I ordered some circuit boards from Seeedstudio (good and cheap board fab, btw). I paid extra for DHL to get them quicker.
I submitted my boards to Seeed (Shenzhen) October 10. On Oct 16, said they were shipped to DHL. Awesome. Told DHL via their webapp and text messaging that "I do not need signature. Drop at doorstep". 10 boards were a whopping $5. Guaranteed delivery by 19'th, cause thats what I paid extra for.
So what does the fucknut idiot delivery driver do? "Did not deliver because no signature". I was fucking furious. I called their support line, and "we'll try to deliver tomorrow" ~~~ for WHAT? The idiot to say AGAIN that no signature, did not deliver? Uh huh, tell them to get their ass back right now and drop it off. Their claim was "They can only ask". BTW, their systems noted both my previous "I dont need signature" authorization, along with the text message responses saying the same.
Well, it turns out that Twitter is good for other things, like complaining loudly. So I reached out to the 4 contacts linked to DHL, and included my package#. I got one of their US VP's on there. Wouldn'tya know, they had the authority to tell the idiot driver to get back and deliver.
Who knows when I would have gotten my boards. But I certainly know how to bypass 'consumer firewalls'. I brought Seeed into it as well, by mentioning them with DHL. Evidently, squeezing the B2B may have worked, I really don't know.
I have had a similar experience once with UPS. To cut a long story short they really messed up, relabelling someone else's package with my address and this package was payment on delivery, which I paid. Trying to get them to come and pick up the package they relabelled in error and refund me for the payment was an absolute nightmare.
Many calls to the call centre and 2 days later I had enough. No amount of asking to speak to a manager or anyone I spoke to managed to resolve the situation. I found the email address of the CEO of UPS on https://www.ceoemail.com/ and proceeded to write him an email explaining the issue, the effort I have made to try to resolve it as well as the incompetence and inability of the staff to resolve the problem. Note this email was very professional and stuck to the facts, the only emotional bit maybe being me highlighting that I honestly expected better from a company such as UPS.
I did not expect anything to happen honestly. However 15 minutes later I received a reply from him saying it will get taken care of. 20 minutes later the manager of the distribution centre that caused the problem gave me a phone call apologising. 2 hours later a driver came to pick up the parcel and refund me the money I paid in error. I received 2 more calls from the distribution manager and that person provided their personal contact number in case I ever have any issues again.
I personally do not like going the social media route by default. I would only consider it if I have exhausted all other options and am honestly left with no other choice which seems to be the situation you were in and that is completely understandable. Maybe give the CEO email option a try next time as I believe your success was due to someone high up being forced to recognise your issue. If that then fails I would hit the social media option for sure.
I live in France and in the working hours of the delivery guys I'm at work in a different city. I ordered a number of things to my personal address, and the story is typically like: "package delivered" with some strange message from the delivery guy where to find it, or no message at all. Out of the last 3 things I ordered, 2 didn't get to me (I made a claim on Amazon and they reimbursed me, no questions asked - at least), and 1 other was delivered to a shop three streets from my place, and after 2 weeks when no one came to get the thing, a good guy from the shop noticed my phone number on the box and called me.
I try to avoid buying physical stuff in the internet now, way too much stress.
DHL is mostly subcontracted to local companies. Yes, drivers do that when they have a residential address, because they cannot pull the same trick with companies at factory/office hours, they hope it goes unnoticed with individuals.
But I also have a DHL driver doing the opposite: you stay at home all day and nobody rings; then you notice that the parcel is marked as delivered on the website. What? You get outside and you see the parcel was thrown in your yard over the wall/fence/portal. You go back to DHL website and you download the receipt, to discover a beautiful fake signature of yours forged by the driver.
So he just didn't bother to ring the doorbell to save 20 seconds. He saves 20 seconds and you lose several hours waiting for him...
Also, in this subcontracting company, the drivers have very bad equipment, they do not have winter tyres (and we are talking about a mountain area...), they do not have enough large enough vans, so the drivers try to ditch as many parcels as possible in any 'possible' way because otherwise they have no room for pickups...
The driver even showed up one day with a regular compact car... He had to come back.
