Consumer: DHL Debacle, Next Day Shipping takes Two Weeks
On Friday December 14th my sweetheart ordered me a 19″ Dell monitor to be delivered to me with next day shipping (we figured Monday the 17th or Tuesday the 18th). He worked with my father on setting up a set of days for my father to stay home and wait for the delivery so he could wrap it before I saw it (because obviously it’s going to say DELL on the box).
When Wednesday the 19th came, and we heard nothing, we started to try and get ahold of DHL. Their website was consistently down all week so we couldn’t check the tracking #, which we chocked up to the holiday season making them extremely busy. We tried to call but their phone went consistently unanswered. He tried to call, was sent to a que that told him they were too busy to take his call and to call back, then hung up on him… did this about 15 times throughout the day.
It wasn’t until Friday the 21st that their website came back up and we finally got ahold of someone who stated that the package never made it out for delivery, but they could not tell us why. The package was still sitting in the Hunt Valley office in Maryland, and they even had the audacity to ask if we could go pick it up. Obviously we said no. They said their supervisor would be calling us back and that it may be delivered today, but it would definitely be delivered on Monday the 24th. We waited until Saturday the 22nd and still no phonecall. After more numerous tries, we kept getting ahold of international customer service representatives that stated they could not give us the local number for DHL, but that supervisors would be calling us back.
On Monday, Christmas Eve, we finally got ahold of a woman sometime late morning who said that it should be delivered today, their delivery men have until 7pm to deliver, and that a supervisor from the local service station would be calling us back (even though we’ve yet to have anyone call). . My boyfriend called his Dell rep that he ordered the product from and told him of the situation. The Dell rep said he would call and find out what was going on, and called back a few minutes later to let my boyfriend know they couldn’t even tell the Dell Rep anything other than that it would be delivered on Monday. So I waited around all day to be sure I was available. 5pm comes around and still no word or sign of the package. We called several times and finally got connected to a man named Garret Foster who said that all of the employees were let out at 2pm for Christmas, despite what the woman told us earlier. He said that even he could not tell us what happened to the package, why it wasn’t delivered before then, why it sat in a service station for over a week and a half, why the woman we spoke to earlier didn’t realize that every driver in the company was leaving at 2, or any other information of any remote usefulness.
He provided us with his personal direct line said he would make certain the package was delivered on Wednesday 12/26/2007… a day too late, and a week and a half later than he paid for it to be delivered. We were assured he would contact us and confirm that it would be delivered that morning.
12/26/2007 – We didn’t receive a call… so we called Mr. Foster and left a message. He returned our call later only to let us know that the package didn’t make it on a truck to be delivered. He also informed us when we asked for the number to the local DHL office that they were not allowed to give out that information. A woman did call me to let me know it would not be delivered today, but instead would be delivered on 12/27/2007 for sure. Since I have caller I.D. we were able to use the number to contact the local office to speak with a supervisor, but alas they had no information and a supervisor would call us back in the morning (notice the pattern here?).
12/27/2007 – During one of the many phonecalls throughout the day, we finally convinced one of the customer service representatives to give us the number for a supervisor named Daryl Powell.
3pm The package is still not delivered, we still have no idea what happened and why it was sitting in an office for 11 days, nobody has offered to have it emergency shipped, nobody has even offered to refund our money for the shipping…
About 3:00pm or so we called the cell phone of Daryl Powell, the supervisor that was going to call us back.
He was very to the point, “I’m very sorry, but I’m not going to bullshit you, DHL dropped the ball on this, we were in no way prepared for the amount of freight we received in for the holidays. If this was a Christmas present, I can’t tell you how sorry I am as I have two little girls myself. We had easily 6 times as much freight as we would normally and were short on drivers to begin with. I will call the driver who has your package and call you right back with a time.” Which he did, and within 5 minutes we had the name of the driver, where the package was exactly, and how long it would be till it was delivered. For the first time we were satisfied with the response we got… which was something, maybe it wasn’t what we wanted to hear, but at least it was honest, to the point, and he made us feel like he gave a damn about what a nightmare this whole thing has been. We will still be contacting DHL with all of this, as nobody has yet to even offer reimbursement for the shipping charges for the package. At least the present finally got there almost two weeks later for next-day shipping.
Package arrives at 4:19pm.
Needless to say we are more than disappointed with DHL service. I can understand delayed shipping for the holidays, but to not even attempt delivery, and to deal with consistently incompetent people the way we did is absolutely ridiculous. I worked in customer service, so I know what it means to promise something to a client and deliver.
My sweetheart has a 1.8 million dollar budget at his work that he’s allowed to use for shipping computer equipment like this. Needless to say not a cent of the shipping for that will ever go to DHL again.
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One Response to “Consumer: DHL Debacle, Next Day Shipping takes Two Weeks”
January 10th, 2008 at 8:42 pm
If they had more than they could deliver, then they should have stopped accepting jobs! grrr. I use “Brown”.