Dear DHL - You Suck
December 19th, 2007 -- by Augie De Blieck Jr.
My wife has never received flowers at work in her life. So I set out to surprise her.
Ordered flowers last Thursday to arrive at her school today. Everything shipped out fine yesterday. The flowers were in NJ first thing this morning. Here’s the DHL delivery fine print:
3:00 is a good time for a school.
When I got home, the first thing I asked her about was the flowers.
“What flowers?”
Guess what? The flowers never arrived today, due to “weather conditions” and “Christmas backlog.”
So the surprise was ruined for my wife.
Screw you, DHL.
There’s an entire Amazon thread devoted to how late DHL always is.
December 19th, 2007 at 12:46 pm
I can’t agree more Augie. I truly despise DHL. I have had to deal with them for work and personal stuff and they always screw something up. At work, they were always “losing” or late with payroll. And that makes for grumpy workers. And personally, I have ordered comics online from instocktrades and they ship using DHL. I live in an apartment and they would leave packages on my door. And that is an invitation for theft. Any reputable shipping company would know not to leave packages on the door step of an apartment. Plus the package was supposed to be signed for. And also, my girlfriend has to deal with them at work and she hates them too. One of their drivers almost ran her over in her parking lot when she was going to lunch.
December 19th, 2007 at 10:11 pm
Now I’m feeling paranoid. I’ve got a bunch of gifts being sent by a company that uses DHL. They were sent on the 16th (8 days after I ordered, what’s up with that? Eh, different problem) and I’m beginning to wonder if they will make it by Christmas.
December 20th, 2007 at 7:11 am
Laura- we’ll be keeping you in our prayers. ;-)
Lennon - It’s amazing the number of similar stories I’ve heard and read since I went on this anti-DHL bender. (And, honestly, it’s not just because I work for their competition. . . )
The ultimate kicker? The flowers arrived yesterday. They look like the Charlie Brown Christmas tree — they were a lot more impressive in the pic on the web site. ::sigh::
December 20th, 2007 at 9:53 am
Face it, Augie — this is one of those Laws of the Universe ™: When you try to impress your wife, fate will conspire against you.
(Phil’s Corollary: So why even bother? ;) )
December 20th, 2007 at 5:00 pm
Two comments:
1) DHL/Airborne was rumored at one time to be run by members of one mob or another; and the DHL/Airborne poor service is a carryover of the days where customers were too afraid to break DHL contracts, no matter how bad the service was.
2) When flowers have to be delivered at a certain time of day, I recommend just calling a local florist. It may be a few dollars more, but isn’t that worth the surprise actually occurring?