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.