Camera thefts couriers GERMANY!!!!

Pieter12 said:

Most of the shipping services seem to be understaffed and overworked beyond being just plain incompetent. I have had deliveries that were clearly marked as direct signature required that were left at the door. FedEx, UPS and the USPS consistently delivers packages addressed to my daughter to the apartment building across the street, so much that they now have a policy of refusing the deliveries. I once had UPS deliver a clearly damaged package that required a signature, they just left it at the door and scooted away. The oddest thing that has happened was a FedEx package (from BH Photo) that arrived damaged--and had another sender's package inside along with my goods!

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FedEX now has taken to leaving packages at the front door on the street rather than getting a signature for my KEH packages. The last I had delivered to a FedEx store. I complained and they told me to report the shipping number to FedEx corporate customer service. For now I am not buying at KEH.

Sirius Glass said:

FedEX now has taken to leaving packages at the front door on the street rather than getting a signature for my KEH packages. The last I had delivered to a FedEx store. I complained and they told me to report the shipping number to FedEx corporate customer service. For now I am not buying at KEH.

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I purchased a very big bucks camera from MPB a short while ago, it was supposed to be delivered by FedEx with an adult signature required. I waited (like Janis Joplin) for the delivery, heard the truck pull up and by the time I reached the door the driver had left the box on the porch and was halfway back to the truck. I called to him, "do you need a signature" and he just asked for my first name and was off.

Pieter12 said:

I purchased a very big bucks camera from MPB a short while ago, it was supposed to be delivered by FedEx with an adult signature required. I waited (like Janis Joplin) for the delivery, heard the truck pull up and by the time I reached the door the driver had left the box on the porch and was halfway back to the truck. I called to him, "do you need a signature" and he just asked for my first name and was off.

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This is crazy. I have had good luck with FedEx. DHL invents extra charges, although I suspect it's had something to do with the seller not filling out customs forms correctly.
I got to know the local DHL delivery lady pretty well for a time. Good service.

I've had bad experiences with DHL as well. It seems they open and search more boxes than other couriers do and then repack them badly. This gives plenty of opportunity for things to arrive damaged, or not arrive at all. And they have a very condescending company policy if you complain which doesn't help when you're trying to locate your valuable camera.

thank you very much everyone for your comments, help and support I will let you know how this transpires

Whilst you still have access to the original tracking details, print out a copy for yourself.


I had two separate instances of goods not turning up. Then after a respectable time, reporting the missing items.
Immediately after reporting the items not delivered, both appeared in the tracking as delivered, leading me to think of a bit of nefarious work in the system.

Luckily both problems were eventually sorted.

Good Luck with the situation.

This stuff happens with all couriers, unfortunately. Some might be better then others in some locations. Also, there is a difference in service for DHL (= German postal system, like USPS, Canada Post etc) vs. DHL Express (comparable to UPS, Fedex, etc).

And another anecdote: In December my girlfriend bought online a new phone. UPS didn't reach us, so they brought it to a pick-up point a few streets away, which is a small corner shop. Tracking showed at the same evening a signature from this shop's employee, and ready for pickup. So far so normal.
When I went there one or two days later, they didn't find the package (Black Friday and pre-holidays mess with many packages). I complained to UPS and went again 1-2 days later. It didn't show up. The sender, the phone company's phone first line support people had no glue how shipping works and said we should contact the police, and tracking would say it was delivered (but that was just the signature of the UPS shop, not us). Of course usually the sender has to handle these problems, but calling them every day, they were just useless.
In between the UPS/corner shop (I never met the person who signed, of course it might have been a bulk signature for 20 packages and he never actually received it, but spoke only to his colleagues and the boss) told us they would have checked their security camera footage and they saw how our package was picked up by a woman, and she did ID herself. Of course you can see on a security camera a package's tracking number and a name on an ID card perfectly, using AI video enhancement and whatever crazy stuff a small corner shop runs. So, also from this end no help and just crazy things.
In the end I filed a missing package report with UPS (their help line was supportive and professional, the opposite of the sender's), and after the investigation was over after 10 days or so, UPS declared it as lost. We contacted the sender again, and somehow managed to escalate this time the call to someone who actually understands things (before even the higher support level was useless), and she arranged that my girlfriend could immediately pick up an hour later a phone from their shop, and upgraded her phone to a newer model (Pixel 8 instead of the ordered 7) without any additional fees. So, finally all good.
And what happened 2 weeks after that: We received by Fedex (not UPS this time) a new phone (Pixel 7), which I guess was shipped automatically a few days after they processed the package lost information. We contacted the sender, and they just told us: we are not the right department, you have to call the other department. Ok, we sent them an email, and never heard back. I guess they don't remember by now and we should sell this one...

