Christmas is a-coming and the delivery men are in overdrive trying to deliver Christmas gifts. Finding our house is challenging enough, but when people do not provide our correct address, we are nigh on impossible to find. Needle and haystack springs to mind.
Our son ordered my Christmas present and told me it was on its way. It’s only a small lightweight parcel yet the delivery charge was almost half the value of the gift. I scratched my head as to why until I tracked the parcel online.
2 stops in the UK
1 in France
2 in Spain
1 in Lisbon
and then onto us.
I am not smiling at its carbon footprint, but I digress.
So what made me smile?
Now given vital details of the address were missing I am going to give the driver 10/10 for initiative!
When addressing packages we always ask people to include our mobile number which on this occasion saved the day. The driver rang us but as we were over 90 miles away at the time trying to convey where we lived in pidgin Portuguese seemed pointless unless he was prepared to drop the package over the gate. (How do you say that in Portuguese?)
We paused for a moment but before we could offer suggestions or arrange an alternative day we heard another voice on the phone asking if we spoke German.
No.
Do you speak English?
Yes.
When we explained to the mystery voice (a man) we were 90 miles away and would not be back until later, he kindly offered to take the parcel and gave us his address. Now we can’t figure out whether the man was a random person the driver stopped on the street or he was making a delivery at the man’s house.
Either way, we were thankful for his kindness and to the driver who went that extra ‘mile’ to deliver my parcel and for thinking outside the box!
I now have my parcel and eagerly await Christmas day.
“The Weekly Smile”, is a shared blogging event over at Trent’s blog. What a great idea!
Piglet in Portugal 
That is definitely something to smile about! And shows a lot of Christmas spirit.
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You may be the person who causes us to replace street addresses with GPS coordinates, and won’t that be fun to put on our mailboxes. . .
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Reblogged this on Spinster's Compass and commented:
Good idea. Cheers.
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Very clever postman and kind neighbour.
”Solte o pacote sobre o portão.” sounds like a bad google translation, the correct phrase to use would be “deixe o pacote atrás do portão”.
I sent a package to my Mom in Lisbon, it left here the 9th of November, arrived in Lisbon on the 22nd Nov, my Mom was notified on the 1st of Dec, and she had to go and get it personally at Customs because they wanted her to pay import duties and gst. I had to write a letter to say it was a gift and that it cost less than it actually cost, or she wouldn’t pay a lot of gst for it! Eventually she collected it yesterday, 6th Dec!!
Considering the exorbitant price of postage here and the actual cost of the gift, it’s not worth sending anyone a gift.
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Ah … if people struggle to find you then you are way off the beaten track: sounds like my kind of address!
Oh, and this …
”Solte o pacote sobre o portão.”
🙂
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We are not so much off the beaten track just on the edge of nowhere. So a needle in the haystack if the house number and area are not supplied.
”Solte o pacote sobre o portão.”
I’ll remember that, thank you!
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Sorry – bet you cannot ‘beat’ this 🙂 ! I live in what was a semi-rural national community of seven well-planned streets – just one problem: from 70 years back, houses were numbered in order of getting built with no street names or anything vaguely logical . . . Oh, there was meant to be an office at the gate to receive mail and parcels . . . new owners, no office, no help and no mobile (cell) reception . . . just, please, don’t ask: at least you can learn more and more Portuguese each day . . . the new owners regard the situation as ‘too difficult’ and I am oft at wits end how to describe where I live in the community in ’25 words or less” . . . 🙂 !
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Sounds like you have a challenge, Eha.AND no mobile. How on earth do you cope?
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As with everything in life: you grin and bear it and work ‘around it’ 🙂 !
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That is such a nice thing to do. 😊 I’m so happy that you got your Christmas gift from your son delivered. Great weekly smile post.
Blessings,
Debbie
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thanks, Debbie. There are some nice people here and a strong sense of community
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I’m so glad. ❤ Blessings!
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Wow, that was one hell of a delivery charge. Did the chocolates have their own seat on the plane? Yes, I forgot to mention in my post we collected the package and I thanked the people for their kindness.
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That is pretty good act of kindness. I have had things delivered “over the pond” and know it can be very expensive! One time I was about to order $20 of Belgium chocolate, but when the delivery cost came to over $150, I decided to skip it… (I hope you ended up getting the package without a problem.)
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