There appears to be something in privatized post and parcel companies that makes them inherently customer-unfriendly, even when it directly costs them money. (For an earlier case, do read this popular post about The total incompetence of Parcelforce.)

I ordered plants online. I’ve done this before, and the normal result is that I get a box delivered to my door. This time the plants were delivered by PostNord, which is basically the old Swedish Post combined with the old Danish Post. The experience was a bit surreal.

A week after the boxes were sent off, I got an SMS from PostNord, that the parcels were available for me to pick up at their delivery centre. After a good half-hour of waiting – while the long queue got slowly served by a single overworked, surly lady – I got four large boxes. All of them more or less mashed up, which was no surprise, given that they were handed to me in some random orientation, so they had probably been stored with the same care and attention, despite clear green “UP” arrows on each one.

A fifth box that was part of the consignment was not yet available for delivery. The tracking link I had informed me that PostNord had actually made an attempt to deliver the boxes home to me. Two days ago. In the middle of the day. Without any attempt to contact me in advance – even though they obviously had my phone number.

How on Earth can it make sense for them to waste their drivers’ time, trying to deliver to a home address in the middle of a working day, without any advance notice? How much cheaper would it not have been to send me a simple SMS, even just the day before?