DHL Worldwide Express

DHL Worldwide Express

I recently experienced an extremely frustrating failure of service with DHL delivery on a package that was being sent to me from Canada. To make a long story short, DHL lost the package that contained my passport and my wife's passport. And they couldn't even find the package in their tracking system. Finally, after talking with them every day for two weeks, we finally had to give up hope and get rush replacement passports (to the tune of $250).

We were leaving very shortly for our belated honeymoon trip to North Africa. The catch is that our old passports had all of our visas in them for our trip, so we had to them scramble and pay expediting fees to get them in time for our departure. Luckily, we did get it all done, but it was incredibly stressful. Total cost, just in hard costs, to us was about $600. DHL, of course, claims they don't pay out more than $100 in situations like that. That's not good enough for me, after the incredibly bad service they gave. Below is the letter I recently wrote to their CEO.

===== February 14, 2005

Mr. Uwe R. Doerken

Chairman and CEO

DHL Express Americas

1200 South Pine Island Road

Suite 600

Plantation, Florida 33324

Dear Mr. Doerken: I am writing to you to bring to your attention an extremely frustrating, unpleasant and ultimately expensive experience I had recently with DHL Worldwide. I am confident that you will see fit to fully rectify this situation. The situation transpired like this. Less than a week before a very busy month of international travel for my wife and me (including our belated honeymoon), DHL lost our passports as a result of failed performance by one of your subsidiary companies, Purolator in Canada. The lost shipment not only contained my passport and my wife&#185s passport, it also contained the Libyan visas that we had just spent $220 and three weeks of effort to get. For two weeks (beginning on October 13th, the day that the package was handed off by the sender to Purolator in Ottawa) I spoke with DHL tracking on the phone every day trying to locate this package but in this entire time DHL failed to even find the tracking number in your system. In fact, your DHL tracking department couldn&#185t even figure out if the package was picked up by a Purolator, DHL or Airborne Express employee. Because DHL did not locate our package and could not even trace it to determine whether or not we would ever get this package, my wife and I were forced to get emergency passports (at a cost of $290) in San Francisco to be able to attend my sister&#185s wedding in Thailand on October 29th. Of course, in order to do that, my wife and I both had to take off two 1/2 days of work to apply for our emergency passports and to pick them up in San Francisco on the day of our flight to Bangkok. When we returned from Thailand in early November, we had a mad scramble to salvage our own belated honeymoon &#173 a trip of a lifetime to Tunisia, Libya and Niger &#173 beginning on November 18th. With the lost passports and new emergency passports, we had to get expedited rush service on re-issued Libyan visas and expedited service on our visas for Niger. The stress was overwhelming &#173 at one point we thought that we were going to have to postpone or even cancel our trip - all because of DHL/Purolator/Airborne Express&#185 failed service. Luckily, we did succeed in getting all of our visas redone, but at considerable cost and effort (see enclosed copies of receipts). Just before we left for our honeymoon, I filed a claim with DHL Claims, asking for re-imbursement of our hard costs associated with this disaster - $593.98. This was a request that I considered extremely reasonable. However, upon returning from our trip in early January, I was met with a letter from DHL Cargo Claims (see enclosed) stating that your policy is to only re-imburse damages up to $100 and that our check for $100 was enclosed. Adding insult to injury, the check wasn&#185t enclosed. However, even if it was, I do not feel that a $100 re-imbursement is sufficient in this situation. If there ever was a situation with extenuating circumstances that demanded special consideration, I think this is it. Just so you know, since the beginning of this fiasco I have used FedEx at least 20 times for my business. I would very much like to return to using DHL for all of my domestic and international shipping. But at this point I cannot trust your service nor DHL&#185s willingness to provide competent customer care in the event of a problem. I believe that DHL is a company with strong integrity, as I have witnessed firsthand in my dealings with Randy Bergman in your Office of the President. But I would like to see this matter dealt with appropriately at the highest level necessary. One of DHL&#185s new advertising campaigns claims: &#179We go the extra mile&#178. I am asking you to make good on that claim. I am taking the first step in writing this letter, but I am prepared to pursue all avenues in order to be reimbursed with full compensation. I am confident that you will see fit to take responsibility for DHL&#185s service failures, and that of your international partners, and grant me my full claim. This gesture of good faith will go a long way. Thank you for your consideration. Sincerely, Tom B Click this link to e-mail the above consumer: Email User Consumer

Comment On This

Wow, I had a similar frustrating experience as well! Basically Passport Canada sent my new passport in a overnight DHL express package and I never got. This package required a signature but when I track it online it said it was delivered locally at the Front Door! I know DHL is notorious for leaving packages unattended at the door but this was an express document that required a signature!!!!

I tried to call their customer service and they would have none of it. They said that the driver had delivered it and if I didn't get it then to bad, go file a claim. What BS... The funny thing is I reported this to Passport Canada and they opened an investigation on this with a passport being lost and all. I magically got a call from DHL the next day saying the package was found and will be delivered immediately... what miracle! This means that my package was never delivered, not left at the front door.

I am happy I got my passport back, but this just tells you that if you are a small fry and your package is lost by DHL, they will not try to locate it for you. Someone on the DHL side must've got into real trouble from Passport Canada in order for them to make the effort to locate my package. DHL has the WORST customer service over the phone EVER, what a crappy company. I can't believe I had to go through all this when they did not even deliver my package!