Amazon Prime and when I do buy from them I elect the 3 to 5 days free postage option. When Amazon is busy (Xmas etc.)the item is often dispatched the same day and delivered the next day. Other times they may wait 4 days, send the dispatched email and it gets delivered the next day.

If you don't already use bags I recommend using their Hepaflo disposable bags. It will keep the inside, the supplied filters and the motor very clean.

Albeit not recently but often the RM parcel delivery man couldn't put my packages through my letter flap. Why? Too bloody lazy to take the elastic band off the two or three separate packages that all would have fitted my letter flap with ease.

I often found that first the approximation of an answer was good enough. An accuracy to 32 decimal places was unnecessary :)

I have only ever had to return one Amazon item. I got a notification within minutes of the parcel being scanned at the Post Office then a refund soon after. I can't remember how long after but the parcel probably hadn't even been picked up from the Post Office.

On a lot of items (but not all) there is an option for free local delivery which is not dependent on price. For me, that's my local Post Office or the parcel boxes outside the Spar shop, both about an 800 yard stroll. Normally takes three working days but often arrives in two & on one occasion, next day.