The DHL Germany December Disaster 2010

[sixty]

I just figured I'd publish my little rant "diary" here, for no apparent reason.

Anyway, here is a recap of what happened:

Starting in November 2010, DHL Germany started to suffer very hard under the Christmas business. Now the following things happened in my zip code area:

October 2010: I order and pay a copy of WhiteRice's double shot replacement keys

late November 2010: The keycaps from WhiteRice are shipped, I order tons of more stuff from eBay and other sources

End of November 2010: I notice that I still have not received my eBay goods.

1st~4th December: Pretty much everyone and their mother in Europe is receiving their keys from WhiteRice, nothing here still. Hmm.. my eBay stuff is still missing too. There seems to be no mail delivery going on in my street. Neighbors confirm the situation.

7~9 December: Still nothing, by now I am missing a total of 13 parcels, national and international. The earliest of them dating back to 22nd November. The online tracking for all of them shows them "preparing shipment in the office of exchange". It is getting worse. Now also parcels that I have sent seem to be missing. Getting the first reports from MrInterface and Webwit that their parcels have not arrived yet.

10 December: The mail came!!!..... but it did not bring any parcels. I talk to the mailman and he says he has been on holiday for a week and that three(!!) other delivery guys all got ill and that there is literally no one to deliver mail. He was forced out of holiday to deliver letter mail. He reports of 600 parcels piling up. He says in the next two days two guys will deliver all missing parcels for this zip code with two special trucks until 10 PM.

12 December: Where are those two guys on their trucks? Nothing here still. We are at a total of 18 incoming missing parcels, 9 of them with online tracking, all stuck at the same location. 4 outgoing parcels missing. I call DHL and they say THEY HAVE NOT A CLUE WHERE THE PARCELS ARE. The promised "extra delivery" team? They have never heard of such a thing and have no information about it. They suggest to call the "Deutsche Post", which handles DHL parcels in my ZIP code. I call the "Deutsche Post", they tell me to call DHL. Lol. Yeah fuck you guys. I call the newspaper instead.

14 December: Newspaper prints an article after I have called them to report this mess. The article confirms the terrible situation and confirms that parcels are missing for nearly three weeks now. They have a statement from a DHL guy in there, confirming the extra trucks and pointing out that they will even deliver on sundays now.

17 December: Nothing. I have given up hope by now and stopped counting missing parcels.

21 December: A truck from another courier service arrives at like 10 pm. Asks if I can help to carry stuff, claiming to have nearly 20 parcels loaded up for me. It seems DHL had to hire other courier services to outsource this mess. After about an hour later I have indeed received most of my missing parcels. But uh oh! All international ones are still missing.

25 December: I receive the last bunch of 4 missing parcels, which had been shipped to my work address instead of my home address. International parcels are still all missing. No sign of the international ones. People I have sent stuff to, also report that shipments are still missing. One of the missing items is a Realforce 87UB I sold on geekhack. Tracking is just idle.

>> Fast Forward about a month
15 January 2011:The realforce I had shipped on December 22 with 7 day shipping, finally actually arrives in the US. I don't know who is to blame for this.. USPS or DHL? My guess is on DHL. Others still report that no parcels from me have arrived. I am still missing all of the international parcels, including the WhiteRice keys I ordered back then in October...

26 January 2011:WhiteRice sends me a PM on geekhack and reports that the parcel has returned to him! The DHL stickers on it claim that I have died or moved. Cool, didn't know. The box had already passed customs and everything.

Now: Still missing all international parcels that I ordered in that time. The keys from WhiteRice have been returned to him, a keyboard from France is entirely missing and the tracking for it has expired. Neither DHL nor French Post claim to know where it is. Keycaps from Korea are still missing. A keyboard from Portugal is still missing. Tracking for all is stuck at 15th December.

Outgoing: Missing: 1x parcel to webwit, 1x parcel to MrInterface, 2x parcel to Korea, one of them including over 20 keyboards.

To be continued. I have lost all faith in DHL and try to use FedEx when possible nowadays.

[itlnstln]

That sucks, bro. I'm surprised that they could even get away with that. Do they have some kind of monopoly in Germany?

That reminds me, I wonder if webwit ever got the Northgate Evolution I sent him. Not DHL (that I know of) but still.

[Minskleip]

Man that's messed up! I thought DHL was supposed to be good! I also lose packages from time to time, but they are mostely stolen I think. People here even impersonate the receiver when the delivery guy is at the gate..

[instantkamera]

man, I thought I hated UPS and Canada Post (Purolator are my guys!), but that shit is just WACK. Sorry to hear about the trouble.