> But I also have a DHL driver doing the opposite: you stay at home all day and nobody rings; then you notice that the parcel is marked as delivered on the website. What? You get outside and you see the parcel was thrown in your yard over the wall/fence/portal. You go back to DHL website and you download the receipt, to discover a beautiful fake signature of yours forged by the driver.
IN cases like that, I would have a very hard ethical time in pushing that issue of fraud onto the driver. To be honest, I haven't done that... but the thought would definitely cross my mind.
> You go back to DHL website and you download the receipt, to discover a beautiful fake signature of yours forged by the driver.
Depending on carrier, this has hellish consequences for customers who end up having to file loss/damage claims against the carrier. Your signature attests that you received it and it's intact, so when the signature is forged attesting to such, any claims filed are summarily denied.
(Consumers usually get their money back from the shipper as a matter of customer service, but the shipper still eats the loss.)
It also happens in germany. I once talked to a deliery guy from DHL. He told me, he has 3 minutes for a delivery. That's insane. Just one red traffic light and the 3 minute windows is fucked up.
When you call dhl you only get lame exuses. "Maybe you doorbell isn't working?" Sure, DHL, sure.
In the UK we can get our money back if the goods don't make it into your hands. It's up to the seller / courier to prove otherwise although it's usually a battle arguing with them.
Royal Mail delivered a £560 multimeter to the wrong address and to a signature which wasn't mine. Never saw it again. That took a nightmare battle from hell to get sorted.
I actually found that in the UK at least, you get on twitter and call them thieving bastards repetitively until they are fed up with you and just give you the money to shut up :)
Some of the vendors allow you to select the delivery company. I like this.
It's pretty hard to get back to a seller and try to explain him the delivery company he is using is potentially scamming, especially as it only affects me (the receiver), not the shipper.
You don’t need to guess, it’s been documented. Most have impossible schedules. Ugly industry, and it would be costly to make it less ugly. So we all look away.
Amazon lockers are the best thing since sliced bread. They put the ball back in your court to pick it up, when you have time. Removes the stress completely and makes ordering pleasant again.
This kinda thing is extremely good and I'm surprised it hasn't caught on in a bigger way. Many (most?) purchases are made online these days, but when you do so you have to make one of a couple of awkward choices:
1. request a delivery at work, let the receptionists at your office sign for the package and very politely thank them each time (and don't do this too often)
2. place the order to be delivered at your home address, knowing that you won't be there and that you'll have to pick up the "you were out..." slip, and duck out of work and cross town later in the week to the post-office sometime during opening hours and suffer the queues there.
The reason I use the word "awkward" is that I feel like I'm misusing some facilities no matter what I do (expecting a receptionist to handle my packages, or making a postman bring a package all the way to my flat and then all the way back home and fill out forms etc).
> request a delivery at work, let the receptionists at your office sign for the package and very politely thank them each time (and don't do this too often)
Everyone in my office does this, although we don't have a dedicated receptionist and the job normally falls to the office manager instead. It doesn't even cross my mind as a misuse of company resources. Is this something that would be considered inappropriate in other places?
It depends, I think in a larger office it can get a bit out of hand. My previous workplace was a few hundred people and the pile of packages was a little shocking, especially around christmas time. My current workplace the downstairs reception is shared between a number of companies, so they're not even our employees which makes it a bit worse.
It could be that this is all fine and I'm overthinking it - so maybe take what I"m saying with a pinch of salt :-)
As a counter-example: we have a receptionist and a dedicated mailroom which is staffed for full business hours. I do imagine it gets nuts around christmas, but it's essentially an office perk / honestly I'd consider it something that should be expected by default - the alternative is, as mentioned, home delivery when you're not home, which is ridiculously ineffective and has problems with theft.
Fully agree. Unfortunately the lockers are not very popular yet in France. But I've seen a few added in the last months in my area, hope it catches the steam, because it's way better.
The problem though is that most of the time I can not choose the delivery company, and I've only seen La Poste having the lockers.
With the all the home deliveries that people have these days I think it should be mandatory for all new constructed condos etc to have delivery lockers. The item gets delivered to the locker the code is messaged to you retrieve when you get back home.
The current place I am living in has the security gate intercom dial my handphone. So for any package delivery I tell the guy I will open the door for him but I am not at home so to leave the item outside my apartment door.
