A woman from Bristol said her Christmas has been “ruined” after gifts sent by her family using DPD went missing in transit, and instead, she received a box of “rusty old car parts.” DPD told Bristol Live it was "very sorry" and had "launched a full investigation".
Julia Harris, who lives in Avonmouth, has suffered three heart attacks during the past year. Because of her vulnerable health, her family decided not to gather for Christmas this year. Instead, her son and his father, Adrian, sent a box containing several gifts they planned to open together while video chatting on Christmas Day.
When a large box arrived at her house yesterday (Tuesday, December 20) from DPD, Ms Harris was surprised to discover the outer packaging was a different shape from the one that her family had sent, which she’d seen in a video message. The outside of the box was taped to indicate that the package had been 're-sealed by DPD with care', but inside, instead of the carefully wrapped gifts that had been sent to Ms Harris, she discovered “rusty old car parts” packed with Amazon cardboard and bubble wrap.
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Speaking to Bristol Live she said: “I rang my son and his dad straight away. They thought I was joking and winding them up, so I showed them on a video call, and they couldn’t believe it. My son’s dad got straight onto DPD, who were absolutely useless and didn’t want to know.”
Tracking information for the parcel suggested it was repacked at a DPD depot in Rumney, Cardiff. Ms Harris said that the DPD tracking information “looked normal" until it got to Cardiff. She said it was then repacked and re-labelled at 9am on the day of delivery.
Ms Harris said she tried phoning the depot throughout the day on Tuesday but said was unable to get any response. Meanwhile, her son's father, contacted DPD and was initially told that because it was a DPD Local delivery, he would need to contact Parcel2Go, who works with the company.
He said he persisted in trying to speak to someone at DPD and was asked for video evidence to be sent to an email address, but he claimed that the address wasn’t valid and kept bouncing back. He alleged he then waited in a phone queue for over an hour before being given another address to send the footage to.
The only reply the family claim to have received is a generic response that said the company would ‘look into it in due course’. Ms Harris said that 'in due course' would not make it so the Christmas presents were delivered.
Ms Harris' family said that while individually, the items didn't have a high monetary value, collectively, they were worth around £200 and were all chosen with great care, some even handmade. Because of this, the parcel was insured for £200.
Despite the situation, Ms Harris still doesn’t know what the items that were meant to be inside the box are as her son, who will be spending his first Christmas away from her this year, still hopes they will be found and wants them to be a surprise.
The family said they chose to send the presents via DPD because they wanted to avoid issues due to the Royal Mail strikes, but have said they won’t use the company again. Although the family say they are aware it must be a highly pressurised time of year to be a courier, they feel that DPD's lack of willingness to engage in communication is inexcusable.
Ms Harris said: “They don’t care, we’re just another customer to them, just another barcode. The little Christmas we were going to have we haven’t got now, it’s been ruined."
A spokesperson from DPD said, "We are very sorry indeed to hear about this and have launched a full investigation. From our security images, we can see that the packaging failed in transit, and we are now conducting a search to locate the missing items, as a matter of urgency. We will be in contact with the customer to resolve this issue."
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