The Penalty Box

The following recounts a tale, a tale of annoyance, rage, hatred, stupidity and incompetence. Join me now as I tell you the story of how DHL managed to completely fail at “definitely delivering” and “proven reliability.”

We begin our story with our hero, me, ordering a colourful assortment of items from the land of awesome geektitude. On December 4th, the order was placed. The price to ship with DHL was $10 cheaper than UPS, so I figured I would take that and save a little dough. Plus, given couriers are couriers, they ought to have an equal probability of dropping the ball in the same manner. That was mistake #1, because not only did DHL drop the ball, they tossed it into a fracking black hole and said sweetly, “we’re looking into it.” The package was delivered into their hands on December 6th in the evening, and began transit on December 7th. The seemingly useful online tracker told me the package arrived in Richmond, BC on December 8th. Here’s where things started to go wrong.

On Monday, the last update on the tracker said “Left Richmond depot” at about 2pm. Nothing else updated after that, so on Tuesday I phoned DHL asking about the status of my package, since the last status update was on Saturday. The customer service rep said it left the Richmond depot and was being transferred to the Burnaby depot. Thanks dingus, that was Saturday, I just told you that. You want a cookie? It does not take 3 days to transfer a stupid package from Richmond to Burnaby unless you gave the job to a gimpy midget. “Oh, well I’ll put a trace on it and someone should call you tomorrow.”

Hate begins to build.

Wednesday comes and goes. No call. Okay, time to call DHL again. “We haven’t been able to locate your package, but I’ll tell them you called and escalate it.” So you lost my package? Hoo-freaking-ray. Time to e-mail Thinkgeek. Response: they’ve initiated a trace as well, but that could take 8 business days. Oh great, so they MIGHT find it AFTER CHRISTMAS. The upside is that Thinkgeek refunded my shipping charges because I paid for express and obviously a week is not express.

The weekend goes by, no package. By now I’m pretty annoyed and my roommate, who also had stuff in the order (Christmas presents to Ottawa no less), was also pissed off. She phoned DHL herself and got bounced around from Customer Service to Accounts Receivable to Brokerage (WTF?) and back to Customer Service. She was promised a supervisor would call her within a day (HAHAHAHAHAHAHA) and that they were submitting an escalation form. Wait a minute, isn’t that what they told me on THURSDAY when I LAST called them?
Haaaaaaaaaaaaaate.

Monday comes, no call. So my roommate calls again, because by now I’m too mad to even deal with DHL. She was told the driver “couldn’t get to it” on Saturday. Wait, what? You have a package that’s a week late and it’s NOT the first goddamn thing you deliver? Or at least ONE of the first things? You leave it until the end and then the driver just goes home? So why isn’t it delivered on Monday? “Oh, well we have to confirm your address because the driver couldn’t find it.” Are you KIDDING me??? Is your driver too stupid to use Google Maps? Does your dispatcher have give directions from a TomTom that’s been dropped in the toilet? Or did you just decide to hire a local high school dropout looking for pot money to deal with the Christmas rush?

Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaate.

So my roommate tells them to leave it at the depot so she can pick it up, because if their delivery drivers are so stupid as to not be able to find a house two blocks off of bloody Hastings, what else kind of idiocy do they have working for them? She calls Tuesday morning to confirm the package is at the depot and they said they’d call her once they confirm that. One hour later, no call. She calls again, and was told it’s best to wait for the call because they can’t say how long it’ll take for them to confirm the package is there. Isn’t that what your barcode scanner is for?!!

Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaate.

I bet you can guess what happens next. Yup, no call. To her anyways. DHL decides to call ME at 4pm to confirm the delivery address. The same address that my roommate confirmed previously. If I wasn’t directly involved, this would be such a comedy of errors. However, I am, so I start chewing out the girl on the other end. Her reply? “I work in the warehouse and just got this today, so I don’t know what happened to your package previously.” Lather, rinse, repeat. Since I had work to do (because, you know, I actually DO my job), I hung up instead of wasting more time listening to more vocal diarrhea. Surprisingly enough, the package gets delivered on Wednesday…in the afternoon. That’s right, they’ve had my package for 10 days and lost it twice, it’s STILL not priority to deliver first thing in the morning.

Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaate.

The end result was that my roommate had to ship her gifts express to Ottawa, which may not even get there for Christmas. Way to go, DHL, not so much as an apology from your CSRs. Thinkgeek apologized, even though it wasn’t even their fault. For warehouse incompetence, driver stupidity and worse customer service than a phone-in tech support line, DHL gets my nod for Douchebag Company of the Year That I Had to Deal With.

The Canucks have been encouraging fan submissions to promote the passion (and rabid insanity) that comes with being a hockey fan. It’s part of their “We are all Canucks” campaign that started after the trade for Roberto Luongo. Last year one of the best submissions was Trapper’s Delight. From the same guys, this year we get Trap It Like It’s Hot. In a word: awesome.

Say hello to December.  It’s entered with a profound statement in the form of a small blanket of snow.  Something to remind me that while I do live in a temperate rainforest, it certainly can do whatever the hell it wants sometimes.  Then, just as quickly, we said goodbye to it; the good ol’ reliable west coast rain came to wash it away, further reinforcing the fact that Vancouver has two types of weather: “rain” and “about to rain.”  Occasionally there’s “needs some bloody rain,” but that’s rare.

Say hello to Christmas shopping.  Technically I’ve started.  I have a few things left to get, which means I need to sharpen my elbows.  Gotta love how everyone gets into the holiday spirit by being as rude as possible in the overcrowded ratholes they call “malls.”

Say hello to Christmas parties.  Yep, another year, another company Christmas party.  It was really well done; the office manager at my company is really good at her job.  Reminds me of how Noah used to organize major events in a relatively short amount of time while somehow managing to keep his studies going.  Well okay, maybe Noah didn’t study all that much, but he’s bloody brilliant enough to keep up his GPA.  Or at least make it sound like he knows what he’s talking about.  Anyways, the party was good.  I would’ve said awesome, but I didn’t win anything, and so perpetuated my horrible luck at any kind of draw/raffle/prize contest.  No matter, a good time was had by all, complete with a few developers kickin’ it old school on the dance floor.  It seems the crazier types are the ones with kids.  Not surprising when you think about it.  I know I drove my parents nuts.

Say hello to scheduling madness.  With family events up the wazoo and my sister coming home to visit, along with a few friends who have exiled themselves to the nether regions (read: armpits) of this country also visiting, it’ll prove to be a rather hectic latter half of December.  Speaking of family, I still need to find something for the family Secret Santa gift exchange (done with aunts, uncles, cousins etc).  Shopping for family is hard.

Goodbyes are hard.  Today was the last day of one of my co-workers, John.  He’s leaving to follow his entrepreneurial spirit and run his site Platerage.  Had a few beers with him after work with some other co-workers.  Getting to know some of your co-workers outside of work is a healthy exercise in my mind, helps you work together better.  Unless you work with jerks, and then it can’t really be helped.  It wasn’t until yesterday that I felt like I was in a normal corporate company though.  I couldn’t really relate to Dilbert or The Office with my job, and that felt weird as a programmer.  But then, the HR manager gave a little goodbye present to John: a mouse encased in Jello.  If you watched The Office, you know what I mean.  If you didn’t, well, it’s still pretty damn funny.  I figure I’d give his site another plug as he heads off into the land of self-employment.  Perhaps readership of about two dozen (I round up okay? ) of this blog can make use of it.
It’s also almost time to say goodbye to 2007.  A calendar year without school, the growth of a small company to a medium sized company and just the learning experience of working with people was pretty cool.  The aspect of human interaction is still quite fascinating to me.  It’s interesting to see how people react to each other and to learn about entirely different sides of people you never see, whether you are the cause of their actions or not.  Maybe I should’ve done a masters in HCI.  Ah well, maybe if my career gets stagnant I’ll consider it.  Right now the problem solving part of my job is holding my interest quite well.
Say goodbye to another week.  Hello weekend and maybe actually getting off my lazy butt and going Christmas shopping.