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This is SOO true. I ordered some circuit boards from Seeedstudio (good and cheap board fab, btw). I paid extra for DHL to get them quicker. I submitted my boa

This is SOO true. I ordered some circuit boards from Seeedstudio (good and cheap board fab, btw). I paid extra for DHL to get them quicker. I submitted my boards to Seeed (Shenzhen) October 10. On Oct 16, said they were shipped to DHL. Awesome. Told DHL via their webapp and text messaging that "I do not need signature. Drop at doorstep". 10 boards were a whopping $5. Guaranteed delivery by 19'th, cause thats what I paid extra for. So what does the fucknut idiot delivery driver do? "Did not deliver because no signature". I was fucking furious. I called their support line, and "we'll try to deliver tomorrow" ~~~ for WHAT? The idiot to say AGAIN that no signature, did not deliver? Uh huh, tell them to get their ass back right now and drop it off. Their claim was "They can only ask". BTW, their systems noted both my previous "I dont need signature" authorization, along with the text message responses saying the same. Well, it turns out that Twitter is good for other things, like complaining loudly. So I reached out to the 4 contacts linked to DHL, and included my package#. I got one of their US VP's on there. Wouldn'tya know, they had the authority to tell the idiot driver to get back and deliver. Who knows when I would have gotten my boards. But I certainly know how to bypass 'consumer firewalls'. I brought Seeed into it as well, by mentioning them with DHL. Evidently, squeezing the B2B may have worked, I really don't know.