ant! said:

Also, there is a difference in service for DHL (= German postal system, like USPS, Canada Post etc) vs. DHL Express

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Depends, sort of. DHL as a whole is a subsidiary of Deutsche Post Group. The DHL Express brand is just that; a brand within the DPG, and to an extent, they all share the same infrastructure. In practice, it's more of a nuisance than a benefit, although DHL Express' rates are often quite attractive. On occasion, I've had to track down a package that was sent to me from abroad and in doing so, I encountered the interesting situation that DP/DHL's information systems are only weakly linked. As a result, a package sent from Germany would have entered the Deutsche Post system, then be handed over to DHL for international expediting and ultimately it would end up in the systems of Express because it was addressed to me as a private person. The funny thing is that as soon as the handover from one system to the next was made, the shipment disappeared from the previous system. So when the DHL guys got the package from their DPG colleagues, the DPG colleagues had no way to track it anymore. For that package, I've had to call around all three entities to figure out what was happening. In the end, I was able to trace it and it all worked out, but it did demonstrate that the merger between all these different entities (usually pre-existing local/regional shipping companies) has not yet culminated into an effective integration of their IT systems. In fact, I can still discern the system of a local expediter that used to be active here about 20 years ago and that was bought many years ago by DHL!

I don't think I have consistent drivers/route for my address. We have the occasional fedex package and the occasional UPS package that ends up on my back patio (covered and away from street), but 90% sit on my exposed to weather and street front steps. The USPS has never brought anything around to the back. I have to give special instructions when buying anything important that it be sealed from water in some manner since it will likely get rained on.


I too hope the OP gets some type of positive resolution to the situation.

@koraks : Interesting, maybe related to the buying of a Dutch company by DHL as you describe?
I regularly receive packages from Germany here in Canada, privately send or from shops, and never saw this problem. The same, at work we use DHL Express to ship to/from Canada to all parts of the world. For the stuff with DHL Express, it is usually clear where it is tracked, for the packages from Germany it depends always on the service which tracking page is used (a bit confusing, I agree), but I never saw the tracking-hopping you experienced.

ant! said:

maybe related to the buying of a Dutch company by DHL as you describe?

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In part, yes, but in part it's also a 'fact of life' for a conglomerate that grew rapidly through a slew of mergers & acquisitions. You often end up with a patchwork of organizational units and systems, and that's quite apparent in the case of DHL. The situation in Canada may be different and more concentrated in a single country organization. Here, they pretty much left existing companies in place and just taped a DHL badge over the original logo. I still get tracking numbers that start with the letters of the original firm; the anatomy of these tracking codes dates back to the late 1990s (!) when DHL as we know it didn't even exist. They just kept part of the IT infrastructure and never fully integrated it.

PS: one more funny thing; DHL is the only carrier around here that operates two seemingly independent last-mile delivery systems side by side. Not too long ago I received a package through DHL Express in the morning and one through regular DHL in the afternoon - two different trucks, of course. Same address, same day. This morning I also had an Express package delivered to my home; just now when cooking dinner I saw the other DHL van pass by on its route. How they manage to be the almost the cheapest carrier around here, beats me!

Here in Iowa USA, from Japan it can be 48 hours. Courier picks up from seller, flies directly from Tokyo to Cincinnati CVG hub, then direct DHL flight to Cedar Rapids (CID), 20 minute drive to my house.

As long as USPS doesn't get involved it works great.

mshchem said:

As long as USPS doesn't get involved it works great.

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And the reverse is true of buying something from the USA to be shipped to Canada. Never, ever use UPS, whereas the postoffice(s) are pretty reliable. Not the quickest, but I've never had something go missing, and more pleasantly there are not all the extra fees tacked on.

