I’ve experienced this in several different countries so it’s not just one or two services. We could be sitting near the front door eating and be able to look outside when the tracking will change, in real time, to say they failed to reach us. It’s clear as day no one even showed up. Why not just be honest and say “we can’t get to it today. Trying again tomorrow.”
They have to know that half the time the resident knows they didn’t even try? Shit happens. Sometimes there’s just too many packages and you can’t get to them all. No need to lie.
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The usps did this to me on a Saturday. I was home. Moreover, I was *outside* and saw the carrier drive up to my mailbox, so I went and got the mail. In the box was a “sorry we missed you” asking me to sign for paperwork I wasn’t home to sign for. I could sign & schedule a delivery or I could pick it up at the distribution center. Made zero sense other than the driver just wasn’t feeling it
Most often it seems to be the actual courier wants to end their day on time and is given a workload that isn’t realistically manageable. They get in trouble if they do not make it through all of their deliveries so they cut corners to fit it all in, instead of taking 2 minutes to go to the back of the truck and find you parcel then spending another 2-5 minutes knocking on your door waiting for you to answer, making polite small talk, and handing you the package they just spend 1 minute jumping out walking up to the door and leaving the missed delivery slip. If they know they cannot make it to all their stops in their shift and don’t want to stay late they may also just mark it as a missed delivery without even going to it
I don’t think there can be an objective explanation unless you’re literally there with the delivery driver. The simplest answer is people.
Maybe the delivery driver is trying to justify not making the quota for the day, maybe the delivery company has a policy to default to not there, maybe the delivery driver is at the wrong house, maybe the delivery driver is under a lot of stress due to accidents.
The incentive and stress on delivery drivers nay just end up having the delivery drivers lie to get what they want done. Who knows. I think most consumers would be fine with pure honesty but some might flip out either way. Since the assumption is that most people work at the office, it’s just simpler to say “person was not home” and roll the dice.
So I briefly worked for hermes (they didn’t pay me correctly so I quit). On a daily basis you’re expected to deliver 150-200 parcels. Some places might not have immediate access and wasting X amount of time trying to get in isn’t worth it for one parcel.
More likely, they’re behind on deliveries and they can’t find your one parcel among dozens. It’s easier just to mark it as not home or whatever the designation is.
Every X amount of parcels is expected to be delivered in alloted timeslots. So if youre scheduled for 2.30 and its 3.00 the drivers gonna hit next. Sucks for the recipient but deliveries can be fucking hectic and stressful and some people just want to get home
> “we can’t get to it today. Trying again tomorrow.”
Because then you are complaining at them / they may have to issue refunds due to missed SLAs, while ‘we missed you’ is them complaining at *you* and they don’t have to issue refunds.
The advent of doorbell cams has put a real dent in in that practice. Beforehand you might not _literally_ have been watching the door all day, now you can prove it.
This doesn’t really feel like an explain like I’m 5 question. You’re not asking for an easier explanation for something technical. You’re just asking why couriers have a bad practice.
FedEx in the UK did this to my dad today, on a replacement package for the one they lost last week.
“Delivered to address other than residence” but no card or details about where that actually is.
I have video of UPS driver arriving and putting “you weren’t there” in my letterbox without approaching my front door.
WTF is wrong with these people?
When they do that, I report them to the company. I hate them lying, pretending that I wasn’t waiting for them.
Cost savings, and plausible deniability.
The key thing to remember is you aren’t their customer, their client is. They have contracts with the client that have minimum standards they need to hit. Part of that is delivering packages within a certain timeframe. If they don’t meet those standards, it costs them money.
Except it also costs them money to actually deliver everything. They’ll take as much stuff to deliver as possible because they get paid for it, all while paying as little as possible for delivery capacity.
Result: Sometimes (or often, if the company is terrible) they’ll not be able to meet their agreements to their client. So they’ll lie to their clients to tell them that they tried to deliver but it was the customer’s fault.
The clients will pretend they know nothing about this, but really they don’t care either because they already got your money and they saved money by using a cheaper delivery service. They’re aware of which companies do this, and they still choose to use them because they are cheap.
Higher margin industries tend to use delivery services that are less shit because it costs them more money if people cancel or change company. Actual, legit guaranteed delivery companies WILL deliver on time and won’t lie about it. However, they do cost significantly more per delivery.
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