Pet Peeve #2

Every now and then, I find myself needing to vent about a recent event that has irritated me. It doesn’t matter if you care or not but you’re more then welcome to add your comments or even share any recent pet peeves of yours in the Comments.

Purolator is a courier service owned by Canada Post. I’d love to complain to them directly but after being on hold for an hour on the phone, together with my inability to find an email address for them, and having received no response from @PurolatorHelp on Twitter, I have decided to turn to you, dear readers, for sympathy.

I ordered a desk online and it had been shipped via Purolator. I won’t even go into how Purolator takes 3 times as long to deliver things compared to other courier companies; I’m just going to vent about the delivery experience itself.

The day it was delivered a Penske truck pulled up and a very healthy-looking young man rang my doorbell and explained he had a delivery for me but it was too heavy for him to lift off his truck and he wanted me to do it. I’m NOT young (and I’m not saying how old I am – suffice to say MUCH older than him) and I have a bad back, so I explained that I was unable to assist and offered him the use of my dolly. He said he already had a dolly but it was too heavy to lift from the truck to the dolly.

I told him I thought it was being delivered by Purolator and he explained he was with Purolator (I think maybe they’re contracting out jobs, who knows). I finally said if it’s too heavy for you to lift, and since I’m unable to lift for you, I guess you’ll have to take it back and explain you’re unable to deliver due to the weight.

I think that confused him, but I wasn’t about to have a staring contest with him at my door, so I reiterated that he only had two choices – lift it off the truck himself or return it saying he was unable to deliver it, then I closed the door.

Five minutes later I heard noises outside my door and he had just finished putting the large box on my porch. The young, healthy man who had said the package was too heavy to lift off the truck to his dolly, had managed to bring it to my front porch, sans dolly.

So what was the problem? Was he really unable to deliver it? Is Canada Post outsourcing to incompetent individuals, or was this one individual so lazy that he tried to get an older, injured lady to do his job. What would happen if he was delivering to somebody in a wheelchair or walker?

Companies that take orders online for delivery take note – FedEx and UPS are willing to work harder for your business than a company like Purolator.

Are you listening @PurolatorHelp?