I’ve received a few parcels recently where I’ve been asked to sign a touchscreen device as proof of delivery rather than a piece of paper. Not one of these time has the squiggle on the screen looked anything like my signature. This isn’t because it’s hard to sign the screen, it’s just the sensor doesn’t correctly sense where it’s being pressed.

As an example, here is the signature reported as my proof of delivery from Parcelforce this morning:

This is one of the better ones I’ve seen recently, but it barely resembles my real signature (I won’t post it here in case some clever identity thiefs try and use it).

The proof of delivery on their site also states it was signied by “R FARRAR”, despite the parcel being addressed (correctly) to me, and me spelling my surname to the driver. Again, this is one or the better interpretations, having had “FARA” in the past!

Why do they even bother using these touchscreens since they clearly don’t work? When they were testing the system did they say “well, it doesn’t work, but we’ll use it anyway”!? It would be very easy for me to claim this delivery never arrived!