A mum says her Christmas has been “ruined” after gifts sent by her son went missing and she received a box of “rusty old car parts” instead. Julia Harris, from Bristol, had gifts sent to her using DPD but was surprised to receive a package that was a different shape to the one she had seen relatives prepare to send her during a video chat.
Julia, who has survived three heart attacks in the last year, will not be spending Christmas with family due to her vulnerable health and was supposed to open the gifts from her son and his father, Adrian, during a video call on December 25. However, when the package arrived on Tuesday, not only was it the wrong shape but it had tape holding it together stating it had been “re-sealed by DPD with care”.
When Julia opened the box to investigate, there was no sign of her carefully-wrapped gifts – and in there place were some old car parts in bubble wrap and Amazon-branded cardboard. The tracking information for the parcel suggests everything was going as planned until Tuesday morning, when it was repacked at DPD's depot in Rumney, Cardiff shortly before being delivered.
Julia told Bristol Live: “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.”
Julia said she tried phoning the depot throughout the day on Tuesday but 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 work 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 says 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”. Julia said that “in due course” would not make it so the Christmas presents were delivered.
Julia's family said that the items had a combined monetary value of around £200, with some of the gifts irreplaceable as they were handmade. The parcel was insured for £200.
Julia's son, who will be spending Christmas away from her for the first time, has not told her the exact contents of the package as he still hopes it will be located in time for the festive season. The family used DPD in order to avoid issues caused by Royal Mail staff striking.
“They don’t care, we’re just another customer to them, just another barcode,” Julia added. “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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