As you may already know, I live on top of a mountain.

The roads up are great but not as wide as some of you may be used to.

Sometimes delivering parcels can be a problem. It shouldn’t be but there you go. I remember one courier, a young chap, said it was his first day. He was white and almost trembling when he came up saying that he wasn’t used to narrow roads!

Also, the streets in my village are medieval so delivery vans cannot come to my place. We generaly go to the village carpark to meet them and bring our deliveries up.

The normal way though is for the courier to ring and ask if it is ok to leave our parcel in a bar in the nearest town which is about 4 km away. This is normally fine if we are going out that day. Otherwise it can be, although rarely disastrous!

Today seems to be heading that way. I’ve been expecting an order from a company who we use regularly. We get deliveries every week from them and two days ago, I was told that they couldn’t delivery my precious (not literally) new things, because my address didn’t exist. Another attempt the next day, yesterday and I’m told I have to contact the sender, who has already contacted me to say I have to resolve the issue directly with the courier. We are currently back and forthing and not getting anywhere and I’m starting to feel frustrated.

I have found that I have to be very proactive in dealing with customer services. I have, in the past worked in this field myself and it can be a very souless experience with customers being offensive and even threatening me (not Italian, it was an Australian, in Australia!) and my kids, saying that they were going to get me. Well, I thought, I’d like to see them try to even find me, on top of a mountain in deepest darkest Italy.

Anyway, being proactive has in the past for me, involved firing out 14 consecutive emails, all the same, just to get a reply. It worked though but doesn’t send a good message to me as a customer does it? It encourages me to be a bit, well, nasty!

RESULT! – After more to-ing and no fro-ing, I thought I’d better check my tracking as I hadn’t been replied to. It said that my order would be delivered today, 10 minutes later it’s delivered. Not to me though but to the bar. No call or messge from the courier. Mind you until I have my parcel in my hands, I’m still a bit sceptical.

On the whole though, and you may not believe me, the post isn’t too bad here. It’s rustic living so sometimes the weather can impact things but generally I find it reasonably good!