Thursday 3rd December, and DHL attempt to make a delivery to the house. Unfortunately there is no one around at the time, and so they leave a "we attempted a delivery" message. That in itself isn't a problem, or what has really wound me up - it's the DHL redelivery system that sucks.
We arranged (through their automated system) to have the parcel redelivered today (Friday) and so as a result someone was in the house all day long from 9am - 5pm (their advertised delivery times). Unsurprisingly there was no delivery and so this evening I rang the "local" depot (in Loughborough) to find out what had prevented the delivery. My options on the phone were simple - I could press 1 to arrange a redelivery, or 2 to arrange a pick up. There was no option 3 to speak to an operator to make an enquiry at all. Pressing any other key than 1 or 2 resulted in the call ending. #failnumber 1
Eventually I managed to obtain a number that put me through to a main, central, office that did have humans working there. So after explaining that the parcel had not been delivered, I was asked for the parcel number. Quoting it to the operator she informed me that it didn't exist(!!). There was a digit within the number that could have been one of several digits so she tried again, then again, and again until she had tried al combinations from 0 - 9 without success.
At this point I asked whether she could locate the parcel by using my address. That was not possible as they didn't have the addresses of parcels on their system. ??? How the hell can they not have addresses on the system of a delivery company - it's the most important piece of information they need to deliver a parcel, surely?
Eventually she took my address, and the local delivery office code, and put a request in for a redelivery on Tuesday. Yes, you're right, there will be nobody in, and so I asked if it could be redelivered to my work address. That is possible only by sending an email to the local office with a reference to (yep, you guessed it), the parcel number. That's the parcel number that doesn't seem to exist as the driver has written it in such a non-decipherable way. #failnumber2
What a stupid, unworkable system this is.
- Why can't the failed delivery card have a printed number on it that can be correctly read, rather than a drivers scrawl?
- Why can't the main office locate a parcel number through a delivery address?
- Why do I need to email a change of delivery request?