Yeah fuck you guys. I call the newspaper instead.

Tight. Quote of the year so far.

[sixty]

That sucks, bro. I'm surprised that they could even get away with that. Do they have some kind of monopoly in Germany?

That reminds me, I wonder if webwit ever got the Northgate Evolution I sent him. Not DHL (that I know of) but still.

Kinda yeah. Normally I never had any problem with DHL and usually had stuff here within a day or two, even from other places in Europe. I guess this just was too much for them. It seems to be getting better again now, but this was still a very bitter pill to just swallow it and forget about it.

[instantkamera]

Don't forget about it, keep bitching. You have evidence that they lied by returning that package, I would use it.

Im a fucking ball-buster for shipping man. In fact, I ordered a lens just YESTERDAY. It wasn't supposed to be here till Wednesday, but I check the tracking this morning early and it's "out for delivery". Sweet.

Next thing I know:

Code: Select all

07:35		Item out for delivery		
07:35		Attempted delivery. Notice card left indicating where item can be picked up.

So they basically just said "fuck it" and dropped my package off at the post office, instead of my house, where I PAID for it to be delivered to. Needless to say, I yelled at them. If it happens again, I will flip.
Same thing happened with UPS (anything that brown must be shit), and I bitched so much that they drove back out to my house to deliver it personally at 8pm.

[keyboardlover]

You seems to get angry a lot. Ever thought of taking an anger management class?

[webwit]

That sucks, bro. I'm surprised that they could even get away with that. Do they have some kind of monopoly in Germany?

That reminds me, I wonder if webwit ever got the Northgate Evolution I sent him. Not DHL (that I know of) but still.

No I got another one from Bob.



















I did however call and ask what happened to boxes with missing labels etc. Apparently the contents are either destroyed or auctioned. Never found out where that auctioning would take place, but maybe it's different for DHL Germany.

[webwit]

They probably broke some mail laws, and those tend to be tough. There's a difference between losing one or two packages in the process, and losing a whole bunch because your system is lame and fails.

[sixty]

Don't forget about it, keep bitching. You have evidence that they lied by returning that package, I would use it.

Im a fucking ball-buster for shipping man. In fact, I ordered a lens just YESTERDAY. It wasn't supposed to be here till Wednesday, but I check the tracking this morning early and it's "out for delivery". Sweet.

Next thing I know:

Code: Select all

07:35		Item out for delivery		
07:35		Attempted delivery. Notice card left indicating where item can be picked up.

So they basically just said "fuck it" and dropped my package off at the post office, instead of my house, where I PAID for it to be delivered to. Needless to say, I yelled at them. If it happens again, I will flip.
Same thing happened with UPS (anything that brown must be shit), and I bitched so much that they drove back out to my house to deliver it personally at 8pm.

Had similar things happen in the past. When I received a sample from Japan, Fedex also claimed that they were here and unable to deliver. Since I had the item shipped to work, someone would have been there to take it, without a doubt. So I informed the sender of the item, saying that I was there the entire day, waiting for the parcel. He informed Fedex. Fedex reported back saying that the driver apparently tried to call the house to inform us about a small delay because of the weather. When no one picked up the phone, he assumed that no one is there anyway and just did not bother to deliver it at all.

In the end the item got here a day later with a personal apology for trouble and lies and we had the full shipping costs refunded. While the situation (or maybe just the driver?) as is is fucking lame too, I think the way they dealt with it is great. I like FedEx.

[ynih]

Not to spam, as I read your entire post, but I like FedEx too. Their facility, at least in the United States, are always so much better looking than UPS or USPS.

[nanu]

Great story. Here, I usually witness good service from any courier. I have used DHL like once ever so I have no opinion. I like FedEx and UPS about the same because they consistently deliver in the morning and evenings, respectively. So I try to roughly schedule my deliveries.

Nothing in comparison to this failure, but I recently had an order get split between FedEx and UPS for three day deliveries, and the seller somehow managed to give them both an incorrect delivery address (I used Paypal). FedEx delayed one day for their redelivery; UPS did the same. However, by the usual expected delivery time, I checked tracking again and was not surprised to see "Emergency conditions beyond UPS' control". I guess the UPS man was just exhausted by Friday evening so the second redelivery attempt jumped to Monday.

The FedEx package was correctly labeled. The UPS package was relabeled. I peeled away to reveal the the original label's delivery address and the street number was way off. Hard to say it was a finger transposition error while inputting it.

[sixty]

However, by the usual expected delivery time, I checked tracking again and was not surprised to see "Emergency conditions beyond UPS' control".

