Merry Christmas to my friendly neighbourhood (or delivery driver) thieving rat. I'm afraid I couldn't stretch to a new iPhone for you this year, but please take care when drinking your Hario V60 coffee. I wouldn't want you scalding yourself or having it go down the wrong pipe and choking you.

This is going to be somewhat of a rant, but consider it also a public service warning to avoid doing business with Yodel if you ever have the chance!

To begin the story; I ordered a replacement internet hub from Virgin Media, but as I can install them myself I didn't ask for an engineer. They sent it... via Yodel.

Now at first the horror of Yodel wasn't obvious. You get texts telling you when to expect attempted delivery, so I made sure to be home when it arrived. I live in a converted house, but all the sub flats have the bells in the same place so I can hear if any of them go off. This is the UK subreddit so you all know what comes next, right?

No bells ring, card through the door.

Ok, we're all used to this by now, usually you can get a second delivery if you get the company to make a note that yes, just shoving the card through next time won't be excusable. Here's where you get Yodelled up the backdoor though.

Their "Online support" appears to be permanently Offline. You have to wade miles deep into their webpage to find their telephone number, but if you answer "Yes" to anything, you get thrown off the service.

Say "Yes" to you have a parcel tracking card/number and it'll state they'll automatically try and redeliver when they choose, then it disconnects

Say "Yes" to whether it's about the parcel you just called about, and it repeats the above message and then disconnects you again.

Sometimes it just automatically recognises you've just called and automatically plays the same message, or even at times I suspect tries to block you re-calling in.

You have to lie and say "no" to everything to get through to an actual person.

And this is where the fun really starts; I speak to someone at Yodel. They have no record of the parcel. It eventually turns out this is because they've mixed up the Sender and Receiver identities. They explain it'll automatically come the next day anyway, so not to worry.

No bells ring, card through the door.

I do the Lying Dance, say no to everything again, and call back up again. Same song and dance on the phone again.

Third day, no bells, card through the door and this time the card says I've failed my "3 tries" and it's being automatically returned to the sender. I ring up furious and explain I've been here every time and not once heard the bell. They tell me I need to get permission from Virgin Media themselves to resend it. I spend a while calling them to find the right support who can do this, and have to call Yodel again and pass on details the tech support there now don't understand. I ask that the driver be reprimanded. They arrange for an "Emergency Delivery".

This time I get a different coloured card through the door, no bells though...

When I call up yet again, within 5 minutes of spotting the card is on the doormat, I'm told the driver claims he has been ringing but refuses to try again. I ask if they I can try and make the 3 hour bus journey to manually pick it up, and they say it's already marked for return to the sender.

In the end, I call Virgin up again, and they send an actual Engineer around to manually deliver it, and we have a lovely chat about gaming and how shit Yodel is as he plugs it in.

In the meantime, I go and manually check the wiring on all the bells in the flat. 2 have been broken (I suspect the disturbed guy in the flat above) but the main 2 still work. But as I can't prove he didn't ring every single bell I call up one final time and just say there may be extenuating circumstances, but I'm still pissed they made so little effort.

But just now I get my phone bill; it turns out that Yodel's helpline is a "service" number which charges premium rates and they've cost me £15 in call charges

So seriously, fuck Yodel. Don't send your parcels with them if you have any say in the matter!