Lately I’ve had a few interesting experiences having things delivered to my house.  I’ve had one great experience, and a few pretty lame ones.  I thought I’ld break em down after reading one bloggers great experience with DHL on Consumerist.

Laura’s a student again (a Junior now), and asked for a laptop for her classes.  I was very (happily) surprised to find that Dell‘s prices on laptops have come way down from last I recall.  I was able to get her a good Inspiron for around $600 (With WindowsXP even!), and have it delivered to the house.  I paid extra for the 2-day shipping, and was surprised to find out it was shipped via DHL.  A few days later (on a Wednesday night), I got an email from Dell saying that the laptop had shipped, and that we could expect delivery sometime between the following Monday and Wednesday.  They sent me a tracking number, and DHL showed they picked it up on Thursday morning, with an expected delivery of Monday.  Laura and I were excited, but then shocked and disheartened when she came home from work around 3:00 Friday and we found a note on the door for a failed delivery attempt!  We were happy to see they tried on Friday, but now we had to live with the fact that the Laptop was in the local warehouse all weekend!  I called the central office, and after a bit of routing, they said they would put a note in the log to call us when the delivery driver returned to the station so we could go pick it up.  Impressivly, they called the house less than 10 minutes later from the local dispatch, saying it would be available any time after 6.  Then, to really knock our socks off, the delivery guy made an inpromptu second delivery attempt before returning to the local station, giving us our laptop.  This was simply fantastic and I really wish I could get more stuff delivered from DHL.

Now, for the not-so-impressive.  Twice now I’ve had items delivered via UPS, the de-facto standard in home delivery.  One time it was a bracelet from a small jewelry & engraving company.  They never sent me a tracking number, but I had ordered it & paid the extra for 2-day shipping, hoping to get it before our Saturday Anniversary.  I was frustrated and upset Friday night at 6:00 when it hadn’t shown up.  Then, when I stepped outside to set the trash out, I found the small box sitting in our driveway in front of the garage door.  The driver never rang the bell, knocked, or anything indicating he was there.  Just today I had a small package delivered from ThinkGeek via UPS.  I’ve been watching it carefully via the web interface ever since they sent the tracking number.  I noticed this morning that the website finally updated to show that at 2:30 yesterday it arrived in Jackson, and at 11:30pm it had a "Destination Scan", whatever that means.  Beyond that it never updated.  I waited anxiously this afternoon for the package, constantly checking all the doors to see when it would appear.  Finally, around 6:30, Laura opened the front door to close the garage and found the (slightly crushed) package sitting on our doorstep.  Again, no doorbell, no knock, nothing.  After he delivered it, the website finally updated to show "Out for Delivery" and "Delivered".  Both their Website & their customer service stink.

So, that’s my story.  I’m a definate DHL fanboy now, and UPS is quickly getting on my bad side.  Anyone know any good way to get UPS to shape up?
[tag:dhl][tag:ups][tag:package][tag:shipping]

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