mcv 9y ago
Public shaming seems to get you the best customer service. We need to use that more often.
- animal531 9y ago
  Hard disagree on the 2nd point. It seems that needing to reach out to social media to get normal business processes to work has become the default. Now I need to actively be registered on N social media sites and harass the company in question until such time as they bother to respond, instead of having just had to connect with the company and directly resolve the issue.
  - icebraining 9y ago
    "We need to use it more" doesn't mean we should have to use it more, just that's the most effective avenue we do have left.
throwaway613834 9y ago
Does this usually work with any Twitter account? Even a new one with no followers? Or do you need to have followers or fame or something for the tweet to carry any weight in practice?
- manyxcxi 9y ago
  I’ve only got a couple hundred followers and rarely tweet and it’s been massively effective a couple of times for me. It helps to work in a popular or trending hashtag for good measure.
- matwood 9y ago
  Any account. I’ve had good experiences reaching out on Twitter to Comcast, TMO, and airlines. I complained about having a problem, but also was not rude.
  - cjsuk 9y ago
    I've found that the inverse is true. If you are polite, Royal Mail will ignore you. If you call them thieving bastards, you'll have your refund sorted by the end of the day.
- DonHopkins 9y ago
  There should be a service where you can rent the use of a Russian troll twitter account to make customer service request tweets, taking advantage of its millions of crazy alt-right wing nut job follower parrots who will mindlessly retweet your message and threaten to boycott the company and make death threats and show up with automatic weapons at the offices of the company that didn't give you good customer service. Just mention the customer service rep's name was "Hillary".
  - cat199 9y ago
    Wow, that's a whole new way to play the 6-degrees-of-vladimir-putin game.. kudos to you, kremlin troll account
  - 9y ago
jakub_g 9y ago
I live in France and in the working hours of the delivery guys I'm at work in a different city. I ordered a number of things to my personal address, and the story is typically like: "package delivered" with some strange message from the delivery guy where to find it, or no message at all. Out of the last 3 things I ordered, 2 didn't get to me (I made a claim on Amazon and they reimbursed me, no questions asked - at least), and 1 other was delivered to a shop three streets from my place, and after 2 weeks when no one came to get the thing, a good guy from the shop noticed my phone number on the box and called me. I try to avoid buying physical stuff in the internet now, way too much stress.
- gcp 9y ago
  Believe me, even if you are home 100% of the time, packages will still not get delivered because "nobody was home". IIRC DHL is especially prone to this. I think the drivers try to catch up time or whatever.
  - lostlogin 9y ago
    Wonder if we have it all wrong. If we paid for shipping on receipt there would be motivation to deliver.
    - gcp 9y ago
      Some of the vendors allow you to select the delivery company. I like this. It's pretty hard to get back to a seller and try to explain him the delivery company he is using is potentially scamming, especially as it only affects me (the receiver), not the shipper.
    - cjsuk 9y ago
      In the UK we can get our money back if the goods don't make it into your hands. It's up to the seller / courier to prove otherwise although it's usually a battle arguing with them. Royal Mail delivered a £560 multimeter to the wrong address and to a signature which wasn't mine. Never saw it again. That took a nightmare battle from hell to get sorted.
baldfat 9y ago
I live in a 130,000 person city. UPS will not drop packages off to your neighbor period, even though that is an option on the "Sorry we missed you slip." UPS will not drop package without signature. UPS took 2 weeks to deliver my replacement part for my vacuum. When I see the UPS driver I tell him UPS policy sucks and is anti-city and his response was maybe there were too many packages taken. "I've lived here for 10 years and never had a package taken and this part is $10." United States Postal Service allows drop offs without signatures and dropping off at neighbors. I constantly request that my packages are not mailed by UPS.
- wst_ 9y ago
  I would never allow them to leave my package at neighbors house and if they do I would write a note to the support. This is my package and I want it delivered to me. I can't understand what is the problem of rescheduling the delivery for the time that suits me the best. Or scheduling the best time in the first place. Why Japan can do this? Even Japanese Post (not only a courier) allows you to define when you'd like to get your delivery and they deliver even at 21:00. Why other countries can't follow is beyond me.
  - jstanley 9y ago
    For most people, it's more convenient to go to their neighbour and collect the package right away than it is to try and reschedule a delivery for some other time. Most people don't have hostile neighbours.
    - rurban 9y ago
      The bigger and more dense the city, the more hostile and private the neighbors. I take packages for all my 10 neighbors, they are happy with it, but we live in a civilised city and all our delivery drivers are extremely competent and nice
      - ajeet_dhaliwal 9y ago
        Sounds great, I'm not being sarcastic, it really does, I'm somewhat sick of the 'big city' bs.
Swinx43 9y ago
I have had a similar experience once with UPS. To cut a long story short they really messed up, relabelling someone else's package with my address and this package was payment on delivery, which I paid. Trying to get them to come and pick up the package they relabelled in error and refund me for the payment was an absolute nightmare. Many calls to the call centre and 2 days later I had enough. No amount of asking to speak to a manager or anyone I spoke to managed to resolve the situation. I found the email address of the CEO of UPS on https://www.ceoemail.com/ https://www.ceoemail.com/ and proceeded to write him an email explaining the issue, the effort I have made to try to resolve it as well as the incompetence and inability of the staff to resolve the problem. Note this email was very professional and stuck to the facts, the only emotional bit maybe being me highlighting that I honestly expected better from a company such as UPS. I did not expect anything to happen honestly. However 15 minutes later I received a reply from him saying it will get taken care of. 20 minutes later the manager of the distribution centre that caused the problem gave me a phone call apologising. 2 hours later a driver came to pick up the parcel and refund me the money I paid in error. I received 2 more calls from the distribution manager and that person provided their personal contact number in case I ever have any issues again. I personally do not like going the social media route by default. I would only consider it if I have exhausted all other options and am honestly left with no other choice which seems to be the situation you were in and that is completely understandable. Maybe give the CEO email option a try next time as I believe your success was due to someone high up being forced to recognise your issue. If that then fails I would hit the social media option for sure.
Sean1708 9y ago
> "I do not need signature. Drop at doorstep" Isn't the point of the signature to protect them? You can't just say "I don't need a signature, I promise not to sue you." and expect them to just be ok with that, or have I got the wrong end of the stick here?
- mbrameld 9y ago
  Why not? You say that with some authority, as if it's well known that this option doesn't exist. Why, then, do all the delivery companies give you the mechanism to waive the signature?
- quasse 9y ago
  Some carriers offer that option but it usually seems to waive the (limited) liability they would have had for stolen packages.
- mikeash 9y ago
  Sure you can. Many offer this option officially. For example, when I've ordered iPhones from Apple, they let me "pre-sign" online before delivery, which means the delivery person will drop it off if I'm not home. Of course, the tradeoff is that if your package gets stolen, they're no longer responsible for it, which is why I've never actually done this.
  - crankylinuxuser 9y ago
    Absolutely. If I were ordering bigger ticket items, you can be sure I'd tell them "I want to pick it up at the shipping office". But in my case/story, it was $5 set of PCBs I had fabricated. Shipping was $20 for what amounted to an ePacket. I took the chance of having someone steal them (unlikely) to tell them to just drop it off at my dorrstep (in reality, a screened in porch).
    - mikeash 9y ago
      Yeah, it can be totally reasonable to waive the signature in exchange for assuming liability. Depends on where you live, what you ordered, how you feel that day....
ramzyo 9y ago
I’ve had similar experiences with delivery companies (UPS seems to be the worst for me) over the years, and sort of just accept now that this happens from time to time. After all, the “fucknut idiot” delivery driver is just a person who can makes mistakes like the rest of us. If they don’t deliver on time, I reach out to customer service and ask for a refund (works well, if you can put up with the hassle of calling)
- crankylinuxuser 9y ago
  Making a mistake is getting the house next to yours. You know, making good-faith attempts that are a mistake. This wasn't a mistake. At all. "Making mistakes" and malicious compliance of literally driving by and not stopping are 2 very different things. Shows up on their GPS they were "there". I was at the house, sitting on my screened-in porch when DHL 'updated' to "Sorry you didnt sign". First, I said no sig needed. Then they didn't even bother to stop. I WATCHED THEM DRIVE BY. They didn't do their fucking job.
justinator 9y ago
username checks out.

