If the postie finds that a letter or parcel is to big to fit through the letter slot, or needs to be signed for, they ring the bell - and if no-one is at home, they have to fill in a card with details so that you can go to the post office and collect the item. Or you can go on the Royal Mail website and arrange redelivery, through the item number written on the card. That's good.
What's not so good is that you've been home all day and find one of these "undeliverable post" cards -- the postie hasn't even bothered to ring the bell, just left the card --- and didn't put in an item number.
So, off to the post office. The 20-minute walk across the park is all well and good, but the experience goes downhill after that; the collection point is at the back of an industrial area -
I've had the same thing happen to me, too, here in the U.S. Seems endemic to postal services worldwide occasionally.
ReplyDeleteLast week I had a dickens of a time persuading the hospital bed people to bring a bed to the house. We assured them we'd pay with cash, credit card, certified bank check, whatever.
ReplyDeleteThey were adamant, however, that they would bill our insurance -- if only my MD would sign the forms. My MD, in the form of the bad-cop nurse, insisted I should use the stairs, be cooped up upstairs with the impossibly high bed (or the impossibly low futon), no access to TV or good radio. And besides my insurance wouldn't cover the bed.
I did not care that no signature was forthcoming. I would pay what it cost for the bed (not an outrageous sum, regardless).
But the bed people insisted they wanted to bill the insurance company although the parties involved never agreed on which part of my insurance wouldn't pay. And the MD bad-cop nurse would sign, but I shouldn't expect coverage.
I have the bed. The insurance will be billed but the MD nurse said she wouldn't lie. Good for her. All I wanted was the bed, which I was willing to rent, cash up front, for a month.
Sigh. This is just to say that sometimes the world just doesn't make sense. Our PO carrier is pretty good, btw, but don't get me started on the commercial delivery people.
And if I sound a bit out of sorts, I even have an excuse. I'm off for a hip replacement tomorrow and have done practically everything I can think of and it's only 1 PM. So I have lots of time to get tense and excitable about the world going to hell in its handbarrow. Which is as it always was....