Two days on and still no sign of Hermes, with my order. The delivery was supposed to have been made on Friday – that’s four days ago.
If my Hermes package was a child and we lived in the US, it would be branded a missing person and currently be appearing on millions of milk cartons across 50 states.
I have been harassing Hermes – pretty much like in the video below. Except replace ‘spy camera’ with ‘crap merchandise from Leeds United’.
Plus, I am a 37-year-old grown man. The video contains a 10-year-old cartoon child, voiced by a woman.
I also tweeted my complaint. I am sure Bart Simpson would have used social media, to enquire about his spy camera – in between trolling Cheryl Cole and Moe Szyslak – but that episode was created in 1990, and I don’t think it was possible to connect to the internet on a BBC micro computer.
I am sure that anyone who has ever ordered anything online and relied upon a courier to deliver their precious goods, has always been extremely satisfied and never encountered any problems.
To many, the following statement may be very shocking…
Hermes are shit.
Hermes are, apparently, a courier company. Lots of online shops use them – one would wonder why, as a shoddy service from the courier, would reflect badly upon the seller.
I have my suspicions why Hermes are still in business and used by so many individuals and retailers. It is the same reason John Cleese’s Basil Fawlty, of Fawlty Towers fame, favours the services of the inept builder, O’Reilly… “because he’s cheap!”.
Unfortunately for me, one of the many companies who make use of Hermes is Leeds United Football Club. As regular readers will know, I am a Leeds fan.
The fact Leeds use Hermes does not really surprise me, considering they managed to completely mess up promotion last season.
I ordered some merchandise from Leeds United recently. I don’t know why – the same effect of displaying the club-branded tack, could have been achieved a lot cheaper and easier, by making myself a hat from a sheet of A4 paper and writing “I AM A MUG” on it.
Anyway, my Leeds United goodies were packaged up and sent on their way from northern to southern England – with Hermes…
To cut a long and boring story short (it’s gone on long enough), take a look at this…
It is one of two Hermes tracking pages for my order.
I’ll be generous and won’t rant about the events of Friday – the day the parcel was originally meant to be delivered – although you would be correct to assume, by reading the note, that the delivery was twice postponed and I was left not knowing what was going on during Friday evening. But I don’t like to go on…
By Saturday afternoon, there was still no delivery and I was starting to get a little peeved – while planning a blog post about the whole ordeal. Every cloud and all that.
I had sent a calm and happy tweet to the Hermes Twitter account. This account seemed to mainly consist of retweets from customers who had praised the service provided by the courier. These retweets contained many replies from other, less happy customers, moaning about their experience.
My tweet politely asked for an update. I am yet to receive a reply. How rude.
I may or may not have sent a further tweet to Hermes, which was less poliet thanthe first.
It was the update at 17:17 where I began to see red. “There’s been a slight delay with your delivery”.
How long is “slight”?
I also suspect the courier, tasked with the job of delivering my parcel, may have told a “slight” porky pie. Look at the second tracking page…
The update I take issue with is again at 17:17 – “Delivery attempt made, allow 24h”.
Claire and I were sat within ear-shot of the front door, so how on earth could a delivery attempt have been made? Unless…
The bit about “allow 24h” is also unfortunately wrong. A day later and still no delivery. Ooops!
Let’s be fair to Hermes. They were shit to me, but they may have been excellent to lots of other customers. Customers who don’t seem to blog or tweet much. Who knows – Hermes may have a Royal Warrant on their delivery vans. Of course, I wouldn’t know as I am yet to see a Hermes van.
Hermes are also not the only courier company, of which I have been unfortunate enough to have had a bad experience with. Yodel were a nightmare when assigned the impossible mission of delivering a wardrobe to our new house from Argos. You can read all about that in past posts.
Hopefully tomorrow will see my Leeds United junk arrive and not another extension to Pinocchio’s nose.
I have reviewed last night’s Deliveroo order – from Pizza Express – in Emojis…
I’ll briefly explain the symbols…
- Our pizza took over two hours to arrive.
- The food was delivered cold. Not even luke warm. It was Al Fresco.
- The service was poop. No communication or replies to messages, enquiring of the whereabouts of our food.
