I recently tried to find out where to buy a new mattress online. Usually I get them IKEA and that's fine, but their shipping is so expensive, it's generally only worth it if you boy a whole lot of large items at once.

I talked to the customer repo of another shop to inquire what vendor they used for shipping and what would happen if I wasn't home - and they told me they used DPD.

Turns out that DPD's "we missed you" service is "you have to go to our distribution center to pick up your package". As mentioned above, that would have been a 1h15min train journey (one-way) with multiple changes. Carrying a mattress.

I sincerely hope the customer rep actually understood why I told them that this was an immediate non-starter for me. Especially since I regularly missed packages because the mail carrier simply didn't attempt delivery at all.

That's the part that really surprises me. In my experience picking up missed packages from the post office, they're completely empty 90% of the day, but after work, the line is out to the street!

And given that my transaction (present a pick-up slip - wait for employee to find package in the back - sign for package) is mostly trivial, I personally also find it a right waste of time for the postal employee.