We have a few Amazon Lockers in Paris and the suburbs. It's awesome. A lot better than the usual "Relais Colis".
Just flash the barcode from the email, and it opens the appropriate locker. It even lets you open multiple ones with a single barcode if you received multiple packages the same day.
I'm curious, is it uncommon to have packages delivered to the mailroom at your place of work? That's what I've done for the last 4 years and I've never had a problem.
It is not uncommon, but at a mid-sized company it is a bit problematic: when the receptionist has to handle private parcels for a couple of individuals, that is OK; but when there are 100-200 employees and they regularly order non-work related stuff at their company address, it becomes a burden on the receptionist, burden that is not part of what the company pays him for.
So :
* small company where everyone takes care of (his own) deliveries: OK.
* smallish company company where there is a receptionist: OK because it does not happen too often.
* middle-sized company: not OK.
* large company with a dedicated mail/parcel/delivery service: I guess it depends on formal work agreements.
-We solved this in a simple manner at a former employer - we just had everybody who wanted something sent to work have it addressed to such-and-such, room 40.
Room 40 was a bench behind the warehouse reception.
Of course, there are potential pitfalls here - say, assuming your colleagues to be honest, for instance - but to the best of my knowledge, we never lost a parcel in years. (Which is more than could be said for anything entering the murky depths of our ERP system...)
At AOL in late 2001 they insisted that employees cease receiving non-work packages at work. The legit concern was the anthrax being mailed to DC area offices. That was also just past "peak AOL" so I was soon freed from this problem, with a decent sverance to boot.
I have found ordering from B&M's via their websites and picking the thing up at the store bypasses this whole problem.
I experienced the receptionist losing track of my stuff once and it was a really uncomfortable situation because, obviously, you're still colleagues and you don't want to get too pushy, but at the same time, where the hell is the stuff I paid for? After that I stopped having stuff delivered to my office.
And anyway you may not want everyone to know what you are buying.
I've rented a mailbox at a private post office for years to do this. It's basically a subcontracted receiving department, and they can deal with parcels from any vendor or courier for me.
Maybe... I've used them three times, I think. Once everything was good, the next time I couldn't retrieve the package because the touchscreen and barcode reader were malfunctioning, and then the third time I got someone else's package and mine vanished into thin air. (I was able to dox the other person and leave their package where they could get it though.) The company where I work has essentially the same thing, and seemingly more reliable, if I'm willing to wait an extra day for it to get through their system.
I almost never have to return anything but the one time I had a defective item I decided to use a locker for the return exchange and it never worked, they were always all full (London, UK) so then I had to end up going to a post office anyway.
It has been my experience that if you order with a credit card and the item is not delivered you will not be charged. I usually let the credit card company handle it to avoid the hassle.
Also being in France, I find that the most reliable and practical way to get something shipped is to use a "point relai" (when delivery at work is out of the picture because of company policies). Delivery services generally know better how to find them and deal with them, since other people use them too.
When your package is damaged, some will even offer to add a note to your delivery, without you asking, in case there's a problem later.
I order very regularly from Amazon, and I think I have never had a single problem receiving packages this way, and it's pretty easy to find one on your way from work or somewhere that suits you.
Some of them are even open on Sunday, depending on what their main business is, very convenient ...
Yes I'm trying to use point relais right now whenever possible. However oftentimes Amazon says to me that the items I want to buy can't be delivered to point relais (probably there are restrictions on size and type of products).
It seems to me that being an expat in Japan is a win win with no downside, as one can enjoy everything that works within their society while avoiding all the social pressures the Japanese suffer.
We are planning a trip soon to investigate our insight.
Haven't been there, but anecdata from my friend who spent 2 years there says yes, but you have to probably work remotely, because Japanese companies are very rigid, hierarchical and conservative - culture clash might be hard and you might be suffocating.
Agreed. But working remotely from Japan can be a great lifestyle if you can pull it off. Almost all of Japan's downsides come from working for traditional Japanese companies.
Isn't the point of the signature to protect them? You can't just say "I don't need a signature, I promise not to sue you." and expect them to just be ok with that, or have I got the wrong end of the stick here?
Why not? You say that with some authority, as if it's well known that this option doesn't exist. Why, then, do all the delivery companies give you the mechanism to waive the signature?