- The delivery driver arrived cold. Not luke warm. Wouldn’t call him Al Fresco – his name probably wasn’t even Alan. He looked unwell. We worried for his welfare.
- Our mood – rather peed off!
Deliveroo did eventually find the time and courtesy to reply to me – the next day. We were given £20 credit towards a future order of cold food.
The pavement was still unavailable this morning, as Virgin Media were continuing to dig up the street.
I therefore had to take another detour to work. My journey to the office was a tad less stressful than my ride home the night before. Firstly, it was daylight. I also knew the route to take, so didn’t find myself lost in the backstreets of Weston.
The diversion did, however, add time to my journey – approximately 10 minutes extra each way.
This may not seem a lot, but considering I can normally make the trip in just 8 minutes, that is a 125% increase!I therefore feel that Sir Richard Branson should have to pay me for my wasted time – a grand total of 20 minutes…
A quick search on Google revealed that Richard earns an annual salary of $6,450,000. This can be broken down to roughly $736.30 an hour. For 20 minutes, he will earn $245.43. I feel I am entitled to this.
At the current rate of exchange, I am set to receive £190.53 – although I’ll just settle for a Hive webcam. I’ll even use Virgin Money to change the dollars into pounds.
If you are concerned that Rich will suffer financially and be unable to feed his family, as a result of my pay-out, consider this – all I am asking for is 0.0038051162790697676% of his annual summary. Needless to say, he wouldn’t be forced into visiting a food bank.
My journey home from work took a little longer than normal, this evening.
Part of the pavement on my route home had been destroyed and was impassable. “Who could have done this blatent act of destruction?”, I hear you ask. “Terrorists? Vandals?”. It was neither of those, although you would have a fair argument if you were to call what had taken place vandalism.
The pavements had been dug up, apparently, fully legally. The responsible party being none other than Richard Branson. Well, not him personally. He wasn’t on Penn Hill Road, bouncing on top of a pneumatic drill. His company, Virgin Media, were laying cables, so we could all enjoy the fantastic services on offer. Cough! It didn’t even appear to be Virgin employees carrying out the work – they had contracted maintenance workers to do their dirty deeds. I call them “workers”, I’ve seen fewer cowboys in Red Dead Redemption.
This blog isn’t one of my “Sean VS The World”, Victor Meldrew rants. As many of you know, I use a mobility scooter. I was unable to complete my regular route home.
Not being prepared to ride in the main road, I took my scooter down a poorly lit side street. While there, I spent considerable time, searching for a dropped kerb, as my scooter cannot simply mount any pavement. When you’re looking for a dropped kerb, it’s amazing how few of them there are! In the end, I located one, after riding up yet another side street, this time in almost total darkness.
I did make it home, safe and well, if not a little aggrieved and upset. I find the whole thing very selfish and inconsiderate by Virgin Media. They will argue that we were warned that highway maintenance was due to be carried out. In reality, a note was put through our letterbox this morning, after Billy the Kid had began removing slabs of concrete.
I am certainly not the only person who would have been affected by Virgin’s appallingly actions – other disabled people and parents with children from nearby schools would have also suffered.
I sent a very strongly worded email to Virgin Media. I fully expect to receive some standard, pre-written spiel back, as a reply. I therefore copied my MP and local councillors into the email. It’ll probably achieve nothing, but I would hope that Richard Branson’s Magnificent Seven are not allowed to continue working in the manner which they have been.
About Me
So you stumbled across my blog. No doubt after searching for something bizarre on Google. Before you hit that 'Back Button', why not stay and have a read for a few minutes?
If you are after a website which gives advice on how to hack an iPhone X, download the latest Steven Seagal movie, or view nudy ladies, you've come to the wrong place and may now press 'Back'.
However, if you would like a lifestyle blog, written by a 30-something chap, living in Bath (England), feast your eyes on this.
You won't discover how to copy PlayStation 4 games. What you will find is a blog, covering life in the West Country, the highs and lows of supporting two unsuccessful football teams, while sharing a house with a wife and rabbit.
All written by a man, somewhere on the sanity-scale between normal and eccentric.
