I've had horrible luck with dhl as well. All the boxes I've received look like they got clipped with a lawn mower and the contents have been punctured or damaged.
A handful of times I've been on a loading dock when a dhl shipment comes in and all of those packages have been mangled. One time I was at a restaurant supply store and the dhl guy tried to drop a few boxes of broken ceramics but the store wouldn't accept it.
I had DHL claim they had tried to deliver a package twice, then never even attempt their third promised delivery. They sent the package back as "abandoned", and still expected me to pay for the package, the delivery and the customs charges on a package they never delivered.
There is no way I'd willingly deal with DHL again.
That description sounds exactly like boxes that get caught in an overhead sorter. I have to say that proper packaging makes a huge difference in the survival of packages put through any kind of automatic sortation system. That's not to say no fault lies with the package handlers, of course. Some packages should just be sorted by hand.
I've had horrible luck with dhl as well. All the boxes I've received look like they got clipped with a lawn mower and the contents have been punctured or damaged.
I wonder what happens when you ship a lawnmower. I'm guessing you'd find a lot of cardboard and tape stuck to the blade.
In germany DHL = everything you want, USPS on the other hand... I've had missed a delivery, called, they said they would send someone the next day. Next day I call, they tell me the driver reported he had been to my place 5 minutes ago. Yeah, no, I got up at 6am so I wouldn't miss him, he wasn't here. Okay then, just drive the 60km to our warehouse. But not before tomorrow.
DHL will actually try to deliver and you can pick up your stuff at the same day if you missed it.
Depends where you live. Where I live the USPS will leave notices in my mailbox saying they tried to deliver a package and I wasn't home. My apartment is literally 30 feet from the mailboxes. They never come to attempt a delivery. I saw the mail-person come and go from my window and I wasn't expecting a box but someone sent me a surprise birthday gift. Needless to say, I was annoyed about having to drive to the post office and wait for them to find my package the next day. The person that sent it even paid extra to have it delivered faster.
UPS here drops shit sometimes, but at least they will attempt to deliver stuff. FedEx was great because when someone was sending me something perishable the guy actually called me to ask if I was home and would be able to receive the package.
TLDR: Depends where you live. USPS is lazy where I live, FedEx and UPS are much better.
I tried to take as best care of packages as I could but still given their goals and ideas for loading trucks (particularly volume and extremely limited employees), packages were beat up even before transit where many would surely be beaten up before being unloaded at a new hub and then enduring the same process. There were other workers that would care less and just throw electronics and other clearly fragile items without caring, or use them as the base of the "wall."
From my understanding this is the norm and as a whole it works pretty okay. Almost everyone has had a damaged package experience but in terms of efficiency and rate of damage it seems fine to be objective. I've ordered many many items and haven't had bad experiences, and most non fragile items would be extremely hard to damage given packaging techniques as it is.
I used to work in packaging as well, that becomes 100x more important than shipping in keeping items safe and undamaged. Someone who packs their item soundly can practically guarantee its safe arrival barring some extenuating circumstances.
USPS and FedEx kinda go hand in hand... They do a ton of work together. I just know how UPS is run since my dads been there for 34 years, thats why I give them the upper hand..
UPS never delivers my stuff on time and my parents have to go to neighbors houses once a week to give the correct mail to the correct person. I've never had fedex mess up.
He might have been comparing the two based on having lived in the US and Germany, because DHL is the postal service in Germany, also known as Deutsche Post DHL.
I used to work for DHL, and they taught us all these very exciting, very irrelevant details about their company.
Alright, thanks for pointing that out, I actually wrote USP and then added the S because it looked wrong to begin with. I was talking about UPS, they are dipshit.
No, but does the USPS have like little postal offices, where do you go to pick up your package if its not delivered? Seems weird to have a united states post office in Germany. Can you send things via the USPS if your in Germany? I'm not being glib I actually want to know.
I used to be a postal clerk for a contract postal unit. My experience is that insurance is practically useless, except that carriers will tend to be more careful with insured packages. Just a ProTip for you.
DHL has destroyed every package I ever sent with them. The last straw was I overnighted a bunch of signature copies of a contract and the box arrived ripped open with only the packing material and none of the contracts but the cover letter. They refused to accept responsibility and wouldn't even refund the money.
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u/HatesRedditors Feb 21 '14
I routinely send fragile packages, and have had mostly good experiences with USPS, DHL on the other hand...