International delivery - DHL bad service?

[phil from seattle]

Anyone else seeing a decline in DHL service quality?  I had a package (2.5 Kg) sent from China to Seattle USA. It took 2 days to get to Seattle but then sat 5+ days in their Seattle delivery center. Customer clearance happened before it got to Seattle so no delays due to that. The package made it to Seattle Tuesday evening.  No delivery on Weds and Thursday was Thanksgiving holiday.  But also sat at their site Friday and Saturday.  No Sunday delivery so it is now scheduled for Monday.  Kind of insulting that we saw FedEx and UPS trucks everywhere on Fri and Sat. Shortage of drivers? 

I'm going to switch exclusively to FedEx, they seem to not have extended delays. Given that DHL gets a premium, I expect better.

[jfiresto]

Which DHL service did you use? I have found not all are reliable.

[phil from seattle]

DHL Express

[jfiresto]

DHL Express with no delivery time options, at least in Germany, can be the opposite of express. As to why, follow the money.

[Jeroen3]

I sometimes order stuff from Prague shipped with DHL Express. This is fine.
However they often sent it to the Uk first... this is bad. UK customs delays this at least a week before they find out it's not even intended to go into the UK.
 

Apple also switched from UPS to DHL Express, and they are turned off pickup-point, neighbours or parcel box (box for parcels next to my door).
So I must be home... but they only deliver on weekdays during office hours.

[pastaclub]

I found that it depends very much on the countries involved, because a courier can be great in one country and suck in another. What I found is for example:
FedEx Thailand is amazing
FedEx Germany is amazing
FedEx Morocco is the worst ever
DHL Thailand is quite good
DHL China is amazing
DHL Germany is usually good but when something unexpected happens, they can't fix it
SF China is amazing
SF Thailand sucks
UPS Germany is amazing
UPS Italy is amazing
UPS Thailand are crooks

...so there is no consistent experience with one carrier across countries. This also is part of the reason why shippers have preferred couriers.

[Psi]

I ship DHL express from NZ all around the world, can't say I've noticed any decline in service.

It's very rare that anything gets lost. Like maybe 1 in 600 based on my experiences.
I almost never pay for the insurance, waste of money considering how much it costs vs how often it's needed. Much cheaper to just replace the goods out of pocket.
Only time I pay for insurance is when its to a country I've never shipped to before, just as a test.

[thm_w]

DHL shouldn't be premium, it should be one of the cheaper or cheapest options from China for express shipment.
If fedex is cheaper and you care about on time delivery, then I would use that. For us, fedex is ~30% more or so.

[themadhippy]

come to the uk and use our royal snail,2 weeks for a 150 mile trip is average around here.

[SMTech]

Surely all delivery companies in all first world countries have the same issues. They pay too little, expect too much and are dealing with an ever increasing number of packages. This means they cannot recruit or retain good staff in warehouses or as drivers. This gets you regional problems at national, state or county level.
As a manufacturer we have changed couriers for national and international shipments several times, its a largely fruitless exercise and the best we can do is choose the company who has the best communication when dealing with a problem. If you choose one with a depot nearby, they will close it and operate from a different one further away.
The worst in our experience is UPS, if something goes wrong it is impossible to get someone to tell you something that you cannot see on the standard tracking page you can't even talk to the local depot. Worse their own teams seem incapable of talking to the warehouse managers in their own depots, they leave messages that get ignored and then do nothing about it. They were also the worst carrier at the point Brexit kicked in, absolute chaos.

[NorthGuy]

DHL certainly got slower than they were, say, 10 years ago. Some parcels get delivered fast. Others experience inexplicable delays. It's all hit in miss.

Sometimes it's funny. For example, I've shipped two parcels with DHL Express to Europe - same price, dropped off together. One took off immediately, arrived to Europe next day, then was sitting in the country of destination for several days. The other was sitting here for sevaral days then took off and was delivered the same day as the first one. Go figure.

