In recent years, there has been an increase in the number of consumers shopping for their birthday gifts online. While it is convenient and cheap, there still lies a crucial question: Will your birthday shopping arrive safely? I always wondered whether the gifts would be delivered on time? Will the gift be safely delivered? And therefore, I usually look for courier service near me who are reliable and can be trusted to deliver my gifts on time!
Recently for my kid’s birthday, I had ordered gifts online for children who were going to be present for the celebrations. But due to the heavy rains and flooding, it got delayed. This was when I began wondering how tough the job of a courier service actually is. Imagine having to stick to deadlines come hail or rain.
While reading more about the difficulties of the courier service, I came across some interesting articles on the art of courier delivery.
One such article caught my eye. It was in The Guardian which was titled “Infallible Christmas gifts: Pope’s courier reveals secrets” and talks about Thaddeus Kühnel, the Pope’s courier man, who drove from the pope’s home state of Bavaria to the Vatican to personally deliver a boot-load of food, as well as five Christmas trees that were strapped to the roof of his car.
Then there was the courier delivery man who had to abandon his courier van because a swarm of bees attacked him! The bees were a part of a consignment in the parcel van, which somehow managed to escape, and since the truck was closed, they had nowhere else to go.
Another funny delivery was that of a single banana. This oddity happened quite recently in good old Scotland.
But the strangest and most audacious courier delivery should be that of a live person. This happened in 1849, when Henry Brown spent 27 hours, curled inside a delivery crate so that he could be reunited with his family, Henry was born a slave and was dismayed when his wife and child were sold to a different slave owner. He came up with the plan to mail himself to where his family was.
While the above interesting stories talk about what difficulties the courier service providers go through, we need to choose a courier service that delivers to your satisfaction. I also came to know that there are many different types of courier services, a few among them include:
- Standard courier services include those that collect, sort and transfer the parcels to the closest depot to the delivery location. These are generally the cheapest and ones who take the longest time for delivery.
- Overnight delivery services are similar to standard courier services. However, these are costlier but assure delivery the next day.
- The third type is the same-day courier services that guarantee delivery on the same day. These are usually the most expensive domestic courier services.
- Then there are international delivery services, which again charge based on the distance, size and also the country where the parcel has to be delivered to.
While most courier services have their own restrictions on what they will and will not courier, do keep in mind the difficulties they will face on their routine beat, before sending a parcel to the UK!
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