With many great ideas, the devil is the the detail and that devil has an uncomfortable knack of only getting worse once the cracks appear.

Online shopping seemed such a good idea. Surely it can only benefit us all?

Reduced vehicle emissions as the number of journeys taken by an item decreases. Reduction of expensive rental costs for retailers. Swift and pain-free ordering. Well that seemed like the plan anyway, until delivery drivers set impossible targets and paid poor hourly rates started to find ways to keep their job while not fully doing it.

The majority of the time the major online companies do well; their 24 hour promise is adhered to and it is a service my parents’ generation would marvel at. Like many things it’s great when it works. However… when is doesn’t work it is like the girl with the curl right in the middle of her forehead.

We bought an item unavailable in the UK from America via eBay. The international delivery company claimed to have delivered it when they hadn’t and without my dogged persistence in pursuing its journey via half a dozen different ‘logistics’ companies, I would never have discovered it had been damaged two weeks previously and was awaiting ‘return to sender’ at Heathrow.

A month later we have still received no admission, explanation or apology from eBay, let alone a refund.

We then discovered via Amazon that the item was available in Italy. Three times now we were ‘out’ when they ‘tried’ to deliver.

Again I tilted at windmills, like Don Quixote, by attempting to talk to someone about it. They don’t make it easy. Eventually a letter to the chief executive of the company – one of the biggest – found that the driver was in fact nowhere near my house when he discovered we were out – or, as he claimed, ‘the premises were closed.’

An ‘executive desk advisor’ is now on my case and even she was unable to ensure the latest delivery attempt made it to Baker Towers. This item was only available overseas – but it’s getting to a point that I would have spent less time on it if I had flown out to buy it from the supplier.

The fourth attempt is planned as I write this. So it may be that retail shopping will get a new lease of life, if delivery drivers are tempted to dissemble in order to make a living.