DHL Parcel mislabeled during customs clearance and sent to the wrong address

[NPLondon]

Perhaps a new tracking number wouldn’t be a bad start. It must have some form of identification adhered to the parcel so they locate it within the 13 day DHL parcel

Edited January 30, 2020 by NPLondon

[NPLondon]

Latest news:

 

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Good evening Nicholas

Just checking in with you to update you .The team in Germany have now located your item and are preparing it for return to the UK , as soon as I am given a shipping number I will inform you of this. I have had it sent to myself at our head office so that I can make sure it comes direct to you once I have it in my hand .

 

 

[NPLondon]

 

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3rd Feb 2020

 

I am pleased to inform you that your parcel is now with our Dartford delivery centre in the hands of one of our regional operations managers . Could you please let us know where and when you would like it delivered tomorrow and he will ensure this happens.

 

Again can I just say we are really sorry about your experience with DHL       

 

Richard Wenham

Head of Operational Support  

 

 

[BankFodder]

You could tell him that you have recently moved back to Germany!

[NPLondon]

28 days after the parcel was 'delivered' it finally was delivered to me at 10.02 on the 4th Feb.

 

The official story is that it had a duplicate tracking number which meant it was undeliverable and was the reason why it was returned to Germany. This despite having a legible address. 

 

No one knows how or why this happened but it's been a lot of work from all sides to get this tracked down and solved. 

 

What do we do now?

 

 

[honeybee13]

I'm pleased it's finally with you. Is the parcel in good condition after its travels?

 

HB

[NPLondon]

all arrived and despite the delay it was in good condition. 

 

The only odd thing is that there IS a label attached to the box addressed to the location in Newcastle. DHL said it never went there and it was a duplicate tracking number - perhaps they forgot to remove this...

 

I just don't know what to think about all of this. Of course it great that it finally arrived but the awful support from the company has resulted in a lot of running around to get it delivered to the correct address. 

[BankFodder]

Well I'm glad you got everything back – and thank you for updating us.

Obviously it has been a very stressful and time-consuming experience. It would be very nice to find a way to claim some compensation – but I am sure that they will be very reluctant.

The problem with most legal actions is that you have to show that you have suffered some economic loss as a result of the contractual breach or the act of negligence. Simply suing on the basis of having suffered inconvenience or distress is very difficult in British courts because they want to be able to measure these heads of damage by some real monetary value.
It is extremely unsatisfactory and the approach in European courts is very different where they tend to apply a sort of moral right as well as legal rights – although compensation awards in Europe are generally speaking far less then in the UK.

I think it would be time consuming and challenging but I think that if you kept your claim very moderate, then they would realise that you were prepared to take it all the way and that economically it wouldn't be worth their while making a fuss and so they would prefer to pay you out.

In that respect, you might like to try and claim say, £100, but you would have to follow it up with a real threat of legal action which you would then carry out. It would be extraordinary if they decided to spend their resources on fighting a claim for £100 in circumstances where they were clearly in the wrong but merely relying on technicality of British law that you have to demonstrate economic loss. However, if you did this then you would certainly risk your claim fee of £25 and if they pushed you to hearing, also a hearing fee of about £80 £100 – you have to look it up not to mention the time and stress involved.

Also we would have to come up with a way of arguing that the time that you have put into this has actually resulted in some economic loss that was reasonably foreseeable. If you are a self-employed person and you charger as an hourly rate then this could be a good starting basis. Also, if you have spent time on the telephone or sending letters et cetera then you can recover these expenses.

As I say, we would have to "construct" an argument which demonstrated economic loss. Merely the distress and the stress of this I'm afraid wouldn't run as an addressable head of damage. I have a feeling that the only time you can claim for pure distress is in respect of data protection breaches – or very possibly in respect of punitive damages in the case of trespass where you are claiming in respect of the insult