I guess a lot of people in the UK are asking questions like the title. Where is my parcel? The parcel might be sitting at some delivery depot or in the delivery man’s car.
Why is the parcel sitting there?
The reason for that is the lack of easy access or free parking to the area where the parcel has to be delivered. In the UK especially in the cities, the downtown and surrounding streets are all blocked from parking by double yellow lines or by signs or by some sort of concrete blockade or shrubbery. No free parking anywhere near the shops.
The city councils are making it harder and harder for motorists to park free anywhere near stores, businesses and main street. The city I live in has about 80-100 thousands people and the entire downtown is pedestrians only streets. Nothing is wrong with that, because people like to walk and shop, but the parking in a wide radius is either forbidden or very expensive.
This not only takes shoppers away from the stores, but also parcel deliveries suffer. The delivery man can’t park or would have to pay exorbitant parking fees which would have to come out of their own pocket, because the company don’t pay for that.
This, delays the delivery of the parcels by days or even a week in some cases.
Take my city for an example. Parking even on the streets surrounding the downtown are prohibited by double yellow lines. If someone parks on that it’s a parking ticket worth £60 pounds. The parking areas they provide are all paying ones or else you get a £60 pounds parking fine if you don’t buy a ticket. The other parking areas works by a gate system that only opens if you slide your paid parking ticket into the machine at the gate to open it.
The parking cost in many of these parking lots are around £6 pounds. Some stores will reimburse if you spend a certain amount of money. The delivery man won’t be buying anything in the store and only gets perhaps £0.45 pence for a parcel he has to deliver. Where is my parcel?
So he either pays the parking lot, parks on the double yellow line and chance a parking fine, or parks somewhere far and walks with the package to the address. Most high street stores don’t have rear entrances where parking for delivery people would be provided.
The result is no parcel for the downtown companies, stores, court house, city offices, lawyers offices or anyone who lives above the shops in apartments.
Why do the UK bans parking all over the place? I don’t know. They ban parking by double yellow lines on many residential streets in residential areas. One day you can park in front of your house, the next day you go home from work and find a double yellow line covering your street and can’t park in front of your own house.
I guess they deserve not getting their parcels in time or not at all. People aren’t raising their voices and if they do the council don’t listen. The world is familiar with the British -no logic at all and this one just proves it again.
In Britain the stores in the downtown areas are all suffering. The quality stores are moving out and pound stores, discount stores and pawn shops and -we buy gold- shops taking over. Me and my wife don’t go there either, only if we have to and I am sure thousands of other people are doing the same.
The councils aren’t even trying to help these businesses. So in turn they move out to somewhere else. Simple psychology -if you make it harder, people will stay away.
The councils don’t get it. The businesses do and they act. The downtown area in my city is full of cheap phone shops, discount stores, cheap eateries, discount and pound stores. Unemployed people and kids hanging out. Garbage and gums are everywhere. The whole downtown area is run down. Ugly!
The other thing is, not enough parking in the whole city. They would approve a building permit to build 200 apartments with perhaps 30 or 40 parking spaces. Is that normal? So, the city is full of apartments and the typical small British houses, very few parking spaces considering the number of apartments, and double yellow lines all over.
The delivery man not delivering the parcel, and the people are asking where is my parcel, more and more.
The reason I know all this, because I help out one of local depot of a major parcel delivery company when they are short on people. The delivery people are employed as contractors. (self employed) they get and average of £0.45 pence per parcel delivered. This price is too low and the turnover of personnel is high because of it.
The average daily number of parcels per route are between 50-80. You figure out the math how much these people are earning and they have to use their own car and own fuel. Now if you look at the parking issue it makes sense not to deliver parcels every day if it’s inconvenient to access the address.
Another result of this idiocity about the parking is that people cancel their orders thus the company that sold them the stuff will loose too. Forcing them to raise prices to cover these extra expenses.
So, where is my parcel? Ask your local council why your parcel is not there yet!