The Saga of James The Delivery Van Man

It's that time again folks ... mobile phone renewal time! Hurrah! You may remember the sage I had last year in attempting to renew my mobile phone company and the resulting complaints (yes, this particularly company's customer service was so shocking I had to make two complaints!!) Following this, I decided that in no uncertain terms was I ever going to renew my contract with them, whatever the circumstances.

I therefore found myself another contract with an entirely different company and a shiny new phone. I also found another saga. I call this The Saga of James the Delivery Van Man.

My new phone was due to arrive next day by courier delivery at some point between 7.30am and 9.30pm. The timings were very vague. Armed with my parcel tracking number, I saw that my delivery left the depot at 8.30am and satisfied that it should arrive that day and sat around the house waiting and doing little jobs, mainly weeding the front garden.

My phone did not arrive. At 9.30pm I checked the online parcel tracker and discovered that the delivery company had updated their records to say that they had "attempted delivery" at 11am and had left a card. It must have been the most bizarre attempted delivery to ever take place. At 11am I was weeding in the front garden. The only way a delivery man attempted to get past me was if he, his van and his parcel were invisible. There was also no card. I was tres disappointed.

The next morning, I called to find out what was happening and was advised to call James, my personal delivery driver for an update. I called and was promised it would be delivered by 9.30pm. 9.30pm came and went and there was no sign of my parcel. I was beginning to get more than a little annoyed.

The following day was Saturday. I called the company I ordered the phone from and was told that James the delivery driver had gone AWOL with my parcel, had not returned to the depot and was uncontactable. The customer service assistant promised to call back as soon as she had any news and advised me to stay in just in case the parcel was delivered in the meantime. I waited for 3 hours. I thought this was quite long enough on a Saturday and called back to be advised by a different assistant that the delivery company stop work at 12.30 on a  Saturday (by this point it was almost 3pm) and I was very furious. I enquired about cancelling my order so that I could just go into a shop and sort this out myself (convinced that the stress of awaiting James the Delivery Man would put me into an early labour), but was told that I would need to send my phone etc back, they could not cancel the order until it had been delivered. I was also told that if I called back on Monday they would raise an enquiry with the delivery driver.

On Monday, I called and was advised that it would be delivered absolutely definitely by 10.30am. It did not arrive. I continued with my morning. At 3pm, I decided to chase them up. I was told the driver was 5 minutes away from my house. I waited ... and waited ... and waited ... and waited. James the Delivery Van Man eventually arrived about an hour later.

I was ready to give him my full furious. Then I opened the door to the stench of cigarette smoke. It was not a little bit, it was as if I had been sat in a smoking room with about 500 smokers for the day. I signed for my parcel and shut the door quickly.

In James's case, it turns out smoking actually saves lives! He will never know how lucky he is...