Dear LPG, 

I think that the pandemic we have recently lived through has taught a lot more of us to go shopping without actually leaving the house.  It was a younger person’s pursuit until the beginning of 2020, but so many of us who had never dreamed of shopping online learnt the advantages of going down this route when leaving home was ill-advised. 

Unlike the younger people of today, we older people tend to order and exercise a little more patience when it comes to expecting our acquisitions to arrive to the point where, unless it is one of those items that is vital, we are more willing to forget the pair of shoes or new item of clothing we ordered and have been expecting for a week or so.  Perhaps we still remember the shopping catalogue days of the mid to late 20th century, when getting what you ordered yesterday could take a couple of weeks to find your front door.

But in today’s environment, where couriers are paid according to how many parcels they deliver, and getting too close to those who need to collect them can be another hazardous pastime, our couriers are liable to either drop the parcel and then take a picture as proof before waiting for the door to open (or not), or hide the item somewhere in the garden.  Far fewer find a neighbour to leave it with and even fewer are actually leaving a note to say where it is these days.

The other day I visited a friend and when I got to her front door I noticed a parcel tucked away around the side of her porch.  I noticed it because there was a couple of minute’s gap between the time that I rang the bell and the time she got to the other side of it which left me time to take a look around.   It was so well hidden that I have to admit that a picture of its hiding place would have made a really good one of those ‘find the hidden items’ picture puzzles that are often featured in children’s books or the newspaper quiz pages along with the’ spot the difference’ challenge. 

My friend told me that she had been in and out of her house a few times that day but had little chance of noticing the package because, there was no written note of warning through the door.  Without any hint that she needed to look as she left, she would have spent time concentrating on where she was going with her back to the delivery hiding place while, finding her key when facing the parcel on her return, would have taken all her concentration when it was in her line of sight.

We took a look at what can be done when hidden, lost or parcel damage happens, and found a few solutions which we thought should be shared…

HY, Ladywell

HY, shares the online advice she found… 

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