Couriers

It's the run up to Christmas and, for us, that means couriers delivering parcels. More specifically, it means couriers delivering parcels to our house when we're out. Instead of leaving the parcel with a neighbour when we're out, we find that the drivers more often than not just dump the parcel on our mat in plain view to anyone passing by. Not good.

However, we have had a couple of good experiences recently:

• UPS left a parcel with our local collection point, which was our local corner shop. We hadn't come across this before, but it turns out that UPS have local collection points where they will leave your parcel if you're not in. This means that they don't have to re-deliver, and the parcel is held somewhere safe until you pick it up. Perfect.

• But DPD go one step further. On the morning of delivery, we received an email giving us a one-hour time slot. We were told who our driver was (including a photo of him) and we could track his route as he made his journey towards us, which meant that eventually we knew the 15-minute time slot during which he would deliver to us. I had some reservations about what this meant for the driver (lack of autonomy, pressure to deliver exactly when expected, etc.) but in terms of customer service, it was great!