Sure you can. Many offer this option officially. For example, when I've ordered iPhones from Apple, they let me "pre-sign" online before delivery, which means the delivery person will drop it off if I'm not home.
Of course, the tradeoff is that if your package gets stolen, they're no longer responsible for it, which is why I've never actually done this.
Absolutely. If I were ordering bigger ticket items, you can be sure I'd tell them "I want to pick it up at the shipping office".
But in my case/story, it was $5 set of PCBs I had fabricated. Shipping was $20 for what amounted to an ePacket. I took the chance of having someone steal them (unlikely) to tell them to just drop it off at my dorrstep (in reality, a screened in porch).
Yeah, it can be totally reasonable to waive the signature in exchange for assuming liability. Depends on where you live, what you ordered, how you feel that day....
I've done it a lot but I'd be given pause for something worth a thousand bucks. But like, I'm not taking time off of work to sign for a PlayStation game.
I live in a 130,000 person city. UPS will not drop packages off to your neighbor period, even though that is an option on the "Sorry we missed you slip." UPS will not drop package without signature. UPS took 2 weeks to deliver my replacement part for my vacuum. When I see the UPS driver I tell him UPS policy sucks and is anti-city and his response was maybe there were too many packages taken. "I've lived here for 10 years and never had a package taken and this part is $10."
United States Postal Service allows drop offs without signatures and dropping off at neighbors. I constantly request that my packages are not mailed by UPS.
Unfortunately package theft is common. Our neighborhood suffered several thefts and eventually the police put fake packages with GPS trackers into the delivery boxes then waited to see where they went. They ended up in the house of the person who delivered the newspaper..
Happens here in London, UK. Amazon like to leave packages on my doorstep. Stolen every single time. To fix this they appear to have left instructions to "sling it over the back fence" or "jam it in the letterbox and destroy it".
That seems rather risky. I see lots of people rummaging through recycling cans on the street for the recycling value of the cans and bottles. Or someone could just throw a big gross thing on top of it.
I was amazed to learn that the USPS leaves packages on the door step, always. I mean this was a surprise to me because I grew up in the UK where said package would be stolen in short order, and then for the past 20 years living in the US I was in either apartments where there is no doorstep, or out in the wilds where the postman doesn't come within a few miles of your doorstep. I'd never been in a situation where the post office were able to leave a package on my stoop. But now we have an office location in town with a bone fide door step, right on a busy street and they leave packages in plain sight. When I expressed surprise I was told this is standard procedure for the USPS everywhere. I have a security camera pointed at the door step and so far no thief has stepped forward to have their picture taken...
This reminds me of a segment on Top Gear (the BBC TV show for those unaware) in which Jeremy Clarkson is lamenting that having a pickup truck in the UK would result in your belongings in the bed being stolen when stopped.
For what it's worth, I have ordered many online items (100+) over the last several years, and every one has been left on my doorstep by USPS or UPS. The only time I have had a package stolen was during a summer I spent in a notably dangerous area. The rest of the orders were safely delivered, in my case to a college-town apartment or a suburban family home.
Fair enough, but counterpoint: I live in a vintage building on a busy street, and the USPS carriers never leave packages on our doorstep. Each apartment has put up a little sign on their front door indicating how they'd prefer packages left (on the stairs, out back, whatever), which the postal workers all adhere to.
I see them walking past my window, from the front of the building to the back, all the time.
I got dire warnings from my neighbor when I bought my house that package thieves were on the loose (along with warnings about coyotes and heroin addicts). So far the packages have been fine and I haven't seen any coyotes or heroin addicts either, so hopefully my run of good luck continues.
I mean I'm sure all that stuff is going on somewhere, but, irrational as it may be, as long as I personally haven't encountered it I don't feel compelled to take any particular countermeasures.
I would never allow them to leave my package at neighbors house and if they do I would write a note to the support. This is my package and I want it delivered to me. I can't understand what is the problem of rescheduling the delivery for the time that suits me the best. Or scheduling the best time in the first place. Why Japan can do this? Even Japanese Post (not only a courier) allows you to define when you'd like to get your delivery and they deliver even at 21:00. Why other countries can't follow is beyond me.
For most people, it's more convenient to go to their neighbour and collect the package right away than it is to try and reschedule a delivery for some other time.
