Dell, DHL, everybody loses
Last weekend I ordered a Canon SD800IS from Dell. Dell shipped it on Monday. So far so good.
Dell used DHL to ship it. I’m sure DHL is cheaper than UPS or Fedex because otherwise I don’t understand why anyone uses DHL. I got a call on Thursday from DHL saying they needed my apartment number to deliver. Of course, my apartment number was in the shipping address I gave Dell.
I called them back and the nice DHL rep updated the shipping address of my order and she said it’d be delivered today.
DHL never shows up with my new camera. Eventually, I check the tracking status and it says “Returned to shipper.” I call DHL again, wait on hold for a while, and talk to another customer service rep. Apparently, my package record was updated but Dell refused to allow the redelivery to a different (??) address and the package was instead returned to Dell.
So I called Dell and waited on hold for much longer than at DHL in order to talk to a customer service rep. I explained the story so far and gave the rep my order number. He put me on hold and called DHL. Shortly thereafter he came back and said that DHL’s business office was closed. He put me on hold again and called some other department.
When he came back, he said he could treat it like an exchange (.. but I never got it!) and they’d process it and ship it out again in eight business days (!!!). Unsurprisingly, I canceled the order. The web site still reports the order as open so I’ll be watching carefully to make sure my credit card is credited.
This is not the first time DHL fumbled a delivery for me but it is the first time the shipper apparently compounded the error. I would think that DHL just can’t manage to deliver to an apartment except the other time they fumbled a delivery to me it was to a detached single family residence.
This is most disappointing. I’m used to have good experiences ordering from Dell but this time I feel that they really blew it. They wanted to treat their (or their shipping company’s) error in shipping as an “exchange” and expected me to wait a week and a half for them to even ship it out again. I didn’t get clarification to learn if the rep meant eight business days from now or eight business days from when they received the bounced shipment because I canceled the order.
By the end of all this, Dell lost the order, DHL carried a camera thousands of miles in a circle, and I still don’t have my camera. Everybody loses.
April 24th, 2007 at 9:55 pm
DHL successfully delivered my camera. The label was missing the last digit of my Apt number but the driver rang my buzzer anyways.
I got lucky.
September 7th, 2007 at 2:53 pm
Whatnot…
Ken, you can always ask a neighbor to watch out for deliveries, especially if you live in an apartment. Having had some experiencing in locating (or not) lost packages, this seems to work and is also a good ice breaker if the neighbor is reasonably approachable.
Or, you could just bring over some good wine and a couple of glasses.
October 18th, 2007 at 3:55 pm
I ordered a laptop from dell, it shipped out when they said it would with DHL. On the evening of their 2nd attempt to deliver ( I was at work that day) I called DHL and they said they would deliver the next day. I was home all day sitting in my living room with the front door open. I could see the street. I checked the DHL tracking web site and it said a delivery attempt was made at 1:23pm but no one was home! I called DHL and they told me the same thing, that I was not home! I asked the DHL rep. what a driver does when no one is at home. They told me the driver leaves an attempt of delivery notice. There were 3 delivery attempts and no notice left at my door after any of them. I asked the DHL rep. about the lack of notices left at the door on three different occasions and they said the driver may have been out of notices. Three days in a row? Then I called Dell and they told me the same thing, that an attempt was made at 1:23pm but I wasn’t home; even though I was, staring out the front door looking for that yellow van. So Dells solution was to give me the address of the DHL office so I could go pick up my package. My solution was to tell them to cancel the order and get the laptop back from DHL -good luck- and then I went to CompUSA and bought an HP.
November 30th, 2007 at 2:05 pm
Fellow Cyber-Sufferers:
We ordered a printer from Dell, a company I have always used and respected and still do. I like their stuff.
Two attempts were made to deliver it (we both work and weren’t home) in good faith so we called DHL in Portland and were told it would be delivered the following afternoon, a Friday. I took off time from work to be at home to get it because is required. That’s fine.
To make sure, Friday morning I called to confirm. Seems they didn’t put it on the truck, something I never would have known I had not called.
I asked them why. “It didn’t get on the truck.'’ I told them I knew that, but why not, after delivery had been promised. “It didn’t get on the truck.'’ Get the drift?
I was told they would not bring it by on Saturday even though they do make higher-priority deliveries that day. I thought by virtue of missing a lot of work based on their promise, I might qualify. Wrong. Only stuff that comes in goes off the dock that day. Could someone hand the printer to the dock peoole and say, “please drop this off? Apparently not.
Also, they said I could not go out to their depot on Swan Island on Saturday and get the printer they know my son needed badly to finish college applications, only some of which are going on line. (He’s 16 so I don’t know why that is, nor am I sure it matters here).)
I had no way to get there on Friday for a variety of reasons including one that my wife had our car at work on the assumption that I would be at home waiting for the delivery (true) and not need it.
And let no proper American even THINK of finding a local phone for these folks. All that is listed is something like 1-800-bang-your-head-against-a-brick-wall. They’ll get back to you (which, in fairness, they did.)
So now they say they will deliver it on Monday. Maybe they will and maybe they won’t. Their track record here isn’t great. So I will have to find a way to get out there on Monday during daylight (recent eye surgery) , something I should not have to do.
Whoa! This just in. DHL calls to say that with Dell shipments they normally make THREE delivery tries. Why didn’t they in this case? Nobody seemed to have a clue.
Dell might want to think twice about future delivery arrangements if this is anything approaching the typical. Are those of us rusting out here in the rainy Pacific Northwest alone? At issue here, I think, is not what DHL could do but what it chose to do or not to do.
When I agree to do something I do it. I suspect DHL has similar expectations of those with whom it does business.
During a decade of ducking bullets in Central America for a major news agency in the 1970s and 1980s we came to rely on them as the one company that could do the job, and we were not disappointed. Times change, I guess, when you get big.
Thanks for the use of the hall.
January 29th, 2008 at 9:06 pm
Heh. Dell + DHL made my life very difficult a few years back. I upgraded to “two” day shipping expecting to get a camera before Christmas. After three days, DHL did not deliver the package.
So, I call DHL and their response is, “We only guarentee 2-day delivery to business address.”
Buh? OK. I’ll just pick it up.
Nope! They need to make a failed delivery and verify the address before it can be picked up. WTF?!? I have a drivers license with my address.
After about 5-days and no package, I finally realized I would only get my package if I made it cost them money. I called them every hour on the hour. After ~4 calls they finally put me through to a local manager that let me pick up the package from the depot.
I also complained to Dell who refunded the shipping cost (moral victory).
Now, I avoid DHL like the plague. If/when I cannot avoid it, I ship to my work address.