55. The DHL Caper

The DHL Caper

Bet you thought I had forgotten about this…just because it was about 10 weeks ago.  Here is what happened. 

On Monday morning May 23, I was checking out of Celtic Lodge in Wales and driving down from there to southwestern England to play Burnham & Berrow.  After the round at B&B, I was to fly to Dublin, play one course in Dublin late Monday afternoon, then another early Tuesday morning and then fly from Dublin to Stansted Airport  (just north of London) and drive to near Cambridge to play Royal Worlington (the fabulous 9 holer).  After playing Royal Worlington I was to drive another 90 minutes north to stay overnight near Brancaster (Royal West Norwalk).  Seemed simple enough of a schedule to me…but I figured the travelling would be easier if I shipped my larger suitcase and just spend the two days traveling with my golf bag and small roll on.  Plus, given airline luggage fees, it figured to be cheaper. 

DHL had handled another similar shipment the prior week very well so I planned to ship with them again.

I gave the people at Celtic Lodge the shipping information as well as my credit card number etc.  At around 8:30am, as I was arriving at B&B, I received a call from Celtic Manor saying DHL could not process the charge to my card (as a result of European bank security regulations…they will not process a charge against an out of country card without the card being “swiped” or having its “chip” read).  The Celtic Manor folks suggested that they pay for the shipment and add the charge to my room charges.  That all went fine.

The next morning, I checked the DHL tracking website and saw that the package had been sent to the wrong address and was being rerouted (as of about 10am).  Calling DHL Customer Service resulted in being put on hold for almost 30 minutes before I had to board my flight.  After I landed in England that afternoon, the tracking website had no further updates so I called DHL “customer service” (note the quotation marks and no use of initial caps).   After being on hold for about 20 minutes, the agent came on and basically said he could not find where the suitcase was, but would check and call me back….when he called back he said there was nothing he could do and he didn’t even know where the suitcase was.  I asked to speak to a supervisor and he said I would hear from a supervisor within 30 minutes.

After waiting 45 minutes I called back.  Note that by this time I had started playing Royal Worlington and it was around 7pm (but fortunately no one else was around).  I reached a woman (Lyn) who was very helpful, but their warehouses were closed (she even tried reaching a manager at home).  She was able to narrow its location to one of two warehouses (how can they not know when they scan the barcode with each step??????).  I emailed her specific instructions on where to ship it for delivery either that night or Wednesday night (when I would be in London)…and emphasized that if it was to be delivered Wednesday it had to go to London, not to its original destination.

YUP…you guessed it…on Wednesday afternoon I got a call from the hotel I had stayed Tuesday night, saying the suitcase had just been delivered.  When that call came in I had been talking to Lyn…and told the folks at the hotel to NOT sign for it.  Then in a series of calls with DHL and the hotel, I negotiated the delivery.  The DHL manager wanted to ship it to Copenhagen (where I would be Thursday and Friday nights) and I told him that with hundreds of trucks in the UK, they for sure could find one to deliver it to London by that night.  I told him I planned to write the CEO of DHL and advise him of his company's definition of customer service.  Bingo!!   That worked and the manager promised by email to have it delivered to London by 10pm that night.

Believe it or not, at around 9:30pm that evening, the front desk at my hotel called the room to advise that a suitcase was delivered.  What a relief…and this gave me a new project…get my shipping fee (GBP57.00 or about $85.00 pre BREXIT) back!!

I called Lyn and she put me in touch with another department who offered me a “goodwill gesture” of GBP25.00.  I semi-politely advised them that to date on this shipment, DHL had:

o   --attempted to deliver the suitcase to the wrong address;

o   --then realizing this, lost the suitcase within its internal systems and made no attempt to reach me;

o   --upon finding it the next day, delivered it to the original address even though DHL customer service received written instructions as to where to send it; and

o   --attempted to force me to wait an additional 36 to 60 hours for delivery to another country.

Within a few hours, they had agreed to a full payment.  Getting that payment ended up taking another two weeks…but it was received.  Good to see customer service works well in the European economy!!  This one beat Qantas Airlines by miles and miles.  Learned my lesson…stay with Fed Exp or UPS.