[phil from seattle]

A follow up.  I had 2 jlcpcb orders that I was not in a big hurry to get so had one ship UPS and the other DHL Express as a test. No holidays were involved.  The UPS order made it to my home (Seattle, WA, USA) in 2 days and the DHL order took 5 though one was a Sunday so call it 4.  The UPS order was a couple of $$ less - both were in the $20 range.  Both were under 1 Lb (<.5 kg).  I plan on using UPS from here on out.

By the way, The order I had shipped via UPS took 2 days to manufacture so from pushing the order button in Seattle to having finished, assembled boards in my hands was literally 4 days.  Pretty amazing!

[dobsonr741]

DHL just lost a package. They can”t provide a proof of delivery, and their customer support tone do not meet my expectations:

“DHL did deliver the shipment to the correct address. If you still do not have your shipment, I do apologize. I will be closing this investigation with no further follow up.“

[meshtron]

I've been having decent luck with DHL lately (although frequently the tracking lags the actual package).  But, had a run of new boards that has been showing expected delivery (from PCBWay to Portland, OR) of yesterday all the way up until about 2AM today.  Got updates this morning, turns out package has been sitting in Hong Kong since 6-DEC.  And, near as I can tell, it's still there.  Now I have no expected delivery date whatsoever.

I wasn't in a huge rush for these boards, but I ordered them before Thanksgiving.  PCBWay took a bit longer than hoped (the boards aren't special - 2 layer but with ENIG and hard gold) and now shipping is taking forever.  I'm considering switching to OSHPark but I can't seem to figure out how to order non-purple boards there so far. 

[phil from seattle]

I've been having decent luck with DHL lately (although frequently the tracking lags the actual package).  But, had a run of new boards that has been showing expected delivery (from PCBWay to Portland, OR) of yesterday all the way up until about 2AM today.  Got updates this morning, turns out package has been sitting in Hong Kong since 6-DEC.  And, near as I can tell, it's still there.  Now I have no expected delivery date whatsoever.

I wasn't in a huge rush for these boards, but I ordered them before Thanksgiving.  PCBWay took a bit longer than hoped (the boards aren't special - 2 layer but with ENIG and hard gold) and now shipping is taking forever.  I'm considering switching to OSHPark but I can't seem to figure out how to order non-purple boards there so far. 

Yeah, I didn't mention bad tracking.  One DHL package about a month ago never "got off the loading dock" in China but showed up at my door with the status still "waiting for pickup".

[phil from seattle]

come to the uk and use our royal snail,2 weeks for a 150 mile trip is average around here.

I know this is old(er) but just wanted to say that I totally hear you.  I have a lot of customers in the UK and, using USPS, the time to delivery from the US is super variable. The package usually gets to the UK in about 3 days.  From there it sometimes takes a few more days and other times, it has taken more than 2 weeks. It seems like anything much north of London is way slow.

[TomS_]

Funny because I have the opposite experience.

I ship a few packages a year using Royal Mail, second class. Sometimes they'll be delivered next day (!) but all will make it within a business week.

Contrast to a couple of packages that were shipped within the US using USPS, it seemed like every day they would make it a few miles further down the road to the next facility, e.g. taking well over a week to go from somewhere like North Carolina to Washington DC.

[phil from seattle]

Funny because I have the opposite experience.

I ship a few packages a year using Royal Mail, second class. Sometimes they'll be delivered next day (!) but all will make it within a business week.

Contrast to a couple of packages that were shipped within the US using USPS, it seemed like every day they would make it a few miles further down the road to the next facility, e.g. taking well over a week to go from somewhere like North Carolina to Washington DC.

Perhaps it has to do with the priority of foreign originated mail in both countries. USPS first class mail less than 1 pound (about 450 grams) is super fast for domestic delivery.  From my house on the West coast to the East coast takes either 3 or 4 days.  about 5000 km.  Some of it depends on how close the sender and receiver are to major distribution centers. I drop my outbound packages at a post office that is one hop from a major distribution hub.  I know that customs in the UK can add time and, frankly, it seems pretty slow.  Most of my inbound foreign packages goes through customs before it actually lands on US soil.