UPS is the worst for that, they can often add on $80 worth of brokerage fees to determine that a package is duty free. My golden rule is if a US seller will only ship UPS, I won't buy from them.

Craig said:

And the reverse is true of buying something from the USA to be shipped to Canada. Never, ever use UPS, whereas the postoffice(s) are pretty reliable. Not the quickest, but I've never had something go missing, and more pleasantly there are not all the extra fees tacked on.

UPS is the worst for that, they can often add on $80 worth of brokerage fees to determine that a package is duty free. My golden rule is if a US seller will only ship UPS, I won't buy from them.

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Yeah, UPS is fine as long as you are a factory with a loading dock.

mshchem said:

Yeah, UPS is fine as long as you are a factory with a loading dock.

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Or shipping within a single country.

MultiFormat Shooter said:

I shouldn't really laugh at that, but I couldn't help it.

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it's not a laughing matter. We all feel your pain. I hope they turn up eventually or you find an attravtive replacement.

To the best of my knowledge DHL in the US is still up for sale, but no takers. FedEx and UPS wouldn’t touch it.

RalphLambrecht said:

it's not a laughing matter. We all feel your pain. I hope they turn up eventually or you find an attravtive replacement.

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To be very clear, I was NOT laughing at @sperera's misfortune! I just though the DHL initials comment was funny.

Pieter12 said:

Most of the shipping services seem to be understaffed and overworked beyond being just plain incompetent. I have had deliveries that were clearly marked as direct signature required that were left at the door. FedEx, UPS and the USPS consistently delivers packages addressed to my daughter to the apartment building across the street, so much that they now have a policy of refusing the deliveries. I once had UPS deliver a clearly damaged package that required a signature, they just left it at the door and scooted away. The oddest thing that has happened was a FedEx package (from BH Photo) that arrived damaged--and had another sender's package inside along with my goods!

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I ordered a heater and a box arrived with a (not making this up) a pair of blue suede shoes.
Unfortunately, my dancing days are over and they were a size too big.

koraks said:

...DHL is the only carrier around here that operates two seemingly independent last-mile delivery systems side by side. Not too long ago I received a package through DHL Express in the morning and one through regular DHL in the afternoon - two different trucks, of course. Same address, same day. This morning I also had an Express package delivered to my home; just now when cooking dinner I saw the other DHL van pass by on its route...

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FedEx Ground and FedEx Express do exactly the same thing in the U.S. Two different trucks, each marked with their division's logo, come through here every day. Sometimes multiple times each day.

All transactions are risky. Life isn’t fair. There are people in all walks of life, and countries, that are nefarious. To lie and cheat people out of money, labor, time, benefits, is the American way. At least from my point of view

Pieter12 said:

I purchased a very big bucks camera from MPB a short while ago, it was supposed to be delivered by FedEx with an adult signature required. I waited (like Janis Joplin) for the delivery, heard the truck pull up and by the time I reached the door the driver had left the box on the porch and was halfway back to the truck. I called to him, "do you need a signature" and he just asked for my first name and was off.

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The last six months I too have had FedEx packages from KEH left on the street at the front door rather than delivered to the unit inside the building even though requiring a signature. I talked to KEH and they told me to complain to FedEx customer service managers directly.

Latest news on this is that the repair shop (Leica authorised and trained) have brought in their lawyer to deal with DHL and I am waiting for a resolution.

I successfully sent a Pentacon Six camera to Germany for repair last year. By successfully I mean that the camera was worked on and returned to me within a couple months.

However the main problem was overlapping frames, which was not fixed. The repairman explained that there is no way to adjust the frame spacing on a Pentacon Six but still took my money.

At least no one wants to steal the Pentacon Six.

sperera said:

Latest news on this is that the repair shop (Leica authorised and trained) have brought in their lawyer to deal with DHL and I am waiting for a resolution.

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Great news. My understanding, in Eu, is that the supplier is responsible for the delivery of goods or service and if your item is not received within 30 days from order fullment, you are entitled to a replacement or refund.

Item insured in transit is separate.

Let's hope the repair shop gets a positive result, very soon.