Tis the season...

[fenchurch]

I got my first Christmas card of the season last Saturday, from ladyforash! Yay! Of course, they've been rolling in ever since, including a really cool handmade one from curiouswombat! I got my first batch of cards in the mail on Monday and I'm hoping to get batch number two on its way tomorrow.

Last Saturday also marked a first for me this year: I sent a birthday card to a friend early enough for it to potentially arrive *before* his birthday. For fairly understandable reasons, I've been running behind on everything all year... but it feels like I'm finally starting to catch up. Just in time for the year to end.

I got in an argument with someone at DHL Shipping today... Back toward the end of November, I'd ordered a DVD set to give to my dad for Christmas. I've got Amazon Prime, so it shipped out Second Day along with a DVD I got for my mom for her birthday. The latter arrived two days later, but it finally occurred to me today that I'd never received the other order. We've been getting a lot of packages lately, so I just assumed I had it... until I couldn't find it anywhere, and when I checked the delivery status out at DHL's website the package was listed as "In Transit" with an estimated delivery date of November 29th.

Um...

So, I called DHL. The guy (and oh, I wish I'd remembered to get his name) informed me in a slightly condescending way that Amazon had just printed a label for the package but that they hadn't arranged for pickup yet. I countered that the webpage said it had been picked up and was in transit. Even more condescendingly (because, apparently, I'm pretty slow), he repeated what he'd said and explained that just because Amazon had scanned it into their computers, didn't mean it had been picked up by DHL. I repeated for the THIRD TIME in this conversation that I wasn't getting this information from the Amazon website, but from the DHL website. He argued with me about this for several more minutes, apparently trying to convince me that even though I was looking RIGHT AT THE DHL WEBSITE, I was really looking at the Amazon website and that they'd never had the package picked up.

Finally, he gave a great sigh and told me he'd check one more thing... came back and said, not the least bit apologetically "It looks like your package may have been lost" and then tried to end the phone call! Um, yeah. He eventually took down my phone number, after I asked for a timeframe, and told me someone would call me within 24 hours with the status of my package. I then asked him why he'd argued with me about whether my package had been picked up in the first place... and he told me that he hadn't had the information that it had been picked up. Why? Because he hadn't bothered to check for it until after we'd argued for awhile. At which point I asked why he hadn't bothered to actually LOOK UP THE INFO ON MY FREAKING PACKAGE before answering me and he hung up on me.

Yeah, I'm not happy. I'm going to be sending a snailmail letter about this one, because I want to make sure it gets where it needs to go and gets taken seriously. I have the time and date of my phone call and the package tracking number. Assuming he actually did what he said and put a search out for my package, then his information should be attached to it somewhere. I hope. Man, I wish I'd gotten his name.

I did call Amazon, or rather had Amazon call me (their support call system is actually kinda cool -- no number listed anywhere, but you enter your phone number and tell them when you want them to call (immediately, in five minutes, in ten minutes, etc) and they call you), to let them know that at least one of their customers was VERY unhappy with the treatment from DHL. Amazon is reshipping the DVD set and it should be here Monday... if I ever do get the first order, I'm supposed to just refuse delivery and have it sent back. But honestly? I have serious doubts that anyone at DHL is even looking for it.

Comments

[gamiila.livejournal.com]

Sadly, your experience of DHL customer service is by no means exceptional. I work at hp and we use DHL as our main contracted courier. Having to chase up things with them is a nightmare and takes an inordinate amount of time, because their customer service staff like to be argumentative and defensive rather than informative and helpful. They'll keep trying to give us the runaround, and we're one of their major accounts! Not that it matters, they should give the same service to all their clients whether private or corporate, but still...makes me wonder what they teach them in soft skills school.