OT/PSA - DHL Express : Incompetence Personified

[Gsinill]

As we "speak", my wife is on the phone with Amazon customer service regarding an order from a 3rd party that was shipped from China.
Arrived in Chicago, was then forwarded by USPS to Dallas and now says delivered at destination (some town in TX).

Me thinks there is some major system issue going on at USPS right now.

[eBAUMANN]

Originally Posted by yngpunk

Good point. Try putting your DHL tracking # into the USPS tracking system and see what it returns.

It returned nothing.
This is a DHL issue.

I have had nothing but success with USPS the past few months (150+ packages). FWIW.

[windsurfer]

I had a recent USPS 1 day priority package travel to fl,then la, back to fl, and back to la before being routed correctly. This was a shipment from Kansas to Santa Barbara and ended up taking 14 days.

[thirdgenbird]

USPS is getting worse. I have multiple packages inbound and outbound that are getting scanned in and out of the same facility two to four times over the same number of days and not moving. All of them now say they are delayed and will arrive late.

Meanwhile, my package that has been in Illinois (I am in Iowa) for over a month says nothing about delays.

Neither DHL package has seen an update since Saturday but one is still scheduled for today.

[benb]

I just had something similar happen.

Ordered a DJI drone battery as a father's day gift for my dad through a 3rd party seller on Amazon.

My address is in MA.

USPS delivered it to somewhere in Virginia and it got marked delivered. Amazon marked the order complete and sees no issue even though the order said it should go to MA and there are no VA addresses in my address book and I've never sent anything to VA.

Thank goodness the seller was cool and refunded me the money, along with a groan that I was not the only customer this happened to.

[thirdgenbird]

I just talked to one of my employees who had to buy a valuable computer part 3 times because the first two were lost by USPS.

[eBAUMANN]

UPDATE! - So it turns out a long-lost delivery preference that was setup last year when I was traveling (the last time I bought a lens off ebay from Japan)...I was shipping things to General Delivery (post offices, for pickup) -- I didnt realize that it would be shipped via DHL and was therefore ineligible for delivery/pickup at a USPS location. So I guess I changed my "DHL On Demand" delivery preference to hold for pickup, which defaulted to their West Philadelphia facility (the PO I was trying to ship it to was in Wilmington, DE).

It was, ultimately, my fault that it was being shipped for pickup at a facility in Philadelphia.

That said - I still dont understand why this couldnt have been corrected in the call I placed to CS before the box even left Japan...and then in the 2 subsequent calls I placed when the box was still here in Tucson. Especially considering this was the 2nd DHL delivery that made it to Tucson with that delivery preference active on my account.

It was only today, on my 5th call to CS that this possibility (that I had a pickup preference selected on an account I didnt even remember I had) was suggested to me by the CS rep, who I will say was LEAPS AND BOUNDS more helpful and competent than the other 3 I spoke with.

So, hopefully, it will finally make its way to me tomorrow or wednesday, saga complete...maybe.


-----

Sidenote - anyone else feel like "delivery insurance" is a total scam? That the customer should have to pay more in case the carrier does a sh*t job?

"Gee that sure is a nice looking box ya got there, would be a SHAME if something were to happen to it...would you like to buy some insurance?"

[thirdgenbird]

“Delayed” USPS package arrived on time

USPS package without status ticked another day on its second month in Illinois.

First DHL package arrived on time with no issue. Left Canada Friday and showed up in Iowa on Monday.

DHL package #2 still only shows info using DHL.de. No info if I use DHL.com.

[tomato coupe]

Originally Posted by eBAUMANN

It was, ultimately, my fault that it was being shipped for pickup at a facility in Philadelphia.


Sidenote - anyone else feel like "delivery insurance" is a total scam? That the customer should have to pay more in case the carrier does a sh*t job?

You seem determined to find fault with DHL.

[eBAUMANN]

Originally Posted by tomato coupe

You seem determined to find fault with DHL.

Id say there is fault on both sides if it takes 4 different CS reps to figure out why a package is going where its going and why they ignored the on-phone delivery requests of the recipient of 3 separate occasions.

Again, I had another package delivered here with the same preferences in place after only ONE phone call to CS to request delivery.
Nobody ever told me I had delivery preferences on file for an address in DELAWARE from last year.
I dunno about you but in my opinion, it is the job of the CS rep to know MORE than the customer about the company they work for.
I am not the first person this has happened to, I wont be the last, and if it happened again I would know the likely causes of the error...and so should they.

[Blown Reek]

I just got my tubulars from PBK delivered by DHL this evening. Five days from the UK to my front door, zero issues.

[eBAUMANN]

Originally Posted by Blown Reek

I just got my tubulars from PBK delivered by DHL this evening. Five days from the UK to my front door, zero issues.

All carriers make mistakes.
No carriers failures outweigh their successes.
For every horror story each of us might share, the success stories will outnumber it 100:1.

My point here was only ever to illustrate how fruitless my week and a half long interaction with DHL customer service has been.

The true test of any company, any customer service team, is how they handle those rare times when things go WRONG.

Just my opinion, this entire thread, a micro-rant...

Ill wrap it up here, as I feel like a jackass to be complaining about any of this considering what is happening in the country at the moment.

[Louis]

My most recent experience with a variety of items I've received and sent is that simple shipping is working semi-OK, and although they may be delayed a bit, usually work out. However, anything that's the least bit complicated runs of risk of turning into a huge mess, with multiple-week delays, 40+minutes on hold for phone and/or online-chats (e.g.: "You are Number 99+ in line for this chat, please hold, we will be with you soon...") and lots of confusion despite attempts to explain the situation via e-mail.

Bottom line: Do your utmost to keep things as simple as possible in terms of the type of item to be shipped (e.g. things that could be misinterpreted as being dangerous or flammable, even though they are not) or the delivery instructions or location. Right now the system does not have any slack whatsoever, so resolving the least little problem turns into a massive issue.

[thwart]

My data point... DHL delivered a package from England 2 houses away. This occurred about two wks ago... thankfully my neighbor kindly brought the (damaged) box over that day. The address on the box was correct.

I cannot recall a similar problem with FedEx, UPS or the USPS. Guess I've been lucky.

On the positive side, it only took 5 days from order to delivery.

Second positive... in spite of the significantly damaged box, nothing inside fell out. Surprisingly.

[herb5998]

I've had two DHL shipped orders (both from Europe) in the past month, both were very fast, and tracking was correct on both from start to finish.