The bigger and more dense the city, the more hostile and private the neighbors.
I take packages for all my 10 neighbors, they are happy with it, but we live in a civilised city and all our delivery drivers are extremely competent and nice
I have never noticed this in my life. Center City is where neighbors know each other and actually help each other out. The suburbs have always been hostile and anonymous.
I went to college in Minneapolis and I knew all my neighbors and most of the homeless people. When I visit my friends in the suburbs they have no idea who their neighbors are unless there is open hostility. Look at Senator Paul.
I just notice that their is a HUGE bias to bash cities all the time. When you live in a city you actually get to know and live with a wide diversity of people, hence the normal more liberal bias. My father inlaw almost dies inside anytime he visits us and can't ever say anything positive about the city (They live in the country in West Virginia and he is a successful contractor). He thinks everyone is on drugs and lives off of $45,000 for the Government. No one knows how much the working poor works these days and West Virginia's drug problem is 10x that of my city. It's just a anti-city bias.
Wow, yea, some of these responses are crazy! If I had those neighbors I'd GTFO and move to a sane neighborhood. Next time someone accuses me of being a NIMBY because I don't want low cost crack housing built next door to me I'm going to remember this thread.
You ever hear Merle Haggard's "Big City"? It's a classic and the story behind its composition is almost too good to be true. The story goes, he was on tour and his bus driver just lost it at some point and said "I'm tired of this dirty old city! As far as I'm concerned, I'd rather be somewhere in the middle of Montana!" and Merle Haggard was struck with inspiration and wrote the whole song (of which the thing about the dirty old city and Montana is a motif) almost on the spot. Then he supposedly shared the songwriting royalties with the bus driver.
"The song was inspired by a remark by Dean Holloway, Haggard's lifelong friend and tour bus driver. At the end of a packed two-day recording session at Britannia Studios in Los Angeles, Haggard went to the bus to check on Holloway, who had been minding the bus, and asked him how he was doing. Holloway responded, "I hate this place. I'm tired of this dirty old city." Haggard immediately saw inspiration, and began writing the song, based on Holloway's remark, on a nearby pad of paper. "I'm tired of this dirty old city" became the song's first line. Haggard decided that the chorus should include the narrator talking about moving elsewhere, and asked Holloway where he would rather be, to which Holloway responded, "If it were up to me, it'd be somewhere in the middle of damn Montana." "Somewhere in the middle of Montana" became part of the chorus. Haggard rushed back into the studio, where the band was packing up, and told them to unpack their instruments in order to record one last song; the band recorded the song in one take, with no rehearsal.
Haggard credited Holloway as a co-writer, entitling him to half the royalties for the song, which amounted to around half a million dollars for Holloway."
When I was a student I lived in a large student apartment building. Packages were regularly delivered to whoever was walking into the door at that moment or the first doorbell to answer, if the intended recipient was not home.
Then the person who got the package posted on an internal facebook page: "I've got a package for 304 in 605" and they would be collected.
The system worked perfectly and there were a lot of packages, I guess many potentially worth a lot.
Most neighbours round me are also out during the day.
The only 24/7 occupied house is across the road, and it's the local drug-dealing hangout, so that's a nope as they'll either fence the package or try to snort or inject it.
Most of the transient 'residents' wouldn't remember the day of the week, let alone whether they had been gifted a package.
No you have to Opt In. You write a note to leave the package at my neighbor. That is the best option for people living in cities without an Amazon Locker. My grocery store has a UPS locker system for pickup but they don't allow you to send your Amazon packages there.
I suspect this is a combination of delivery services being simultaneously an oligopoly and heavily unionized. The combination of little competition and high wages makes it difficult to justify going the extra mile.
For what it's worth I know at least UPS has a premium service where you can schedule your delivery to a specific time during the day.
The thing is, in Japan it's nothing special. Even post office would do it. More, if you wish they would lleave the package in nearest combini so you can collect on the way back from work. Combini is a convenient store available almost on every corner. It's just their customer service is on a different level. Keeping good reputation is important for them, event if sometimes cost a little bit more.
My biggest beef is that I can't seem to get UPS/Fedex/USPS to just open my front porch door and leave my packages inside anymore. My philosophy is to generally never lock anything if I can help it; if somebody wants to get in and steal my (largely worthless) stuff, all a lock is going to do is mean they kick down my door and then I have to replace the stuff AND the door.
