No more DHL for you, America. They’re cutting 9,500 jobs and suspending domestic mailing operations. This leaves the shipping field back to UPS, FedEX and the USPS. However, you can still ship with DHL internationally from the US, so no need to fret that you can’t keep sending those care packages to Cuba and North Korea.
DHL cuts 9,500 U.S. jobs [CNNMoney]
(Thanks to Graig!) (Photo: Maulleigh)
More From Consumerist
-
Report: EA Quietly Making Staff Cuts At Customer Service Center In Ireland
-
DOT Head Ray LaHood Paints Nightmarish Travel Picture If Sequestration Hits March 1
-
Standing In A Long Line At The Airport Right Now? You Can Maybe Blame Sequestration
-
Forget The Fiscal Cliff, Twinkies Could Soon Disappear Forever
-
USPS Says It Definitely Isn’t Going To Scrounge Up $5.5 Billion To Make Payment By Tomorrow
To be honest, I’m glad they’re gone. In my experiences the drivers were never friendly and the service was slow.
This really doesn’t surprise me to be honest. I live in South East Ohio and I have never really had great experiences with them. They seemed like they were being run by people in someone’s garage behind their house. That and most of the DHL drivers looked like sex offenders.
@Sollus: I forgot to add that the delivery “vehicles” they used were shitty beat up vans with DHL stickers on them.
DHL was great. Unfortunately, like UPS and FedEx they are suffering due to the insanely inexpensive shipping services of the USPS. This is capitalism at it’s finest.
@FrankenPC:
I HATE USPS. I cannot understand what their logic is for sending something 3 hours in the opposite direction before they send it to my house. Perfect example: I live next to Wheeling WV. They send something from Columbus, OH down to Cincinnati, Oh then back up to where I am.
@Sollus: Yeah…Like the DMV, one of the more fantastic examples of government regulation gone completely awry.
I am pleased that DHL will no longer be an option for anybody that needs to ship something to me. They were terrible, and I feel better knowing that nothing intended for me will be in their hands.
We used them, and the pre-paid overnight envelopes, for all our inter-company mail between plants. Our DHL deliver driver is always friendly and helpful. I told him when he delivered a package today that we would miss him. I should have known something was up when they eliminated a bunch of their drop boxes.
Good riddance. DHL is horrible. They left an XBOX 360 package I ordered from Dell outside in about a foot of snow a few years ago. Didn’t ring the bell (and I was home), just plopped the box in the snow. The outisde box was soaked, but thank goodness the inside boxes were OK.
More recently, the nearly lost a laptop computer I had to send to Gateway for repair. They said they had no record of the package, and I was ready to file a claim. Two weeks after the box was sent out, the DHL driver came to my door with the box and said the wrong label was on the box. I only had one label! Never had these problems with FedEx or UPS.
I had exactly one bad experience with DHL. It was both my first and last time doing business with them. It was a standard parcel package that USPS, Fed Ex, or UPS would have gotten to me in 3-4 days. It took DHL 2 1/2 weeks and it was smashed in transit. Funny thing is, I don’t even remember what it was. In my area, USPS is about as close to perfect as a shipping service can be. Fed Ex has also been extremely good to me — for instance, newegg merchandise which is shipped Fed Ex ground usually gets to me on the third day, even when it comes from New Jersey (I’m in California). And I haven’t had any problems with UPS in years, though that little bit of extra speed and reliability will usually tip my favor toward fed ex.
Not surprised at all. At the company I used to work for, we tried out DHL for three weeks, trying to ship a box overnight for Saturday Delivery. All three times the packages got there on Monday or Tuesday.
interesting, and somewhat unexpected this close to the holiday (isn’t this when they make an insane percentage of their yearly revenue?)
any news as to who will purchase their fleet or occupy their Distro centers?
the accounts that they used to handle will go to someone… FedEX looking good?
