For christmas, my parents sent me a little package. A box with some christmas-sy stuff in it. Very nice, very demure. Unfortunately the package got delayed by about a month and only arrived early January. I got a slip from USPS saying they couldn’t reach me and that I can pick it up at the next DHL office.
So I walk the 20min to the office, because taking the subway is only 6min faster and I’d have to pay the train both ways, and walk up to the counter. The guy tells me he needs the slip. I tell him I have the tracking number. He says doesn’t matter, he needs the slip, next customer.
I insisted he should be able to find it with the tracking number or address and that this is how I’ve picked up packages before, finally another staff member of USPS one window over hears the interaction and goes “come over here I’ll help you.” Sure enough, a minute later I hold my package in hand.
Or at least what’s left of it. The box is a USPS box, which my parents from Germany certainly didn’t use to ship this, and there was a tiny sliver of christmas wrapping paper with a shipping label on top of it taped to the top of the box. So the original package must’ve disintegrated, and they could only save a 2”x2” part of the wrapping paper—the part where the original label was attached—and whatever was inside that box. I could hear rattling inside of it, so probably not much left.
I say what do we do now, he said well do you want to accept it, I go yeah I might as well check if anything in there is still whole. So he signs off on it, gives it to me, and puts into the system that the package was “visibly damaged.”
I’m not gonna go into the details of what was sent, but suffice to say, most of the contents were missing or damaged.
So I tell my parents to file a claim. They go to the DHL office in Germany where they sent the package, and they say “we need the box.”
So I call them with a Skype number and they say I need to send the package back. And to try and go to DHL in NYC to get them to send it back for free.
At DHL in NYC they said it’d be $200 to send this box back, and that there was no guarantee I would be reimbursed. I have a trip to Germany coming up, so I go there, and they tell me the same thing. We need the box. The only other option they give me is the DHL phone number again. So once I’m back in Germany I call again, and they tell me “Well it’s too late now <click>” and just hang up on me. I’d been to hell and back for this damn package and he’s telling me I was too late to get this sorted out.
So in a desperate attempt to try all my options, I go back to the USPS office where I picked it up and ask them what to do. They give me the USPS phone number. After calling that number, it tells me to bring the package back into the office where I picked it up. So I go back the third time, they tell me they can’t accept it, I call the number again, they forward me to DHL, they say they’re not responsible I need to call DHL Germany.
The only person who actually offered any help was the supervisor at that USPS location who tried to file a claim in his system. After putting all the information in, making me fill out forms, he gets an error saying it’s an international package and I had to file a claim myself online first. Trying that of course results in the error message “tracking number not found” because this is a DHL package, not a USPS package.
So I’m out of options. I called that location again to tell them to just toss the package, which they had held for me, but after 3 attempts on 3 different days of calling the office, nobody ever picked up. And I’m definitely not going back 20min each way just to tell them to throw out a box of broken christmas gifts.
The last thing I want to mention is the second experience I had at the USPS window. Another employee who tried to get me to leave without helping me. After her supervisor had given me the forms to fill out, I asked her if she could get him back to the window so that I could get him the paperwork. “He left” she said. He had gone out the front door. I look at the door, tell her he certainly didn’t, and that I would’ve seen him leave. We kept arguing about this for about 10min until the supervisor finally showed up himself without getting called. “Oh I guess he didn’t leave.”
The only thing I hate more than DHL’s fraudulent business practices that cheated me out of a 70€ shipping fee plus a 200€ package insurance are the two USPS employees at the tribeca location. This whole thing took about 2 months of my life and I got nothing and am out of options. Guess I’ll use UPS next time.