Solving the Shipping Problem

Yay!

It took a wee while but eventually our shipper, DHL, solved the case of the missing Nutshells.

If you follow here you will know we have a shipment posted early December that 'vanished' into the black hole of the global postal services.

Even though we now ship every product with a tracking code, over a dozen products mysteriously took time out someplace and went to ground.

Because it was the silly season (aka Christmas), the mails get over busy and trying to locate anything that does not want to be located becomes a bit like trying to find a needle in a haystack...or in a more biblical term, harder than threading a fat man through the eye of aforesaid needle.

However all has now been sorted; the errant products have made themselves known once again to the system and the blockage has been cleared. Our customers, who are so long suffering it is remarkable we have not yet been tarred and feathered and run of out of town on a rail are 'finally' getting their orders...more than a month after they were dispatched from us here in New Zealand.

If there are lessons to be learnt here it is that no one should ever voluntarily become the testing lab for a new service. It appears that the service we have chosen is a comparatively new one to New Zealand and, possibly because we have been in the business of global trading for so long, we unwittingly became the 'test platform'.

It is as yet unknown if we can get compensation from DHL; as a global shipper it is likely we are no more than a flyspeck on the lower corner of their windscreen. Apparently over the Christmas season DHL was shipping 50 tonnes of mail, every day, across the pond that is the Atlantic, from their central hub in Europe to the USPS postal service at JFK International airport in New York. And it seems that it is there the mystery mysteriously deepened.

As they (apparently) say...all's well that ends.

I surely do hope that is true.

XXX

One Rate for All

I would rather it were 'One Ring for All" but somehow I think Sir Peter (or a Hobbit) may take offense...if  they ever read this.

Over the years we have been trialed just about every delivery service to the rest of the world from New Zealand, with varying levels of satisfaction and success.

All have had inherent difficulties. Some were very expensive. Some took no care at all. Others garnered an international sticker on their way through the system that led some customers to believe we were actually making our products in Asia...and not in New Zealand.

Some took no responsibility for their actions; if they dropped the ball and, God forbid, lost a product, they became very defensive and almost accused US of mismanaging the process. Others were less accusatory...but extremely slow to settle their debt..

Meanwhile we, as the merchant, had to maintain our customers' faith in us, and delivery another product...at our own expense.

Hopefully..those days are now behind us.

DHL promise much..and we have every expectation they will deliver on their promises.

Finally - a service that allows us offer a traceable delivery at a realistic rate.