Deutsche Post DHL Customers can choose evening package deliveries
Bonn · Customers in Cologne and Bonn will be able to specify a delivery time by Deutsche Post between 6pm and 9pm from the end of June at the latest.
In the face of massive criticism, the Deutsche Post subsidiary DHL is trying to make its booming parcel business more customer-friendly. By the end of June at the latest, customers in all the major conurbations in Germany will be able to choose a delivery time for their parcels. “Customers specify that the package should be delivered between 6pm and 9pm,” Achim Dünnwald, who is responsible for the parcel business at Deutsche Post, told our editorial staff. “And then we will stick to this timeframe.”
In North Rhine-Westphalia, the new service covers the cities of Cologne, Düsseldorf, Bonn, Aachen, Münster, Bielefeld and the Ruhr region. A similar service is not currently planned for more rural areas.
The new service is based on cooperation with online retailers such as Amazon. “Buyers from certain partners have already been able to choose such a preferred delivery option,” said Dünnwald. However, this only applied to a maximum of a third of parcels as not all online retailers offered this service. “In future, by contrast, the desired evening delivery can be booked for each package in the available regions.” According to Dünnwald, the new service affects a third of German households – 14 out of 42 million. The service will carry an additional cost: the evening delivery will initially cost 1.99 Euro extra, then later 2.99 Euro. When the customer learns the shipment number of his parcel, he should be able to arrange the exact timing of his delivery via an app or the internet.
Deutsche Post has also extended its service to address the increasing number of customer complaints about lost parcels or unreliable deliverymen. In 2017, a total of 6100 written complaints were made to the Bundesnetzagentur (Federal Network Agency) about Deutsche Post; this was 50 per cent more than in the previous year.
Dünnwald put the problem in perspective: “If 1500 customers complained about the delivery of parcels to the Bundesnetzagentur last year, then not even a hundred thousandth of the parcels and packages delivered each year are affected.”
DHL is expecting high demand for the new service. “According to our surveys, almost 80 per cent of customers like the option of an early evening delivery,” he reports.
According to DHL, employees will not receive any additional pay for the later deliveries as, says Dünnwald, “deliveries will take place during the working hours agreed upon in the collective wage agreement.”
(Original text: Reinhard Kowalewsky / Translation: kc)
