For Christmas, I bought my mother a digital camera, from Amazon.
It was delivered by DHL on Monday. Unfortunately, I was at work and my girlfriend had gone out to the shops when the driver arrived.
Quiz time. Which of the following options did the driver choose?
a) Leave a “While you were out” card and take the package back to the depot.
b) Leave the package with a neighbour and post a card through my door informing me of this.
c) Leave a card, tick the box that says “I have left the package in a safe place: ____________”, write “OVER BACK GATE” in the space, and then pitch the package over my 6-foot garden gate, where it can bounce a couple of times on the concrete path before sitting on the grass in the rain until someone gets home
How did you do?
Mostly a’s or b’s: Sorry, you’re not cut out for the demanding world of delivery driving. Try again!
Mostly c’s: Bingo! It said Amazon on the box… it’s probably just a book. Books bounce, right?
Fortunately, Amazon did a good job of wrapping the camera, and the box inside appears to be undamaged. But if the camera doesn’t work on Christmas Day, I might just have an idea why not.
Well, so far I have written to Amazon - it’s best that they know their delivery company is doing a shoddy job. But yes, I should probably let DHL know direct, too.
(NB this was the free “Super Saver Delivery” — figures :rolleyes: )
Now, does anyone have an old beat-up camera I could smash… uh, borrow, for “evidence” purposes?
I do feel compelled to offer one example of how they’re good.
(Though this is the only time I’ve dealt with them.)
I sent by XBox to Memphis for the new drive assembly. It was picked up on Wed morning and I had it back, hand delivered around 6pm the next day.
But I still say get that driver reprimanded. He’s obviously not making any friends for DHL. And let the person you talk to know that little tidbit, as well. Corporate image is everything when you’re competing against FedEx and UPS.
I spent over $50 to ship two boxes to my sister this month. It seems that her UPS man is a DHL reject.
She wasn’t home, so he put the boxes behind the back gate. In the piles of dog shit. Where said dog could get to them. And then didn’t put a note on the door.
So when my sister got home, she saw packaging and wrapping paper strewn across her yard by her 6 month old puppy. She thought, “Huh, wonder what that is,” and went out to investigate more closely.
And she found that the dog had completely got into on of the boxes and those presents were all over the place, not to mention stinky. The other box, the one that cost so much to ship, was a giant framed cross stitch that I had spent a year making ten years ago and was giving to her daughter. Fortunately, my packing guy wrapped the shit out of that package. The puppy had opened the cardboard box, pulled off the two complete layers of styrofoam, and had started on the bubble wrap. She (the puppy) had got down to the frame in one corner, but miraculously, there weren’t any teeth marks on it yet. Ten more minutes, and she would have had that one opened too, and most likely destroyed. It was insured, yes, but I’m not spending another year cross-stitching.
So we were lucky, and my sister just rewrapped the presents. Incidentally, that seems to be why they make the plastic overwraps on kids’ toys so indestructible. It’s not to save them from the kids, but from bad delivery men and Queensland Heelers. Who knew?
Oh, I don’t think any shipping company has a monopoly on idiocy.
After college, a friend of mine departed on a celebratory trip to Europe and had all her worldly possessions (such as fit in a dorm room) shipped to her Dad’s place by UPS.
Now, despite the fact that her father specifically called them and told that he might be out of town, and they should hold the delivery until he returned from a business trip, they blasted the packages across the country in record time and delivered them two days later. Through a latched gate. To his back yard. Where they sat until he returned from his trip.
Oh, did I mention that it was pouring rain the day they were delivered, and for every day afterward?
All her clothes (except the few she’d taken on her trip), textbooks, personal library, photo albums, mementoes, etc. were ruined by water and mold.
UPS sent an agent (not a delivery person; some kind of higher muckity-muck) to their house. Her father began by pulling out an album that contained my friend’s prom photos and a dozen lovingly pressed and dried roses, turned to mush and covered with stinking mold.
Without another word, the UPS lady immediately filled out and signed the paperwork to pay full insurance value on every box.
Easily. My late and unlamented Gateway laptop spent 80% of its dysfunctional life being shipped back and forth for repairs. The damned thing cost the bloody earth but threw off parts and malfunctioned worse than a homemade Yugo.
Good ol’ Gateway would not ship it to my post office box, of course, even though all repairs and shipping were covered by warranty. And they would not ship it to my work address, even though we receive umpteen shipments of various kinds there every day. No, it could only be shipped to my home address…where I’m not around during the day.
So UPS would just leave my laptop sitting on the front porch. Not even tucked inside the screen doors; nope, just plopped on the porch. Now keep in mind I live in a downtown area. There’s a very busy bus stop at the end of my front walk. Twice my very nice neighbor ran over and retrieved it for me when she saw it get dumped off. I suppose I should be grateful that they didn’t affix a day-glo orange sticker, “Computer: Steal This!”
We would:
[ul]
[li]Offer deliveries in the evenings, plus Saturdays and Sundays[/li][li]Ensure we had a contact number of the addressee, so we could ask what to do with the package if nobody was in[/li][li]Deliver packages to the correct address[/li][li]Avoid playing football, baseball or other contact sports with the packages[/li][/ul]
I would give you my left ovary for that service. (I have another one.)
I used USPS this year. Last year, I went to the UPS Store to ship a small box of cookies from Florida to a friend in Montana. The box probably didn’t weigh a pound. However, UPS now measures the surface area of the box (L x W x H) and charges you based on inches cubed, not weight plus distance. Normal ground delivery travel time (for any delivery company) from Florida to Montana is about five days. UPS wanted upward of $40 to guarantee delivery within 5 days. I sputtered, “So… what would you charge for an empty promise and false hope?”
Without blinking, the UPS guy offered back, “$10.95, but it could take 10-30 days to arrive.”
I paid $10.95, vowed to never use UPS again, and called my friend to warn her that some really hard, stale month-old cookies were on their way to her place. (They got there in about, guess what? Five days.)
I relayed that story to the post office guy this year (who was really nice and friendly and loaned me a hand truck to get all my boxes from the car into the post office). He laughed and agreed with me that nobody at UPS has a sense of humor that we’re aware of.
What part of LEAVE AT SIDE DOOR don’t you understand?
I live on a very busy street. Not a high-crime area, but nevertheless. Our side door is actually easier to get to than our front door. And I always have “LEAVE AT SIDE DOOR” included in the body of the delivery address. As in:
Green Bean
123 Main St.
LEAVE AT SIDE DOOR
Toxicville, NJ 07077
Why is the package invariably left at the front door?
