Solving the ecommerce home delivery problem for online shoppers

I am really glad to have tried out ByBoxUk and will be signing up for the annual plan (less than £1 per week) shortly as it solves a key home delivery problem for me.

The likes of Home Delivery Network (now called Yodel) are very unreliable for home deliveries in my experience, delivering at strange times, being difficult to contact, hard to track, handling goods poorly at times, and certainly reporting delivery attempts that do not seem to fit with my observations.

Like most people with busy working lives, I have no idea when I or someone else might be in at home and able to take a delivery. Even though my home is a large and busy property, often people there are too busy themselves to hear or respond to a knock on the door (particularly if it is a half-hearted attempt to attract attention).

The ByBox solution gives me an alternative delivery address. It is provided by one of the very delivery companies I have a problem with, but as it accepts store deliveries to a major central hub delivery location fully staffed and operationally efficient at goods receipting, it is an easy drop off point for whoever the store has contracted to do deliveries.

From that drop off point, the item(s) are then re-delivered to my drop box, a pin-code protected locker located on a major retail site near my home which I can visit 24×7. This drop off point is again easy for the delivery drivers to locate and use. The lockers come in banks of various sizes, and whichever locker is free and fits the goods is used. The correct locker door opens automatically when I or my wife arrives and enters the delivery specific code that has been SMSes and emailed to me and my wife.

This approach adds an extra day to deliveries, so it now takes me two days instead of one day for most deliveries. Or rather, in most cases, it means I get to receive my goods sooner, as I do not have to arrange, and re-arrange second/third delivery attempts or visit the delivery courier's local hub at their convenience to make a collection.

It has worked out very well for me on the run-up to Christmas, and I recommend it to all.

Solving the ecommerce home delivery problem for online shoppers

I am really glad to have tried out ByBoxUk and will be signing up for the annual plan (less than £1 per week) shortly as it solves a key home delivery problem for me.

The likes of Home Delivery Network (now called Yodel) are very unreliable for home deliveries in my experience, delivering at strange times, being difficult to contact, hard to track, handling goods poorly at times, and certainly reporting delivery attempts that do not seem to fit with my observations.

Like most people with busy working lives, I have no idea when I or someone else might be in at home and able to take a delivery. Even though my home is a large and busy property, often people there are too busy themselves to hear or respond to a knock on the door (particularly if it is a half-hearted attempt to attract attention).

The ByBox solution gives me an alternative delivery address. It is provided by one of the very delivery companies I have a problem with, but as it accepts store deliveries to a major central hub delivery location fully staffed and operationally efficient at goods receipting, it is an easy drop off point for whoever the store has contracted to do deliveries.

From that drop off point, the item(s) are then re-delivered to my drop box, a pin-code protected locker located on a major retail site near my home which I can visit 24×7. This drop off point is again easy for the delivery drivers to locate and use. The lockers come in banks of various sizes, and whichever locker is free and fits the goods is used. The correct locker door opens automatically when I or my wife arrives and enters the delivery specific code that has been SMSes and emailed to me and my wife.

This approach adds an extra day to deliveries, so it now takes me two days instead of one day for most deliveries. Or rather, in most cases, it means I get to receive my goods sooner, as I do not have to arrange, and re-arrange second/third delivery attempts or visit the delivery courier's local hub at their convenience to make a collection.

It has worked out very well for me on the run-up to Christmas, and I recommend it to all.

Second go at university for my eldest daughter

I cannot begin to imagine the feelings one has to deal with when facing starting again at a university one year on from having started elsewhere only to have subsequently dropped out.

When the first university was Keele, and the second is Imperial College, the feelings must be even more strange. There cannot be many students who have chosen to have gone to Keele in the first instance, dropped out and then manage to gain a seat in one of the top universities in the country.

Zoë took the decision originally to go to Keele to study Geology on the grounds that it is:

• not in a city
• benefits from a large, green campus (largest in Europe)
• close to home

She really is not into the things most readily associated with teenage girlhood such as partying, shopping, drinking, dancing, clothes, make-up, etc.

By sheer coincidence, her mother (and my wife, I am pleased to say), Lucy, started at the same university at the same time, but studying physiotherapy and commuting daily rather than living on campus. As my wife looks rather too young (and it is not just me saying that) to have a daughter at university (let alone two), introductions to friends and student colleagues from time to time of the daughter/parent were entertaining.

Unfortunately, Keele turned out to be a big mistake. This was clearly something though that she had to find out for herself. She was studying Geology and, frankly, the entrance requirements at Keele were not especially high, so not many of the fellow students were not particularly studiuos and given that Keele is pretty much in the middle of nowhere, then parties were the order of the day for many of the young resident students. On top of this, the work was easy, lectures often disrupted, the university inefficient in marking and feeding back on work and she was frustrated and bored. She dropped out after the first term. An entertaining Christmas.

Several universities were contacted, some responded and were open to allowing her to transfer there and then. Imperial invited her to an interview, which she smashed, brilliantly. The tour of the facilities and briefings on the their approach were stunning. For example, the School of Mines had just replaced all the PCs used by the students in that department with the latest specification machines and had sufficient for one for each student – no competing with other departments. Unlike Keele, they commit to turning around marks quickly, typically within two weeks and often quicker, much better for learning.

Clearly, Imperial meets non of the original criteria. However, given it is a complete nerdfest, the vast majority of students are not that into partying, it has has the select and largely beautiful South Kensignton as its home, and is surrounded by interesting public venues such as the Natural History Musuem (a place she loves). She even managed to get accomodation in the halls pretty much next door (overlooking a nice green) which are cheaper than Keele’s thanks to room sharing arrangements.

I have driven in and through London a good number of times over the years, never been a fan though. Was not too worried about moving her in last October. The university had a slick system in place. You could pull up outside the halls for around 15 minutes for unpacking, bu they had an army of well organised students to unpack your car and place stuff outside of the appropriate rooms and they gave you a parking pass covering a couple of hours for their main campus car park for after the drop off.,

Leaving South Kensington on a warm Saturday October evening was pretty much a nightmare. Whereas I had driven in in the morning with ease, a smooth journey with few holds up; in the evening, getting out to the M4 took hours with most of it sat in traffic jams moving a car length every now and then, with odd emergency vehicle light ablaze negotiating a course through from time to time. Rather than head back to Shropshire though, my wife and I headed to Swansea, and even longer trip. I did not want to drive back home on the Saturday evening though to have to then do another long drive to get to Swansea for work on Monday morning.

We have a nice evening and morning in Swansea. In the afternoon, I did a hostage style exchange of my wife at a large supermarket on the outskirts of Cardiff to her fellow student who lives in Cardiff and lodges at our home during the week.

Zoë did not come home at all during her first term at Imperial. She knows of some other 1st year students, also from our region, who returned regularly. She wanted to prove to herself she could settle into life in halls in London and not need to visit home. By contrast, when at Keele, she visited regularly (but then her mother was travelling back and forth daily).

I did wonder if on her return for the Christmas break, one year after dropping out of Keele, she would have problems. Well, she did. Absolutely standard student anxieties about displacement (where is home, etc). No worries about whether or not she had made the right decision. She was certainly no longer bored, and being surrounded by many very intelligent types no longer felt over qualified. After a few days rest on first getting home, she spent most of Christmas with her head deep in her books, creating mind-maps, and burning up the midnight oil rewriting notes. This in preparation for an exam immediately on her return.

My wife also has spent most of Christmas revising.

Alexandra, by contrast, also back home for Christmas, on a course where such fact-based revision is not really valid, has been able to get out and about an enjoy herself a lot more.