TWO neighbouring rural villages Whitchurch and Symonds Yat are getting fed up with the service provided by a courier company that the residents have set up a WhatsApp group to locate mis-delivered parcels.

Symonds Yat resident Dimple Neal said that looking for parcels delivered by DPD became a game of guess the doorstep as to where their parcels had ended up.

The original complainant, who lives in Symonds Yat said back in November: “DPD have become an almost daily occurrence of frustration, irritation and annoyance.

“They appear to have a couple of utterly incompetent drivers that take it upon themselves to reschedule deliveries that the customer has waited in for, some of which are food parcels for that evening!

“I have now been waiting almost three weeks for a mechanical part for a vehicle that the driver has repeatedly failed to deliver.”

Another resident said recently: “We live on Sandyway lane in Whitchurch and we get oil deliveries, have had mobile skip lorries, supermarket deliveries and have no issues on the whole with deliveries from a variety of parcel companies including Amazon, Royal Mail, Parcelforce, Evri and Yodel.

“We do however wait with trepidation the minute we see an email saying that "our parcel will be delivered today" from DPD.

“Anything that comes via DPD is very hit or miss and more often than not either goes back to the depot or ends up at a random neighbour.”

Another resident said this week: “Two weeks ago, I was awaiting for packages that both happened to be coming from DPD. I was in all day but to be sure - I checked that the instructions were clear on where to leave the parcel if I wasn't in and confirmed the most appropriate neighbour to leave them with if that failed too.

“When the delivery time eventually did arrive, I got a notification that the packages had been delivered successfully to my address - they hadn't... nor had t been left anywhere near my front door or driveway... nor the previous preferred neighbour address... nor the updated preferred neighbour address.”

Another Whitchurch resident said: “I had to walk up and down the road as there seemed to be a ‘pin’ dropped on the tracking information on where they were scanned for delivery.

“It turned out to be about five houses away and I only found it by using a bit of detective work and an assumption on where they were most likely to chuck the parcel out based on ease.”

A spokesperson for DPD said: “We are investigating these issues and apologise for the inconvenience caused by parcels being delayed.

“We are aware of accessibility issues on one driver’s route which we know have caused problems as certain roads aren’t suitable for our standard long wheel-based vehicles.

“As a result, we are looking at different ways of fulfilling these deliveries and returning the service to a level that both we and our customers expect, as soon as possible.”