Moment DPD driver HURLS chronically unwell boy’s £100 Christmas current throughout entrance backyard when nobody answered
This is the moment a delivery driver hurls a chronically ill boy’s Christmas present across a family’s front garden after they failed to answer the door in time.
The DPD employee spent just 15 seconds outside the home of Nick and Vicky Hood – where the courier rang their doorbell twice and hammered on the door repeatedly.
Despite only being at the door for mere seconds, the delivery driver threw the box – containing a £100 model plane for chronically ill Ronnie, 11, across the lawn.
The delivery driver had disappeared by the time one of the couple’s daughters got downstairs.
An email later said the item, which was their son’s Christmas gift, had been left at a house 100 yards away, even though neighbours either side of their house were in.
Mr Hood, 58, who runs a same-day courier firm himself, called A12 Logistics, said: ‘It was pretty galling for me, seeing that.
‘If one of my men had done that it would have been on-the-spot they would have gone.
Ronnie Hood, 11, who has a chronic medical contidion, had his £100 Christmas gift thrown by a DPD delivery driver
The DPD driver rang the doorbell twice and repeatedly hammered the door in the span of 15-seconds
‘I’ve absolutely no idea why it happened. It’s not like the doorbell was hidden. It makes zero sense, even if you’re having a bad day. He didn’t even give us a chance to get downstairs.’
Mrs Hood, 53, added: ‘I was in shock when I saw the parcel thrown across the lawn but also upset in case Ronnie’s present had broken.
‘I know delivery drivers are very busy at this time of year, as we own a courier company, but that is no excuse to treat people’s items with such disrespect. Thankfully Ronnie’s present was undamaged.’
The video was taken at 8.30pm on December 6, when the delivery driver arrived at the family home in Sudbury, Suffolk, with a die-cast model of a Airbus Beluga, a wide-bodied aircraft used to transport aircraft parts and outsized cargoes.
It shows the man, who is wearing a hoodie, checking the screen on his hand-held device before ringing the doorbell twice in quick succession.
He glances around before hammering on the door impatiently, the mutters something under his breath before throwing the parcel out of sight and storming off in the same direction.
Mr Hood, who has four daughters aged between 16 and 23, added: ‘It’s totally self-defeating. Luckily there was nothing wrong with the package, which was well-protected.’
DPD said it was aware of the incident and the driver was ‘no longer delivering’ for the company.
After receiving no answer, he went on to hurl chronically-ill Ronnie Hood’s Christmas gift (Pictured)
The gift was a £100 die-cast model of a Airbus Beluga, a wide-bodied aircraft used to transport aircraft parts and outsized cargoes
‘A depot manager called the customer to apologise,’ a spokesman said.
‘We would like to reassure all customers that this individual’s behaviour does not reflect the fantastic service our team delivers every day.
‘We will always act when standards fall short of what we expect.’
In a league table of courtiers, published by Citizens Advice last year, Amazon and Royal Mail came first equal with 2.75 stars out of five, while DPD was third with an overall rating of 2.25, narrowly ahead of Yodel and Evri.
Earlier this year, DPD apologised after an AI-powered chatbot on its website began swearing at users and producing haikus – a Japanese poem consisting of 17 syllables over three lines – that branded the firm ‘useless’.
The firm blamed an error ‘after a system update’.
