DHL Argh

Last time I posted I was a bit angry. Come to think of it, just as I am now.

So you might remember my tale of a laptop of mine which has had quite the colourful tale of trips to the warranty repair shop. A couple of weeks ago I thought of sending it for yet another run.

DHL picked it up as schedulled, no worried there. Repairs took as long as I expected, and since my complints were exacly as the previous time, I expect repairs were adequate and successful. Delivery by DHL, however, hasn't gone quite as smoothly.

Last Monday they tried to deliver it, but, alas, I wasn't home. So they left a notification slip in my mailbox, telling me to call their customer support line so that a delivery could be schedulled. I didn't read it until after 7:00 p.m., when I arrived from class, and, sure enough, it was far too late to schedulle a delivery for that day. The young lady on the other end of the line (whose name, even though she told me, I can't, for the life of me, recall. Let's call her Tania, which I'm fairly sure wasn't her name, but is a pretty name nonetheless) offered to schedulle a delivery for the next day, which I declined, for I wouldn't be able to take it either, so I asked her to schedulle it for Thursday morning, as I had some free time.

Come Thrursday morning, I was quite eager to get the delivery business over with swiftly, for the previous Wednesday had been far busier than I had antecipated, and some items of my "to do" list had found their way to that very same Thursday morning. But come 1:00 p.m. DHL people were nowhere to be seen. As I returned home that evening, late at 8:00 p.m., I checked my mailbox for more notification slips, from Tuesday and Wednesday. So they tried to deliver Monday, when I couldn't be there, Tuesday and Wednesday, when I told them I wouldn't be able to be there, but come Thursday, when I had schedulled it, they skip it? Sure enough, I called them.

The gentleman who ansewred (whose name, again, I didn't memorise. Let him become, for now, known as Paul) apologised profusely (not really... briefly is more like it) and stated that the package hadn't been delivered "by mistake", and promptly schedulled delivery for the folowing day, i. e., yesterday morning. Now, Friday is usually when I make a very dreary trip back to my hometown for the weekend, and much as I detest the trip itself, I just want to make it early so it can be over with as quickly as I can, yet I had to wait again until the early afternoon for it. When at 12:30 p.m. I had heard nary a peep from DHL I called them (for the third time that morning), and after two empty promises that they'd call me as soon as they had more information (or, in reality, any information at all), they tell me the package hasn't been dispatched. I demanded to speak to someone who might be able to dispatch it, or at least tell me why, for the second time in as many days, they're missing their schedulle. So this young lady (whose name I do recall, for a change) explains to me that Tania did schedulle a delivery for the 11th... of November! And Paul made no attempt to rectify this mistake. The result: two days wasted for me, plus a whole weekend of not working on that laptop and a promise (really, how much weight do DHL promises carry right now?) that my laptop will be delivered Monday morning.

Really, November 11th? I get it, 10 and 11 are similar numbers. After all, we can't all be so fortunate to have such a huge difference in the numbers of our fingers and our brain cells. And what, do you suppose, will become of Tania and Paul? A slap on the wrist? Not literally, I trust. Their salaries docked? Unlikely. A permanent pay cut? Even more unlikely. To be strapped naked by the wrists and ankles to a St. Andrew's cross and flogged with a coarse leather flogger while jumper cables are attached to their nipples and fiery hot coals smoulder just inches from their bottoms? Tremendously more so.

And don't let me catch Tania and Paul uttering a peep of complaint about how stressful it is to deal with irate customers on the phone; they wouldn't know irate if it stabbed them in the genitals with a red hot poker.

Pax vobiscum atque vale.

ArabianShark just got his hands on a recording of Mozart's Requiem in D minor by the Munich Choir with organ, his very latest fetish...