Another incident with a courier company

[Shivam]

Recently I was sent 2 consignments through a reputed courier company. The parcels were shipped by air from Bangalore. They landed at Lucknow the very next day after being dispatched from Bangalore.

I found out that they were dispatched from their Lucknow office for Kanpur 2 days back.
After 2 days, that is today, I called up the Kanpur office and they say that the parcels have not been received. According to them every parcel that has reached them has been entered in the records and there are no parcels waiting to be unloaded.

On calling the Lucknow office - they say that the parcels had left the building 2 days back and should have been in the Kanpur office long time back.

Interestingly the distance between the two cities is about 80KM only.

Now I have been ringing up offices in Kanpur and Lucknow of the courier company and both are saying that the parcels should be in the other city !!!

 

[sash]

I bought a Logitech Harmony remote from someone in Ahmedabad. The seller was very prompt and sent it to me the very next day using Blazeflash courier. He gave me the tracking number and the same was updated on Blazeflash website too - the consignment left from Ahmedabad to Bangalore. That's it - it vanished after that. Never received it. The seller kept calling me and the different offices of the courier company for weeks but no trace of it. The seller had also misplaced the receipt so there was not much we could do. Beware of this company.

 

[Shivam]

This incident is from DTDC.

The parcels (5 in number and quite large) seem to have vanished into thin air !!!

 

[sgmane]

Recently I was sent 2 consignments through a reputed courier company. The parcels were shipped by air from Bangalore. They landed at Lucknow the very next day after being dispatched from Bangalore.

.....

Shoot a email/mail to any of these
Venkatesh (Owner DTDC Courier and Cargo Ltd)
Abhishek Chakraborty (Executive Director-DTDC Courier & Cargo Ltd.)

may be [email protected] or [email protected] and/or [email protected] for complaints with all your call details, consign number etc. Most of the times, these calls particularly to customer care will not bore any fruit.

This should work out.
If you are in bangalore - go to their head office and bash them.
This should be the one:
DTDC House,
No. 3, Victoria Road,
Bangalore 560047,
Karnataka,

If you are gentle.. this it time to act "ungentle". A scene creation - will always work.!!

 

[ghatgepatil]

They wouldn't have vanished, but are being transshipped. That's more cause for worry as its going through multiple 'hands'. Pray!!! :sad:

 

[kanwar]

I prefer Gati , i have good experience with them for heavy and large packages.

 

[reubensm]

I have always used Professional Couriers. They are slow with surface shipping and their website takes time to register updates. But they have always delivered. Some of my early shipments have arrived in damaged condition, mostly due to faulty packaging. After these incidents, I made a study of packaging techniques and actually tested some methods with actual probable abuse. After I adopted these new methods, never had any bad experiences with damage during shipping.

 

[Shivam]

My initial courier of choice was DHL/Bluedart. They played around with LPs and damaged a parcel.
Next I started using FirstFlight and Professional couriers. Again ended up with severely damaged parcels with both (the parcels showed signs of impact - something like being thrown from 2 floors high)
I again shifted to Blazeflash and they recently destroyed a beautiful pair of speakers.(There's a thread about this incident in AV lounge)

I have not tried shipping anything by DTDC but with this kind of tracking I will surely try to avoid it.

 

[jbgude]

Sadly, and almost throughout the world- these random fragile parcels are handled by the lowest paid workers. They need to empty out planes/ trains / trucks as fast as possible -and they neither have the time or the inclination to read -" Fragile" labels etc.
In India, it is quite possible that they do not know how to read- especially English -and the slightly higher paid clerks who run the offices- also have no incentive in handling/ supervising such items.
Guess this may be a niche market to start a business -handling fragile or valuable parcels.

 

[vnmathur57]

Guess this may be a niche market to start a business -handling fragile or valuable parcels.

Good idea! But how you will ensure safe handling at every point of the journey of the parcel? How to get sensitive & considerate handling crew for every point? We can go on blaming the courrier firms but the real culprits are the handling/loading personnel who are completely insensitive towards nature of the cargo.

 

[Shivam]

My missing parcels have been traced. The tracking information was wrongly entered at two different points !!! Due to my phone calls it seems that the parcels were saved from being sent on a wrong route.

 

[sachu888]

This incident is from DTDC.

The parcels (5 in number and quite large) seem to have vanished into thin air !!!

I have lost 2 parcels sent by DTDC and one damaged by some chemical.I lost nearly 15k rs.Their customer care is of no use.I prefer Indiapost now.

Regards,
Sachin

 

[jbgude]

Good idea! But how you will ensure safe handling at every point of the journey of the parcel? How to get sensitive & considerate handling crew for every point?

That is the point of my comment! maybe a market study is required - or perhaps intially start a company say, that handles shipment from Point A to point B with incentives to the entire team, based on performance/ no damage caused.

Maybe we need to talk with Jeff Bezos -perhaps Amazon can accept fragile parcels for delivery- I was impressed with the person who recently delivered a couple of packages for Amazon- smart, polite and also with the electronic delivery signature device.
A good idea now being experimented in our city ( or maybe it is an elaborate scam !) is paying an extra bonus to the sweepers who keep their " ward" or part of the city the cleanest.