UPS - ha!

We have had two different deliveries this week from UPS.
One came on Wednesday and one on Thursday.
At least in theory.

I had been tracking the deliveries and I knew that Wednesday's parcel was scheduled to arrive, so we made sure someone was always in to watch for it. I was not encouraged, therefore, to receive a message saying that the package could not be delivered because we were "indisponible" - unavailable.

How much more available can you be than watching the gate of the front yard of the flats?
We knew no UPS van had come. Anyway our flat has a bell, a loud bell, a loud bell which had been silent all day.

Subsequent messages said that the package had been delivered to a relay point about 5 minutes walk away, then that the relay point was closed so "a new attempt to deliver the package would be made on Thursday".

The problem - apart from complete fabrication such as "unavailable" - is that because the flats are less than a year old they do not appear on GPS systems. If you put in 1 Avenue Paul Montagne the systems often say the address does not exist. Drivers get discouraged by this and give up. However, anyone driving up Avenue Paul Montagne might quickly realise that there is a new block of flats at the start of the road and it would not take the deductive powers of Maigret to surmise that this might be no.1. Not only that but they have our phone number on the package, so they could ring. But they usually don't.

So I quickly went into the UPS website and advised them that our flat was situated on the corner of Paul Montagne and Larouillat, and that we were watching for the driver.

The next day I saw a UPS van arrive at the traffic lights, thankfully red. I shot out and hailed the driver, who pulled in.

He handed over a package. One small package.

"There's another, a bigger one, from yesterday."

"Yes, it's at the relay point."

"But I had a message telling me that it wasn't."

"Oh yes it is, I left it there myself."

Thanks a bunch, I thought, then decided to phone the relay point as by now it was hot. Very hot.

"Hallo, you have a parcel for me, quite a big one, for Davey."

"No, no, there's nothing here for Davey."

I spelled the name.

"No, no."

"Then I have a big, fat problem because the UPS driver said he left it at your shop."

"No... oh, hang on, yes, there it is."

Phew...


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