So instead I end up with packages left out in the rain, or slung in the snowbank during a blizzard that I don't find until spring comes...
I can’t remember the last time I’ve signed for a UPS package. When we had a regular driver, back when I was racing bikes, he once said “you’re supposed to sign for this ($10 package), but I’ve dropped thousands of dollars worth of bike parts on your doorstep and you haven’t complained yet.” True, in seventeen years we’ve never had a package stolen from our doorstep here in Redmond, WA.
That said, I work from home on iPhone delivery day. Were I a thief, that would be just way too easy, knowing the day of delivery and an approximation of what the package looks like.
Does no one sign up for UPS My Choice? Very handy. I have them leave packages at the UPS store down the street from me pretty frequently, pre-sign, etc. They do all of the things they don't for you.
I think home package drop off vaults are going to grow in popularity. Getting one at my office to handle late package deliveries was really useful.
Does this usually work with any Twitter account? Even a new one with no followers? Or do you need to have followers or fame or something for the tweet to carry any weight in practice?
There should be a service where you can rent the use of a Russian troll twitter account to make customer service request tweets, taking advantage of its millions of crazy alt-right wing nut job follower parrots who will mindlessly retweet your message and threaten to boycott the company and make death threats and show up with automatic weapons at the offices of the company that didn't give you good customer service. Just mention the customer service rep's name was "Hillary".
I’ve only got a couple hundred followers and rarely tweet and it’s been massively effective a couple of times for me. It helps to work in a popular or trending hashtag for good measure.
Any account. I’ve had good experiences reaching out on Twitter to Comcast, TMO, and airlines. I complained about having a problem, but also was not rude.
I've found that the inverse is true. If you are polite, Royal Mail will ignore you. If you call them thieving bastards, you'll have your refund sorted by the end of the day.
Hard disagree on the 2nd point. It seems that needing to reach out to social media to get normal business processes to work has become the default.
Now I need to actively be registered on N social media sites and harass the company in question until such time as they bother to respond, instead of having just had to connect with the company and directly resolve the issue.
I’ve had similar experiences with delivery companies (UPS seems to be the worst for me) over the years, and sort of just accept now that this happens from time to time. After all, the “fucknut idiot” delivery driver is just a person who can makes mistakes like the rest of us. If they don’t deliver on time, I reach out to customer service and ask for a refund (works well, if you can put up with the hassle of calling)
Making a mistake is getting the house next to yours. You know, making good-faith attempts that are a mistake. This wasn't a mistake. At all.
"Making mistakes" and malicious compliance of literally driving by and not stopping are 2 very different things. Shows up on their GPS they were "there".
I was at the house, sitting on my screened-in porch when DHL 'updated' to "Sorry you didnt sign". First, I said no sig needed. Then they didn't even bother to stop. I WATCHED THEM DRIVE BY. They didn't do their fucking job.
I ordered some circuit boards from Seeedstudio (good and cheap board fab, btw). I paid extra for DHL to get them quicker.
I submitted my boards to Seeed (Shenzhen) October 10. On Oct 16, said they were shipped to DHL. Awesome. Told DHL via their webapp and text messaging that "I do not need signature. Drop at doorstep". 10 boards were a whopping $5. Guaranteed delivery by 19'th, cause thats what I paid extra for.
So what does the fucknut idiot delivery driver do? "Did not deliver because no signature". I was fucking furious. I called their support line, and "we'll try to deliver tomorrow" ~~~ for WHAT? The idiot to say AGAIN that no signature, did not deliver? Uh huh, tell them to get their ass back right now and drop it off. Their claim was "They can only ask". BTW, their systems noted both my previous "I dont need signature" authorization, along with the text message responses saying the same.
Well, it turns out that Twitter is good for other things, like complaining loudly. So I reached out to the 4 contacts linked to DHL, and included my package#. I got one of their US VP's on there. Wouldn'tya know, they had the authority to tell the idiot driver to get back and deliver.
Who knows when I would have gotten my boards. But I certainly know how to bypass 'consumer firewalls'. I brought Seeed into it as well, by mentioning them with DHL. Evidently, squeezing the B2B may have worked, I really don't know.