Mail Order Plant delivery.

I couldn't agree more, Diane. How frustrating for you. Our postie is wonderful and knows exactly where to find us, even if we are out shopping, or round at a neighbours', but couriers (I am Amazon's biggest customer) are infuriating. I once was sent a dvd I'd ordered (which was for someone's birthday) and after 3 weeks' waiting, went online to try and trace it's progress. SIX times the Bologna branch of the courier had written "This address does not exist": Someone had been here at home every day for months, and the house has been standing for 160 years, so we aren't sure what they were talking about. We do know that when they see our address, they know it's miles up a mountain and they simply can't be bothered. They refuse even to send e-mails or 'phone us. The package had been sent back to the UK. We complained vociferously, and try to get everything sent by post. We got the package 3 weeks later, and an apology, but even then we had to drive 120km round trip to collect it from the city centre depot. So we NEVER send off for plants. They just wouldn't make it.

A lot of companies use Jersey to maximise profit - the plants are grown in the UK, then shipped to Guernsey or Jeresy then resent back to the UK after being packaged. It avoids VAT. You end up with a slightly cheaper plant that has been removed from, say Norfolk, shipped to Jersey/Guernsey then sent back to you in the UK/EU. It is tax avoidance and HMRC have investigated them.

Diane you need to visit your Royal Mail Delivery office, where you pick up your packages from and set up a "Safe Place." It is a written instruction to the Postman that he can put the package where you state. Without that instruction the Postman could be sacked if the package was left there and then went missing. It's not fool proof as your regular postie will have a day off and Holidays...the Postie that covers his duty does not always read the walk log and see your instruction.

I never take plants back to the office, i would have to resist the temptation to pot them up for you as well ...!

Wow! I hadn't realised that Kildermorie. As well as cheating us and the taxman (I doubt any VAT savings get passed onto the customers), the plants spend a lot longer than necessary in transit, so not good on all fronts. Where I can, I use local nurserymen (or rather, I used to) rather than the bigger GC chains, and having really only experienced Thompson & Morgan as far as buying on line goes, am not in a hurry to repeat the mistake.

We don't actually have a problem like that. Everyone knows that our front porch is unlocked and they all leave parcels in there, whether they should be signed for or not. I suppose that we are lucky.

I request packages to be left in the greenhouse if there is no answer and they usually (99%) are. Sometimes a courier won't even bother to ring the bell - just takes the package straight to the greenhouse

On a slightly different note - but still showing that Postie doesn't always have common sense - my passport needed renewal and I found I could have this done in Madrid, so downloaded the necessary forms, one of which was a description of exactly where the village and my house was, and sent the whole lot off to Madrid. Two weeks later we had a phone call - in Spanish - saying something about a parcel 'in the bar in Ojedo' which we couldn't make much sense of. Later that evening we went out, called in at the stated bar and found the courier had left my new passport there for me to collect despite written instructions AND a descriptive little map! I dread to think what could have happened if that had fallen into the wrong hands!