One of them is Claudia Okken. The businesswoman runs the shop "Bacatus - Die Perlerie" in Oberkassel on Königswinterer Straße and she sends out pearls and precious stones via DHL, handcrafted Christmas presents. "We delivered eight parcels on November 28 that have not yet reached their recipients," Okken reported. She had filed an inquiry, but still did not know where the parcels had gone. Four other missing parcels have now reached their destination.

It is not an easy situation for Okken. Not wanting to disappoint her customers, she had to make a second shipment in order to protect her reputation as an entrepreneur. "That's a lot more of an effort and expense for us." DHL had neither apologized to her nor promised her any compensation.

DHL spokesman Dieter Pietruck said that according to his company's findings to date, the missing parcels had all been forgotten or overlooked in a large container at the Troisdorf parcel center. Not only parcels from the Bad Godesberg area, but also from other parts of the city were stored there. The company spokesman was unable to say how many packages were ultimately affected. "We assume that nothing has been lost and are doing our very best to deliver everything before Christmas," explained Pietruck, who apologized for the glitch. He pointed out that DHL had to deliver eleven million parcels a day across all of Germany before Christmas and mistakes could not be ruled out.

Pietruck explained that insurance would take effect only when packages have actually disappeared, not for delays. Customer Petra Mellinghoff said she had mailed a package from Röttgen, traced it online and saw that it never left the post office. Ursula Schmitz, who mailed a package from Friesdorf on November 28, reported a similar experience. Other customers called GA to report their less than satisfactory experiences as well.

Many of those customers affected expressed understanding for mistakes made by workers, but complained of impersonal service when it came to making an inquiry about their packages. In one case, the Mehlem branch did not have any tracing forms, referring an elderly lady to the post office in Bad Godesberg city center. Although the forms are also available on the internet, filling them in takes a lot of time. Mellinghoff was told to send a complaint by post to Hamburg. "Unpractical and not customer-friendly", she says. In the meantime, a customer who had reported that her parcel had gone missing in November, found out that it was successfully delivered to her daughter in Würzburg. Last Friday, DHL spoke of a single case of a missing parcel but admitted in the course of the week that more search inquiries had been filed.

Orig. text: Kim Forster, philipp Königs

Translation: ck