mcv 9y ago

Public shaming seems to get you the best customer service. We need to use that more often.

animal531 9y ago
Hard disagree on the 2nd point. It seems that needing to reach out to social media to get normal business processes to work has become the default. Now I need to actively be registered on N social media sites and harass the company in question until such time as they bother to respond, instead of having just had to connect with the company and directly resolve the issue.
- icebraining 9y ago
  "We need to use it more" doesn't mean we should have to use it more, just that's the most effective avenue we do have left.

throwaway613834 9y ago

Does this usually work with any Twitter account? Even a new one with no followers? Or do you need to have followers or fame or something for the tweet to carry any weight in practice?

manyxcxi 9y ago
I’ve only got a couple hundred followers and rarely tweet and it’s been massively effective a couple of times for me. It helps to work in a popular or trending hashtag for good measure.
matwood 9y ago
Any account. I’ve had good experiences reaching out on Twitter to Comcast, TMO, and airlines. I complained about having a problem, but also was not rude.
- cjsuk 9y ago
  I've found that the inverse is true. If you are polite, Royal Mail will ignore you. If you call them thieving bastards, you'll have your refund sorted by the end of the day.
DonHopkins 9y ago
There should be a service where you can rent the use of a Russian troll twitter account to make customer service request tweets, taking advantage of its millions of crazy alt-right wing nut job follower parrots who will mindlessly retweet your message and threaten to boycott the company and make death threats and show up with automatic weapons at the offices of the company that didn't give you good customer service. Just mention the customer service rep's name was "Hillary".
- cat199 9y ago
  Wow, that's a whole new way to play the 6-degrees-of-vladimir-putin game.. kudos to you, kremlin troll account
- 9y ago

jakub_g 9y ago

I live in France and in the working hours of the delivery guys I'm at work in a different city. I ordered a number of things to my personal address, and the story is typically like: "package delivered" with some strange message from the delivery guy where to find it, or no message at all. Out of the last 3 things I ordered, 2 didn't get to me (I made a claim on Amazon and they reimbursed me, no questions asked - at least), and 1 other was delivered to a shop three streets from my place, and after 2 weeks when no one came to get the thing, a good guy from the shop noticed my phone number on the box and called me. I try to avoid buying physical stuff in the internet now, way too much stress.

gcp 9y ago
Believe me, even if you are home 100% of the time, packages will still not get delivered because "nobody was home". IIRC DHL is especially prone to this. I think the drivers try to catch up time or whatever.
- lostlogin 9y ago
  Wonder if we have it all wrong. If we paid for shipping on receipt there would be motivation to deliver.
  - gcp 9y ago
    Some of the vendors allow you to select the delivery company. I like this. It's pretty hard to get back to a seller and try to explain him the delivery company he is using is potentially scamming, especially as it only affects me (the receiver), not the shipper.
  - cjsuk 9y ago
    In the UK we can get our money back if the goods don't make it into your hands. It's up to the seller / courier to prove otherwise although it's usually a battle arguing with them. Royal Mail delivered a £560 multimeter to the wrong address and to a signature which wasn't mine. Never saw it again. That took a nightmare battle from hell to get sorted.

baldfat 9y ago

I live in a 130,000 person city. UPS will not drop packages off to your neighbor period, even though that is an option on the "Sorry we missed you slip." UPS will not drop package without signature. UPS took 2 weeks to deliver my replacement part for my vacuum. When I see the UPS driver I tell him UPS policy sucks and is anti-city and his response was maybe there were too many packages taken. "I've lived here for 10 years and never had a package taken and this part is $10." United States Postal Service allows drop offs without signatures and dropping off at neighbors. I constantly request that my packages are not mailed by UPS.

