Many readers shared their disappointing experience with DHL with the ombuds team.
Such as: “We had a mirror in the bathroom. DHL said it delivered the package to our doorstep. We were home, I had surgery on my leg and was sitting on the couch watching the front door. I could see the front door. Three weeks later, someone knocked on the door and found our mirror on her doorstep. She had come home from a vacation. Like those weeks, our package has been there. We lived at number 65, this lady at 85. On the other side of the island. Nothing was done with our complaint. We were sent with a bunch of sticks in the cane…”
Ewout Blaauw, spokesperson for DHL, discussed the complaints from readers and our questions in detail. This is his reaction that we almost completely take into account:
You don’t really come out well on comparison sites like trustpilot and the like. How do you see that?
“From our own experience with customer experience research, we know how difficult it is to correctly estimate and assess customers’ perception of parcel delivery. ‘Delivery’ is a service to which very different and growing expectations are linked, and it is also a profession that is also developing very much. In practice, ‘not going well’ also often means: ‘different from what I would have expected’, or ‘would rather have it’. We are therefore developing all kinds of services at a rapid pace to better meet those expectations. In addition, delivery is the only tangible moment when shopping online and is the first focus of attention when expectations are not met. Even if it eventually turns out that not with the carrier, but elsewhere in the process of online ordering – processing, preparing for shipment, labeling and administration at the web shop and other intermediaries – something did not go quite right or went differently than expected. In our experience, almost every case also has another side. Without shunning our responsibility, it is relevant to keep this context in mind.”
What actual numbers are you talking about?
“DHL delivers 260 million parcels in the Netherlands every year. On most days, therefore, around 1 million packages.
That is a growth of 100 percent within two years.
In 0.38% of the cases there is some delay due to delay or misunderstanding about the place and time of delivery.
It goes without saying that the cases where things really go wrong are not justifiable. Although the final number of packages that go wrong is an extremely small percentage, at least one is too many. In those cases, our customer service is ready to lend a helping hand. This often has to be done in consultation with the webshop, which, after all, has made the agreements with the recipient and is also the person who has given the transport order from a legal point of view.
DHL has a customer service department that employs 300 people. They handle 2.4 million questions on an annual basis. Approximately 1 million concerns complaints, mismatch of expectations and misunderstandings, all of which are for the most part resolved satisfactorily.
Despite the doubling of the number of packages, the relative number of contacts with our customer service is decreasing; that means there are relatively fewer questions.
In recent years, DHL has invested heavily in the Netherlands in further improving its services; to name a few developments:
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A delivery app with proactive track & trace information
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Delivery in time windows
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Notification of exact delivery time on delivery day
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Intervention options: change delivery options until the day
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Delivery at ‘appointed place’
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Specify default delivery preferences
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6-day delivery, including evening
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3,750 service points and 140 CityHubs close to the recipients
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With 1500 electric buses, the largest electric fleet in the Netherlands.
“With a further scaling up of our investment agenda to a level of 350 million in the next 3 years, we are working on further expanding the capacity, quality, sustainability and digitization of our network and the service we provide with it. These are developments with which we want to continue to meet the expectations of our customers and recipients and which should also limit the chance of misunderstandings and errors.”
Again, without wishing to detract from the justified complaints, for which we apologize, we would like to finally break a lance for all the people who work hard for DHL every day. DHL is not only growing along with the market, but DHL’s market share is also growing considerably, and is now about 40 percent. About 12,500 people are busy every day in sorting centers and on the road to deliver packages neatly according to appointment, under sometimes difficult and difficult circumstances (think of corona). DHL does this for the most part with its own deliverers and with Service Partners, who have a nice and good job with good employment conditions. They do this with the intention of serving the receivers as well as possible. DHL also pays a lot of attention to sustainability: where online shopping certainly does not emit more CO2 than physical shopping, we are making our activities more sustainable at a rapid pace.”
We had another interesting response from a reader: ‘If a delivery person does not deliver the package on the first day, but the delivery person is paid twice for his work the next day/ Poor delivery is therefore a revenue model for the delivery person’.
,,The majority of the deliverers are simply employed by DHL and therefore do not get paid per package.” So much for DHL.
(Read more below the photo)
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If a delivery service does not deliver a package, you can submit a complaint as the addressee. You can do this with the delivery service, but it is especially useful to raise the problem with the sender. Especially if that sender is a large organization such as Bol.com. The sender instructs the delivery service to deliver the package. If an online retailer receives complaints about the delivery on a regular basis, it can decide to switch to another delivery service.
A number of readers informed us that they have expressed their complaints to bol.com. Joost Morel, spokesperson for bol.com responds to questions.
Are you aware that there are customers who ask you to do something about the delivery service?
,,We want to improve every day and we take the wishes of our customers very seriously. We regularly receive messages from our customer service about the delivery of parcels and we also collect information from our customers with Net Promoter Score measurements. We will of course discuss this during the conversations we regularly have with our carriers.”
How do you experience the cooperation with DHL?
“We discuss this with the carriers who deliver our packages. DHL has been delivering packages from bol.com for years and we discuss our cooperation in the regular meetings we have with each other.”
As the selling party, you are responsible for ensuring that a package is properly delivered. There are people who are willing to pay a euro more for the delivery if that also pays the deliverers better. How do you see this?
“Bol.com wants to make everyday life easier for its customers and offer customers the best shopping experience. This also means that customers can count on fast and flexible delivery and that all packages are properly delivered to our customers by the carriers we work with. Driving on without ringing the doorbell is not the way our parcels should be delivered by the parcel deliverers.
With regard to the remuneration of parcel deliverers: bol.com attaches great importance to good employment practices. We therefore expect the delivery services that deliver our packages to follow the same company standards and values. This concerns, among other things, the remuneration policy and good working conditions. For example, we think it is desirable that deliverers earn a decent wage in accordance with the collective labor agreement and are not paid per package delivered. In addition, the delivery routes must be feasible within a normal working day. We always emphasize this in the contact we regularly have with carriers. In general, these carriers have been delivering packages from bol.com for years and we have a good relationship with them in which we also discuss these kinds of matters with each other.”
(Read more below the photo)
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Not only readers who had complaints about the parcel delivery sent the ombuds team e-mails. Delivery drivers also responded. For example with: ‘How often does it happen that people don’t hear the bell! Are they sitting in the garden with a cup of coffee or something. That can also be said.’ Or with: ‘I love my job, I feel like a free bird, but a slightly higher salary is quite welcome. We work hard for it. But I do not recognize myself in the story that I deliberately do not deliver a package. I don’t get any extra money because of it. That’s a myth.”
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