Kyle expected DHL to deliver his package by 3pm. When DHL failed to show, Kyle called to ask for an explanation. Without any argument, DHL refunded Kyle’s full shipping costs and promised to track down his package.
Well on rolls 4:30 and I don’t have a call yet, at this point I am a tad frustrated. I call them back and tell them what is going on. The customer service representative is very understanding and calls the local office. Normally a company would put you on hold and get back to you with an answer. I was very surprised when he 3-way called the local office and told them what was going on. I was told that the truck had broken down. They said they were trying to get the packages loaded on another truck to continue delivery. Well it was getting late in the day so I prepared to have to wait until monday for my package.I received a call around 5 from another representative, they told me that the drivers are gone for the night, I saw this one coming. Here is were the real shock comes in, they said the driver would personally deliver my package on his way home. About 45 minutes later the DHL driver in his personal car arrived in my driveway, gave my dog a graham cracker (go figure) and delivered my package. He was very apologetic even though he had no control over a broken down truck. To be honest I thought he would be very upset that his boss made him come out on his way home and give me my package but he seemed very happy to be able to do it, it felt like it might of even been his idea.
DHL didn’t make Kyle spend hours on hold, and each representative – down to the driver, made it their priority to solve Kyle’s problem – even after they refunded his shipping charges. That is customer service done right.
DHL Goes Way Beyond Customer Service [Dragon Forged]
(Photo: didbygraham)
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@timmus: Did you read the article? THAT’S why. UPS and FedEx don’t give a shit if you get your package or not.
Nobody in Houston likes DHL. I’ve worked in several offices (contract and permanent) as an executive secretary where I saw DHL screw up deals by not getting contracts to the right people in time. One DHL driver actually left sensitive commercial real estate transaction papers at a competitor’s office. Another one threw a package over a fence and into the pool. When I worked for a firm in a building with a DHL drop box in the parking garage, the driver would frequently log a pickup at the box but not pick up the packages in the box. How lame is that?
The result was generally a change in delivery service. (FedEx can usually, though not always, be trusted around here.)
On a personal level, Amazon uses DHL to ship the Harry Potter books for release date delivery. They go to the post office and the post office does not bother to actually deliver them on the promised day, which caused a hell of a lot of trouble at my house.
You really have to be a glutton for punishment to use DHL around here.
P.S. SwiftOuch, get a different goddamn job if you hate yours so much.
I’m completely shocked by this post and all the positive comments. I’ve heard nothing but terrible things about DHL, and had nothing but terrible experiences with them.
Three times they’ve managed to screw up delivering my packages because they didn’t have the apartment number. Twice they’ve ignored large neon stickers on the package with specific instructions (signature required, deliver to office if not at home, etc).
I refuse to ship with them, no matter how much money I might save. I’m so surprised that there are people who find them better than UPS and FedEx. I guess it is all based on the office and the drivers.
DHL has always provided me with better service than UPS and FedEx.
UPS and FedEx treat us “residential customers” as third rate citizens, packages never arrive before 4 PM (uaually after 6 PM) and usually look like they have been run over by the truck–on a good day.
DHL has always delivered before noon, even in winter in ice and snow during the “Christmas rush”. Even when DHL uses the Post Office for final delivery there is never a delay as the DHL flight and trucks arrive early enough in the day to get out with that day’s mail.
@meiran: Agree. DHL is the root and source of all evil. UPS is my best local — when they’re not using USPS for “last mile” delivery. Then they suck. (FedEx just loses everything locally.)
@timmus: If I had to pay a bit more expense to not get any shit from UPS or FedEX, that’s a price I’m willing to pay.
Whoa, a lot of comments. Probably only ten people are going to read mine way down here, but I’d like to share my experience with DHL too.
I ordered some flowers a week or so early and ftd ships them overnight to make sure they stay fresh. They were supposed to get delivered on a Friday (my wife’s b-day) but low and behold 3:00 , 4:00 and 5:00 rolls around without anything. I called DHL and they told me the package hadn’t even arrived in Denver yet, so I was out of luck until Monday. So it’s not just the local drivers that screw up. After talking with some mortgage buddies of mine, they said that DHL cares about deadlines the least. They’ve ruined millions of dollars worth of deals because paper work didn’t get done before locks expired. No excellent DHL service for them, I guess.
I would not have chosen DHL myself, but ftd doesn’t give you a choice, even though they are happy to charge $20 for shipping.
