ON a recent morning, Chen waited outside a delivery storage station in Shanghai at 8:50am amid the heat, with around 10 others queuing up behind the 72-year-old man. The notice on the door reads: Business hours — 9am to 9pm.

The tiny station still wasn’t open by 9:15am. The line became longer though some had run out of patience and left.

“Is it now a norm that parcels are not delivered to your door?” Chen asked. “Why do I need delivery then?”

Shanghai Daily raised his question to three courier companies via their customer hotlines.

The answers were similar. Their customer service departments said parcels were supposed to be delivered to the door but suggested customers write “deliver to my door” in brackets beside your address, due to the increased number of parcels and lack of deliverymen.

The issue of “last-mile delivery” isn’t new in China, the world’s largest e-commerce market.

The State Post Bureau said in a report released in May that 108.3 billion parcels were delivered in China last year — up by nearly 30 percent from the previous year — meaning nearly 300 million parcels were handled in the country every day.

This also accounted for more than half of the global volume.

On the other hand, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security released a report of the 100 jobs facing the worst shortage of labor in the first quarter of this year, and courier ranked No. 7.

Smart locker service such as SF Express’s Hive Box and Alibaba’s Cainiao storage station was created partially to solve such problems, but new issues have arisen instead.

In 2020, Hive Box, China’s largest smart locker company, was boycotted by consumers after it ended the free service that propelled the firm to popularity.

Many consumers also complained about putting their parcels into lockers without consent, instead of delivering them to the door.

At the time, the Shanghai Consumer Council surveyed nearly 40,000 consumers. More than 40 percent said they never received a call or message asking for consent. More than half said couriers had ignored their request for delivering parcels to the door.

The consumer council said in a statement: “Delivery companies are obliged to inform and get permission from customers before using a smart locker service.” Hive Box ended up reducing its charges and revising its system to help couriers get consent from customers.

Now the issue sees renewed complaints. With increased types of storage service, many consumers find it difficult to receive their parcels at home. Moreover, many don’t even get a message to go to pick-up stations while their parcels have been marked as “received” by couriers.

Hashtag “why has it become an unwritten rule for couriers not to deliver to the door” recently trended on Twitter-like Weibo. One tweet by the account of CCTV.com alone, the website of China Central Television, received more than 20,000 likes.

In Shanghai, it’s more complicated. Residents find their door-to-door delivery service to be among the last to return to normal as the city has gradually reopened everything from restaurants to theaters since last month. Some neighborhoods simply don’t allowed packages to be delivered inside.

But even for those that do, many couriers just don’t do so.

“Most courier companies don’t really enforce the policy to deliver to the door, especially now you have so many packages and so few deliverymen. They know we make so little money that it is ridiculous to be too demanding,” a deliveryman surnamed Zhou told Shanghai Daily.

“It’s troublesome to follow the updates of which neighborhoods are open for couriers. And simple as this, I make 30 to 40 percent more by delivering to a station.”

Zhou is an outsourced deliveryman for five courier companies in his area, a common practice in the industry except for a few premium services that have designated deliverymen.

Zhou has no base salary, meaning he had no income for a few weeks during the city’s lockdown.

In June, he made about 8,000 yuan (US$1,200), despite fines over consumer complaints. He wouldn’t be fined for not delivering to the doorstep — it was only required of him to re-deliver to the door.

By Zhou’s own calculation, he would make only a little more than 5,000 yuan if he stuck to the rule and delivered every package to the door.

Cindy Wang, an office admin in her late 20s, said: “I appreciate their hard work, and deliverymen helped so much during the lockdown. But I just simply can’t get my parcels at all! I have to take 90 minutes to go to work and another 90 minutes back every day. They are only open 9am to 9pm, completely coinciding with the time I’m away from home.”

The owner of the pick-up station where Chen tried to get his parcel said: “I understand the anxiety of the customers, but what can we do? We used to have 400 to 500 packages every day. Now it is 2,000. And there are just two of us. We are open 9am to 9pm, but we actually work until midnight to sort the parcels and everything.”

Like Zhou, his station isn’t designated for one company. It is a pick-up station or “delivery supermarket” for three different companies, including Cainiao.

This could be confusing for consumers, whose messages notifying them to pick up their parcels don’t necessarily give an exact address, but the station name instead.

Wang wasn’t even notified of her parcels for many times, and had a few packages lost because she didn’t realize they had arrived until weeks later.

“I couldn’t even return the products or get a refund from buyers or courier companies because the parcels had been registered as ‘received’ by couriers,” she complained.

“If the companies don’t have enough people, they should hire more. It’s just ridiculous that we the customers bear the consequences. Aren’t they required to deliver to the door? Is there any law or something?”

There is.

Both delivery industry regulations and postal law make it clear that parcels must be delivered according to the name and address written. They also require couriers to get consent from consumers when using lockers or pick-up stations.

In January, a revision of the industry regulation sought public opinions.

The revised draft is more detailed in such issues, stating that couriers must not mark parcels as “received” or store parcels in lockers or pick-up stations without customers’ consent.

The draft also says companies will be fined and warned by the relevant authorities if they violate such clauses.