The best and most useful posts are made when you have a passion for what you write... Or you have some other "strong emotion" about the topic you want to write about... or you are just frustrated by something and you want to vent... 🙂 All these reasons are valid and can make your post much more valuable than writing "without" emotions... This post was born from frustration, but I hope that, by the end of it, I will finish it on a positive note, bringing back value to our chain and the importance of having a place like this!
Created on Canva.com, using my photo as a background
First of all, let's lay out the main topic, and later on, I will bring it back home... Unfortunately, in the days of the Internet, we have to deal with delivery companies... Yes, we have many things online, but we can't eat bits and bytes; we need clothes to wear, broken things to replace, etc. When you deal with delivery companies on rare occasions, you can get lucky and have a positive experience, but when you deal with them more often, the "lucky" aspect dissolves, and you see the real picture!
In the last year or so, I had at least 3 bad experiences with delivery companies, and I would like to share them with you... Why? Well, if we don't share our negative experiences, they will "get away with them", or they will not be aware of the wrong practices in the company... The feedback is the most important information a company could get! Sometimes it hurts to deal with it, but if you want to grow and survive, you need to improve! It's like a wake-up call!
Correos - Official Spanish Post Office
I would say that they are the reason why all the other delivery companies were born... If the Post Office did a good job, we wouldn't have dozens (or hundreds) of other companies... I do understand the pressure, low salaries, budget, etc., but still... You can do better... You had a freakin' monopoly on deliveries in the past! That was (and is) probably the main issue... When you have a monopoly, you tend to lower your quality to extract more profits...
Personal experience - Last year, after the Hive meetup in Graz, Austria, my wife got a reward after solving the WorldMapPin "puzzle game"... The package with the reward was sent by the ordinary post office from Germany... Around 3 MONTHS AFTER sending the package, after multiple checks at the post office directly, my wife received a call from them with the following information:
"Your package has been ready for pickup at the local Post Office for over a MONTH! If you don't come to pick it up in the next 24 hours, we will send it back!"
GIF by Klipy.com
In that MONTH, we WERE there at the Post Office to ask about the package!!! Anyways, long story short, we went there and picked it up... Only 3 months travelling from Germany to Spain...
Recently, I wanted to give them a second chance by sending a package with them... I went to the website, clicked on the register button, got the confirmation code in my email, and went to the website to confirm it... and then I got this:
Translation is not needed... There was an additional link inside the email where you can check if the message is "officially" from them... I tried that, and they didn't even recognize their own email as valid! Long story short, it's impossible to register on their website!
GIF by Klipy.com
I had another experience with them, which resulted in goods being returned to the sender, as I didn't get ANY notice that my package had arrived or where to pick it up... While the sender paid for door-to-door service!
DHL
I think that DHL is probably one of the most popular (if not the most) delivery companies in the world... The fastest, the most reliable, the most secure, the most professional... That should be true? Before the HiveOpenDays in Alicante, Spain, @tibfox sent me two big boxes by DHL with a promotional stand, the banner, and flags for the event...
There were 2 boxes; they separated them, and the delivery took place on 2 separate days... Despite having the address, the email, the telephone number, and paid door-to-door delivery, they didn't even bother to do it! If I didn't have a tracking code, I wouldn't even know when it arrived or where to pick it up... Lucky for me, I have a car and the large box could fit in it, but imagine if they did something similar with someone who doesn't! Or someone who is elderly and can't lift heavy things?
The same thing happened with the 2nd box, but luckily, the guys in the local shop, which works as a DHL pick-up point, were very professional... They took my phone number when I picked up the first box, and they called me to inform me when the 2nd arrived...
All in all, very unprofessional service from DHL that I didn't expect at all! Probably because I forgot about another delivery by them a few years ago when I ordered a computer chair over the Internet... The same thing happened... Delivery should have been door-to-door, but they just didn't bother... I had to pick it up... I suppose the pattern was the same... Heavy boxes aren't delivered to the door; you have to go for them... The irony...
Exactly THAT KIND of delivery SHOULD be done to the client's door!!!
GLS and EuroSender
Well, this is an inspirational and still ongoing experience, as it motivated me to write this "masterpiece"... This story has no ending (yet), but I have to share the current state and behavior of these two companies...
Back to those 2 Hive boxes... 😃 Now it's time to send them back to Tibfox, to Germany... If you want to send something from Spain, you should be aware that these international delivery companies have DIFFERENT PRICES in different countries... So, for example, what costs 50 EUR in Germany could easily cost over 350 EUR in Spain with the same company... After a long search, I (we) decided to go with Eurosender, which is a 3rd party company doing the logistics and finding the best route (and price) for your delivery needs... They manage orders and then outsource the work to delivery companies...
As those 2 boxes are larger in dimensions, I had to go with Eurosender, as they only offered the service at a relatively fair price... After registering an account, entering the details of the boxes, delivery address, and everything else, I PAID for the service in advance... It was done last Thursday around noon... During the process of entering all the details, the pickup date moved from Friday to Monday next week (this week)... Bummer!
Monday came; I got a notice that the parcel would be picked up by GLS during the day... Around 2 PM, I received a call from them, and the lady asked me about the dimensions of the package(s)... After telling her, I got an answer: "Huh... I will call you back..."
Not exactly what I wanted to hear... Of course, she didn't call me at all... After checking the tracking link, I saw that the order status was "cancelled"! 😱 I called back the same number to ask for more details... The lady responded and said that there was no space in the van to pick it up and that they would do it the next day (Tuesday)... Of course, they didn't do it, and here we are on Wednesday...
As I learned from my previous dealings with bad service, you should always try to reach someone at the top to get your things resolved... So, instead of calling GLS (where you can talk with an AI assistant ONLY), I sent an email to EuroSender to ask what's happening... Just a few minutes after my email, my order was "rebooked"!
Here comes the WTF GIF again
I did reply to the email where they told me about rebooking, to release my frustration with their bad service... Instead of reaching the destination after one week, we are still in the "pre-phase", with packages waiting in my room to be picked up...
Proper Use of Hive Blockchain
On my wife's suggestion, I wrote this post... Not just to rant about these ridiculously irresponsible delivery companies, but to showcase the IMPORTANCE OF HIVE!
Just recently, I found out that some airline companies have blacklists of passengers they don't want on their flights... Knowing how some people can be idiots, that's kind of understandable, but... You don't have to be an idiot to get on those blacklists... You can get there by sharing your (possibly negative) experience with an airline company... So, in a way, that's how they deal with "whistleblowers", or those who share unpleasant truths about them!
It's not that radical on traditional social networks or review websites, but many negative comments are deleted, and positive ones are highlighted or promoted... It's like with those "self-called influencers" where you can see only a short part of "the paradise" on camera, while rolling in the mud off-camera...
That's where HIVE comes in! I realized that if I share my experience somewhere else, it could be deleted and hidden, but if I share it here on HIVE, it will stay up forever! Everyone will be able to find this post! F$%# that message where the company asks you to share "more details about your issue" in a private message! Nope! Sharing with everyone is the way to do it, and sharing on an immutable social blockchain is a proper way to do it!
Thank you for your time.
--ph--
👉 Vote for Liotes HIVE Witness HERE 👈
Don't forget to follow, reblog, and browse my Hive page to stay connected with all the great stuff!
