This is illegal. Signatures are legally protected in the UK (and elsewhere I’m sure) and forging a signature is a crime. I got like 3 Hello Fresh deliveries in a row when I complained of their repeated forgeries before I cancelled.
Did the driver try to make the signature look like your name?
And did the company accuse you of signing it?
Not trying to defend them mind. I just feel like their legal departments have thought of this
I don't know if it needs to state the name next to it, that's a good question, and may also depend on jurisdiction, but I would suggest that if a delivery signature was just writing a name then it wouldn't carry the necessary weight for proving receipt.
Though at the more scrupulous companies they take photos slightly more seriously. Just slightly
Them not taking the photo taking seriously works in your favour.
I think this compounds the issue: if people are committing fraud/lying (taking a picture of a random house as proof of 'sorry you were not in' or forging signatures themselves) because their slots are too full to deliver all packages they're supposed to then whomever is working in logistics won't see it. They will think all packages were at least attempted within that slot and as such not too onerous.
But it's not that anyone will take action. This is exactly the expected outcome: Pay less for courier wages in USA/Europe, and keep the much cheaper (and probably outsourced) customer support hotline busy.
On the contrary, it would be more likely to take action if the complaints are not high enough. This means that they could squeeze the schedule of their couriers a bit more.
Hereabouts, Apple uses UPS for deliveries.
They always require signature, and disallow “pre-signature.” I get a $30 cable; signature required. I get a $50 iPhone case; signature required. I get a $120 peripheral; signature required.
They left the $2,600 computer sitting on the doorstep (no signature required). Luckily, my daughter was paying attention, and immediately grabbed it, but we have had a problem, hereabouts, with highly aggressive porch pirates, that will actually go right into the house, to grab new deliveries.
I was pretty gobsmacked.
I did feel bad though for the people doing the deliveries, independent of what company they worked for. You can tell it's an awful job and they're working their butts off, sometimes delivering a package way after hours, like say after 9pm or so. I'm afraid it's like that pretty much in any country, though.
At my partner’s place, the delivery people are excellent, and we never miss a parcel. She has an elevator, in a different part of town, and there’s no Hinterhof. It’s very hit or miss.
The country went a bit delivery crazy after COVID, so the competition is healthy.
They have their MyChoice service which you have to sign up for and wait for a confirmation that is sent to you by mail which might take several days. However even if you take these steps it turns out that they will only match your parcels if the sender uses exactly the same address as the one you provided them. One character off and you lose any ability to set how your parcel should be delivered.
Any other delivery service does that easily, without postal confirmation for a specific parcel or any upcoming shipments.
Since I'm at the office during the day I had situations were I simply couldn't receive a UPS parcel for several days because their MyChoice service is useless once the address matching fails.
At least they tell you the day, not like in Germany. Gets put on the post today, then usually it either gets sorted overnight and delivered the next day, or there's another working day in between. The tracker used to say which it's gonna be after that overnight sorting (so if you check at 2am), but in the last year or so they've switched to telling you it's e.g. after the weekend some day and then surprise show up on Friday for example when you hadn't planned for anyone to be home, wasting the deliverer's time if you didn't decide to work from home that day spontaneously
Kinda wondered why my package showed up as "delivered" and it was signed by definitely NOT me.
That was a fun thing to unravel.