The third lot of cheese arrived from the Comté people at reference 1 yesterday, that is to say Thursday, around noon, having been ordered during the previous weekend, perhaps Sunday. People last noticed a about a month ago at reference 2.
Inspection of the tracking data suggested that the carrier had picked it up from the cheese people on Monday afternoon. Which was fair enough. But then three nights and more than two full days in transit, despite the same day service advertised.
The problem seemed to be with the address, which started off complete, and was complete on the invoice, but which ended up on the outside of the parcel with a line missing, the line which said whether the parcel was going to Tooting or Streatham, quite a useful bit of information if you are a busy delivery driver, from Hermes of reference 3 in this case, not wanting to take time out to get your telephone to check the postcode. Perhaps the programmer who had moved the address from the arrangement (format in IT speak) used by cheese computer to that needed by the parcel computer had been a bit careless - with addresses being complicated enough bits of text for a little carelessness to go a long way.
The packaging was substantial, but rather too large for the piece of cheese involved. Nothing like as fit for purpose as the comprehensive packaging deployed by the people at Neal's Yard Dairy, more or less up the same road. Certainly not fit for a journey of this length, as the package arrived slightly smelly. And the cheese inside was rather more smelly, sweaty and altogether rather unattractive.
But I put it in the fridge, hoping that it would settle down after a bit. By 1800, not too bad, although not up to its usual standard. Removed the soiled, silver foil like wrapping, visible in the middle of the snap above, and rewrapped the cheese in clean greaseproof paper. I dare say all will be well today.
To be fair to them, they did respond quite quickly to the message I left on their web site and there was talk of problems with carriers. The young man I spoke to thought that being a hard cheese, the Comté would be OK again after a few hours in the fridge, which seems likely to be the case. After all, the stuff does come from a place which is probably hot in the summer - hotter than here - and this can't be the first bit which got a bit sweaty.
I dare say I shall use them again. But maybe in personnel department parlance, they are on their second verbal warning. HR speak for the benefit of younger readers.
PS: as it turned out, this cheese turned up after the cheese from Neal's that it was supposed to be covering for.
Reference 1: http://www.thefrenchcomte.co.uk/.
Reference 3: https://new.myhermes.co.uk/index.html?redirect.
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