Irrelevance

The high point of my day was that I got to drink my morning cup of tea without being interrupted.  Ok I was working at the same time but it was uninterrupted.  Glorious.

Of course it didn't last.

At the start of October I posted a number of parcels with DHL to people in the UK.  All but one arrived.  The person receiving said parcel followed it up with DHL in England.  The parcel could not be found and as there was no signature for its delivery, DHL said I would have to open a claim here in Germany.

You can tell this is going to be about Great Customer Service, can't you?

You'd be fumbling around on their website for quite a while before you'd give up.

So I go to my local post office and get the required form.  We gave them all the information we could and said form is filled in and sent off.   

I receive a letter from DHL.  They now need the recipient in England to fill in another form confirming that the parcel has never arrived.  Handily, they've sent this form to me and not to the person they know was meant to receive the parcel.  Because, who knows, if you just make a system obstructive and time consuming enough, maybe people will lose the will to live and you will never have to admit mistakes.

And I'm expecting them to get really fussy because we didn't keep the supermarket receipt with all the items listed on it (you can see some of them on my Blip from the 5th of October).  How long do you keep the receipts from your grocery shopping?  It seems all so unnecessary.  

But I hope they're happy - I wonder how much a single investigation costs?  If it costs 400 Euros to turn down a claim for 50 Euros, well done them.

Oh and they spelled my name wrong on the form they sent me.  Customer Service being really tricky again.

It could have been worse, the company involved could have been DPD, whose motto I'm sure is something like "You sent a parcel with us?  That was really stupid."