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DHL/Dell and signature delivery

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iceage

Member
Joined
Oct 23, 2004
Location
Charlotte, NC
I recently purchased a Dell E1505 laptop to have as a portable back-up rig. Dell uses DHL to deliver their laptop shipments and requires a signature upon delivery. I thought, "Thats good. I won't be home when they attempt delivery as I'll be at work. I'll let them attempt delivery and then go pick it up from the facility."

On the morning of delivery day, I track and the shipment and its on the truck. Fine. Then I track right before lunch, and it says "1:19pm. Delivered" and underneath it shows a scrawl that doesn't resemble my signature at all. I thought WTH? I call DHL and they say I signed for it. I explain to them I have 15 witnesses that I am at work and my wife is also at work. They say they'll "investigate" - never heard back from DHL on that. I call DHL again later and I find out they'll allow a neighbor to sign for my $1400 laptop. WTH again? :temper: Someone could be walking around my house, claim they live there, and sign for my laptop. The name that was shown as signature on the website could have been pulled from the box. DHL also tells me I'll have to get Dell to file the missing/stolen package complaint. Oh, thats just great. That means I'll end up dealing with 2 layers of bureaucracy trying to get a new laptop sent to me.

I drive up to my house and its nowhere to be found outside. At this point I'm really hot. :mad: I head inside and its on the dining room table. My wife found it outside on the doorstep. Its a fairly large box with "DELL" printed on the side, sitting on my easily-seen-from-the-street porch.

After speaking with my neighbors, my conclusion is the driver scrawled the name on the box onto his signature pad and left it on the porch. I'm dying to call Dell and DHL to let them both have it:

1) Dell - for having an idiotic policy of letting DHL let neighbors sign for packages. My neighbors are decent, at least right now. What if I had thieves for neighbors?

2) DHL - your driver forged my signature and left a $1400 laptop on my doorstep. A dishonest person would have claimed it stolen, presented evidence noone could have been home, and gotten 2 laptops for the price of one. I'm not a dishonest person, which is fortunate for Dell/DHL.

My wife doesn't want me to call DHL and get this guy fired. What do you think I should do?
 
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Who knows what really happened?:shrug:

I wouldn't be calling DHL until I could prove what did happen. Was it the driver? Could be but what if it wasn't. You don't want to get him/her into trouble.

Chew on it for a day and then reexamine it.
 
In most cases, the signature policy is purely up to DHL. Dell can request a signature, but it's up to DHL how they handle it. So the fact that DHL allows neighbors to sign for the package isn't something that you should be mad at Dell for.

It's a dumb policy regardless. I would personally love to see a system where package recipients get their ID scanned, so that there is a photo record of who accepted the package... but I don't think privacy advocates would be thrilled with that plan.
 
This isn't Dell's fault. Its purely DHL. I would call them up. Don't let this happen again, cause if you ever get something from DHL, you got the same guy delivering it...
 
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