Sometime in like 2002 or 2003 I was waiting for a UPS delivery. The tracking showed the same situation. Next day I read in the newspapers that a delivery truck had driven down a bridge and burned out. For most of the time the "beyond control" seems to be used as the general excuse for anything, but for once it was right here.

Don't even remember what was lost, think it was a time when I would still order DVD movies, so probably that.

[7bit]

This is a really sad story!

Personnally, I had never lost a package, except for once which got fully refunded by amazon.co.uk.

I would recommend to ask your neighbors if they are still missing packages too and join forces to get a compensation from DHL or Deutsche Post.

[webwit]

I only lost two, one USPS, one DHL, but had numerous occasions of damage. Model Ms for instance, hate travel, that case doesn't like being dropped. Damage sucks, because it's never insured, despite what they tell you and despite your insurance. If you read the fine print of USPS for example, they define "damage" as "completely destroyed". And second hand items? Forget it anyway. Also their lengthy process is designed to make you give up, and bonuses of employees based on that. The ebay dealers do much better. rarekeyboards on ebay for example fully reimbursed me once without me asking for anything. Rating is everything for these guys. Asia, however, forget it.

[7bit]

I only lost two, one USPS, one DHL, but had numerous occasions of damage. Model Ms for instance, hate travel, that case doesn't like being dropped. Damage sucks, because it's never insured, despite what they tell you and despite your insurance. If you read the fine print of USPS for example, they define "damage" as "completely destroyed". And second hand items? Forget it anyway. Also their lengthy process is designed to make you give up, and bonuses of employees based on that. The ebay dealers do much better. rarekeyboards on ebay for example fully reimbursed me once without me asking for anything. Rating is everything for these guys. Asia, however, forget it.

Yes, I had also pakcages where the seller did not pack well even though I told to do so. But losing all packages within a specifc period of time is really exceptional. I bet they just reduced the number of stuff to deliver by just sending them back to where they came from. Hopy sixty is lucky and the stuff suddenly reappears (even if years later) and gets finally delivered:-)

[bugfix]

In the year 2525, if sixty is still alive...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mx-2uEUBhiA

[7bit]

In the year 2525, if sixty is still alive...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mx-2uEUBhiA

;-)
I bet archaeologists will find all his packages where the old customs building was, which had been demolished in 2525.

[sixty]

Speaking of DHL, sent this out today. So painful. So painful.



My trading habits are going to drive me bankrupt one of these days. Its so unfair too.. when over there they pay like $35 to send it with EMS and its here within 2 days, while I pay $75+ and it takes up to two weeks, or optionally never arrives.

[keyboardlover]

I'm definitely glad that you relayed this info to the community. I will never use DHL to order something from overseas. EMS definitely seems like a better choice.

[sixty]

Actually DHL is very decent in foreign countries, how ironic. I once ordered something with DHL Express, which I assume is not part of the "normal" DHL. It arrived within 19 hours from Hong Kong. The truck that delivered it was a special one that looked different from the usual DHL ones.

I dunno. Maybe its the same as with UPS. Everyone seems to hate UPS in the states, yet they are one of the best couriers here (even though very expensive).

Who knows!

[keyboardlover]

My only complaint with UPS is their pricing is not competitive. Haven't had any delivery issues with them though..

[Minskleip]

In Ireland, DPD is really shit. They can't deliver and they can't write notes properly. I've used them once, and I walked (eventually took a cab) to their depot to get my stuff. My housemate got 1 to 2 weeks delivery for a 2 day service.

[sixty]

DPD is shit here too

[HaaTa]

UPS leaves things right in front of your door for anyone to steal...at least in Canada.

[webwit]

TNT to Korea in 6 to 7 days.. not bad. Only thing is they stopped doing air mail to the US since a month ago because of new anti-terrorism regulations or so they claim. It's probably temporary until they conform to new standards or something. So a package to the US is already taking over three weeks and is probably somewhere on a boat. Also they increased prices considerably this year, and introduced a 0-2kg flat rate, so small items are very expensive to ship now.

[nanu]

UPS leaves things right in front of your door for anyone to steal...at least in Canada.

Also standard fare in the US. I can't remember the last time I've been asked to sign for a package from Brown.

[instantkamera]

UPS leaves things right in front of your door for anyone to steal...at least in Canada.

I KNOW, right?

http://twitter.com/#!/instantkamera/sta ... 8772727809

[sixty]

TNT to Korea in 6 to 7 days.. not bad

http://www.otd.kr/bbs/board.php?bo_tabl ... r_id=52460

Related I guess

[webwit]

He doesn't dare to open it further. Nib fetish