Odd irony…a few minutes after reading this article, a DHL driver rang my doorbell and dropped off a package. I was debating about saying “Sorry to hear the news…”
The odd thing was I was expecting the package to be delivered on Thursday.
Saynora to bad rubbish! It sucks to lose the jobs, but the cuts couldn’t have happened to a better (worse?) company! Every time I’ve had an online order shipped to me via DHL, it’s taken four to five times as long as it would have via UPS or the postal service. Arrival dates on their website are always wrong by about 4-5 days, and they never update them with fresh information if the packages aren’t on time.
I’ve had about three or four DHL guys try to deliver me someone else’s package in my apartment complex and they always give me crap when I try to point out they’re at the wrong apartment.
If you’re not home when they try to deliver, they’ll fudge some signature information on their website (signed by “Receptionist” is the usual one), and leave the package on my doorstep, rather than leaving it at our rental office like every other carrier does. Really annoying.
I’ve had great experiences with DHL as a domestic carrier. Including a couple of huge billing errors in my favor, I’m talking billing a 75lb package as a 7.5lb package and the like. After the merger with Airborne, I could never get anyone from the billing department to solve small issues, so I just stopped bothering. It seems to have caught up with them.
Dells already switched all their outgoing service parts to FedEx. I go to FedEx Kinko’s to pickup parts and return half of them via DHL. Dell’s supposed to be 100% converted by Nov 21st.
Kind of a shame, generally competition is better for the market as a whole. I guess DHL just couldn’t horn-in like they thought they would. Their ground rates were cheap as can be.
When I used to work at a comic store, DHL would routinely deliver book orders before the store had actually opened, leaving them outside the door in a busy area, sometimes a few hours before employees actually arrived. We complained several times but they didn’t actually quit doing it until someone stole a giant order of books, mostly overstock that we had ordered for the Christmas shopping season, and the delivery man had an unreadable scribble where one of the employee’s signatures should be, and insisted that someone who worked there had signed for it.
Luckily, we got our weekly comics through UPS (although admittedly those routinely showed up in Utah instead of Seattle, so…)
Can’t say I’m disappointed.
the few times I’ve been forced to use DHL, they have never been able to hit a delivery target.
Tsk. Sucks. Then again, I was ripped off by DHL because they hired temp staff during holidays (whom then ripped open packages and stole from the hub). Merry Christmas back atcha!
I hate to see them go. They were my favorite courier, and I have had nothing but good experiences with them.
Anyone want to guess how long it will be until UPS, FedEx and the USPS increase their rates?
I’m gonna miss though bright, yellow vans! They are a lot prettier than the silver Airborne Express vans they replaced.
Good thing McCain lost, otherwise “DHL-gate” will haunt him in the White House from Day One! No wonder Ohio voted for Obama. Barack should send a Thank You note to Rick Davis…NOT!
The DHL vans reminded me of some child molester van or rape van. They were yellow and CREEPY.
I won’t miss them. Good for UPS and FEDEX. Two great American companies instead of the idiotic german retards running around in the rape vans! LOL
Interesting article …
…”So why is DHL closing its shipping site? The answer tells us a lot about how our economy works, why global financial capital has taken prominence over American jobs and the places where Americans work and live, and also about the ways of Washington…”
“You see, the shipping site that DHL is closing used to be owned by Airborne Express, an American company with roots in Ohio. But several years ago German-owned DHL decided to buy Airborne Express. Obviously, DHL has no particular connection with Wilmington or with Ohio or even with the United States. So it’s no surprise that, a few years after the sale, DHL turned to United Parcel Service to move some of its packages, presumably at a slightly cheaper rate. UPS will send the packages through an airport in Louisville, Kentucky. That means DHL won’t need its shipping site in Wilmington, Ohio.”…
[robertreich.blogspot.com]
Place your bets, people.
I say DHL merges with one of FedEx or UPS within 18 months.
Every package delivered by these guys had problems for me. UPS and Fedex have been superior and deserve to stay in business!