wst_ 9y ago
I would never allow them to leave my package at neighbors house and if they do I would write a note to the support. This is my package and I want it delivered to me. I can't understand what is the problem of rescheduling the delivery for the time that suits me the best. Or scheduling the best time in the first place. Why Japan can do this? Even Japanese Post (not only a courier) allows you to define when you'd like to get your delivery and they deliver even at 21:00. Why other countries can't follow is beyond me.
- jstanley 9y ago
  For most people, it's more convenient to go to their neighbour and collect the package right away than it is to try and reschedule a delivery for some other time. Most people don't have hostile neighbours.
  - rurban 9y ago
    The bigger and more dense the city, the more hostile and private the neighbors. I take packages for all my 10 neighbors, they are happy with it, but we live in a civilised city and all our delivery drivers are extremely competent and nice
    - ajeet_dhaliwal 9y ago
      Sounds great, I'm not being sarcastic, it really does, I'm somewhat sick of the 'big city' bs.

Swinx43 9y ago

I have had a similar experience once with UPS. To cut a long story short they really messed up, relabelling someone else's package with my address and this package was payment on delivery, which I paid. Trying to get them to come and pick up the package they relabelled in error and refund me for the payment was an absolute nightmare. Many calls to the call centre and 2 days later I had enough. No amount of asking to speak to a manager or anyone I spoke to managed to resolve the situation. I found the email address of the CEO of UPS on https://www.ceoemail.com/ https://www.ceoemail.com/ and proceeded to write him an email explaining the issue, the effort I have made to try to resolve it as well as the incompetence and inability of the staff to resolve the problem. Note this email was very professional and stuck to the facts, the only emotional bit maybe being me highlighting that I honestly expected better from a company such as UPS. I did not expect anything to happen honestly. However 15 minutes later I received a reply from him saying it will get taken care of. 20 minutes later the manager of the distribution centre that caused the problem gave me a phone call apologising. 2 hours later a driver came to pick up the parcel and refund me the money I paid in error. I received 2 more calls from the distribution manager and that person provided their personal contact number in case I ever have any issues again. I personally do not like going the social media route by default. I would only consider it if I have exhausted all other options and am honestly left with no other choice which seems to be the situation you were in and that is completely understandable. Maybe give the CEO email option a try next time as I believe your success was due to someone high up being forced to recognise your issue. If that then fails I would hit the social media option for sure.

Sean1708 9y ago

> "I do not need signature. Drop at doorstep" Isn't the point of the signature to protect them? You can't just say "I don't need a signature, I promise not to sue you." and expect them to just be ok with that, or have I got the wrong end of the stick here?

mbrameld 9y ago
Why not? You say that with some authority, as if it's well known that this option doesn't exist. Why, then, do all the delivery companies give you the mechanism to waive the signature?
quasse 9y ago
Some carriers offer that option but it usually seems to waive the (limited) liability they would have had for stolen packages.
mikeash 9y ago
Sure you can. Many offer this option officially. For example, when I've ordered iPhones from Apple, they let me "pre-sign" online before delivery, which means the delivery person will drop it off if I'm not home. Of course, the tradeoff is that if your package gets stolen, they're no longer responsible for it, which is why I've never actually done this.
- crankylinuxuser 9y ago
  Absolutely. If I were ordering bigger ticket items, you can be sure I'd tell them "I want to pick it up at the shipping office". But in my case/story, it was $5 set of PCBs I had fabricated. Shipping was $20 for what amounted to an ePacket. I took the chance of having someone steal them (unlikely) to tell them to just drop it off at my dorrstep (in reality, a screened in porch).
  - mikeash 9y ago
    Yeah, it can be totally reasonable to waive the signature in exchange for assuming liability. Depends on where you live, what you ordered, how you feel that day....

ramzyo 9y ago

I’ve had similar experiences with delivery companies (UPS seems to be the worst for me) over the years, and sort of just accept now that this happens from time to time. After all, the “fucknut idiot” delivery driver is just a person who can makes mistakes like the rest of us. If they don’t deliver on time, I reach out to customer service and ask for a refund (works well, if you can put up with the hassle of calling)

crankylinuxuser 9y ago
Making a mistake is getting the house next to yours. You know, making good-faith attempts that are a mistake. This wasn't a mistake. At all. "Making mistakes" and malicious compliance of literally driving by and not stopping are 2 very different things. Shows up on their GPS they were "there". I was at the house, sitting on my screened-in porch when DHL 'updated' to "Sorry you didnt sign". First, I said no sig needed. Then they didn't even bother to stop. I WATCHED THEM DRIVE BY. They didn't do their fucking job.

justinator 9y ago

username checks out.