PARCEL FARCE
Binned, battered and sodden.. tales of delivery hell
FURIOUS online shoppers are giving delivery firms a Christmas roasting – for smashing up their parcels.
Around 40 million Brits are buying festive gifts over the internet.
But these snaps show how often companies fail to take care of goods in the season of goodwill.
Customers flooded social media with photos of parcels burst and torn, contents spilling out.
Others were chucked in bins, under bushes, in ponds or left on doorsteps where they could get soaked or stolen.
The outrage against courier giants including Parcelforce, DHL and Hermes follows research by watchdog Which?
It found more than half of online shoppers had some kind of delivery problem last Christmas.
Adam French of Which? said: “Dealing with late, missing or damaged deliveries can be a nightmare.”
One shopper accused DHL of hurling a parcel marked “Fragile” over a 6ft gate in the rain. Rory
Lewis claimed a framed 1944 portrait of Winston Churchill was “destroyed” in transit by Parcelforce.
Hishaaam Adam shared a shot of a crushed box that arrived empty.
Ellen Mariex showed film of a driver leaving a parcel without knocking.
And John Pawson said he was told a parcel was left in his porch – though he does not have one.
Parcelforce said its workers were “regularly reminded” of the standards expected of them.
Hermes said it had a 99 per cent delivery success rate but some incidents were “unacceptable”.
DHL had not commented last night.