@bilge: yes, FedEx Ground is definitely the worst service I’ve ever encountered. Once, a driver just failed to even make an attempt to deliver my package three days in a row. I happened to even be working from home for two of those days, and I didn’t get a knock on the door or even a delivery attempt sticker. But the driver marked on the tracking that I was not home to receive the package. This actually happened on two different occasions with FedEx Ground. The second time I got so fed up that I called the driver’s manager, and he actually apologized and delivered the package to me by hand on his way home from work. I politely asked him to discipline and/or fire the driver for negligence. I don’t know what happened to the driver, but I will certainly never use FedEx Ground ever again. The problem is that it’s actually a different company from FedEx with independent contractors who don’t give a shit about service. I think it’s doing FedEx more harm in terms of reputation, than the good it’s doing them in biting into the low-cost, slow-ass delivery sector.
@Falconfire: Well, when they mark it as delivered when it’d dropped off at the post office, and it doesn’t arrive at the customers home for a few more days, it presents a problem. I work(ed) for a major electronics manufacturer, and when a customer calls wanting to know where the package is, and all we can say is “it was delivered yesterday”, it doesn’t work out too well. So, they stopped using them.
Somehow, I suspect that somewhere, someone will lose his job.
I am having an issue with DHL right now. Time Warner Cable sent me a new remote ‘next day’ and that was Wednesday of last week.
I tracked it with TWC and it still says ‘out for delivery’ with a date of last Thursday. We called them up and they said they tried to deliver it but since no one answered the door (my girlfriend was home all day), they didn’t leave a note or put it on the website under the tracking info…huh??
Then she tells me they do not deliver on Saturday yet my neighbor got a Saturday delivery.
DHL is even worse when it comes to package PICKUPS. I have had to call them 3 times for a single pickup, scheduled for 4:00pm, no show. Called, local station manager says noone was there (a lie), they will try again at 5. Another no show, another call, another schedule for 6. Another no show, etc. Finally, they got there at 8:30 for the pickup.
The last problem I had was with FedEx. I called their toll-free number to schedule a pickup. They ended up sending the truck to the wrong state – TWICE!. This is what happens when you force your customers to press “1″ for English, and then staff the line with someone who speaks English as a second language.
Virginia – West Virginia, Same difference… Right?
I’ve heard that DHL is great in Europe. For six years I worked in a lab at a large university in the northeast and received anywhere from 10-20 packages a week. For a while, when DHL was trying to get a bunch of new accounts, we had a lot of deliveries from them. Most of the companies dropped DHL because they screwed up so many times. Most of our deliveries are time sensitive – they’re biological reagents which are sent on ice or dry ice and if they’re left in a warehouse over a weekend they’re no longer good. DHL ended up costing our suppliers too much money in destroyed reagents.
One company, coincidently one of my favorite biological reagent companies which has incredibly good customer service (shout out to NEB) had problems with them shipping items back to the sender for no reason.
Fedex International shipping, again perishable biological reagents, was horrible. I was sending close to a half million dollars of reagents in multiple shipments. In retrospect, I should have used an expediter. The delivery guy in the destination country in Europe didn’t like working after 3pm. Our stuff would go out on Monday morning, sit on the tarmack waiting to go on a plane until Tuesday while I pulled my hair out, then spend a couple of days in customs (shipping biological stuff is never fun, I learned so much about international customs … just don’t ask me about harmonized codes), then go out on the guy’s truck on Thursday or Friday. So when he decided not to deliver it on Friday because he didn’t like working until the end of the work day, we would be out a few thousand dollars worth of reagents.
I think I might have gotten him fired. I still feel bad about that but we lost a bunch of stuff we couldn’t replace.
sorry I don’t care how good DHL customer service is I will never use them. I used them twice, a couple months apart, a few years back, both times they said they could not find my address. That was complete BS, both times I saw DHL trucks making deliveries to other places in my neighborhood.
One of the times I got a CSR that lied and said they attempted to make a delivery (which I was home the entire day). The address is not, at all, hard to find. USPS, UPS, and Fedex never had any issues finding my address.
@ry81984: Why should DHL waste a ton of money and time driving hudreds of miles into the middle of nowhere for one package when they can save a fortune just mailing it the rest of the way by USPS?
Indeed, why should DHL be expected to deliver a package themselves. Oh, wait. I know the answer to this one: BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT THEY WERE PAID TO DO. If the sender wanted to use USPS, they would have used USPS.
Dauymn. Giving the dog a graham cracker too?!? That’s outastite service!