DHL International - shocking service delivery

My daughter booked an online overnight visa service on the Monday for a Wednesday, before 11am collection at the South Korean Embassy - marked as Urgent Visa, and paid more for Visa insurance. On Wednesday afternoon we contacted DHL as we found out that the visa had not been collected. On the 3rd call we made we eventually found out that DHL required a letter of authorisation for the collection, the first we had heard about this. We contacted the Embassy who confirmed that this was not required as we had emailed them on the Monday confirming that DHL would collect the visa.

DHL were informed that the flight was booked for Friday morning hence the urgency, but they were not concerned. They refused to collect it on Wednesday as they said the driver was already out on the road even though we managed to email them the required letter of authorisation. Only after 11am on Thursday the collection was done.

We spent hours again on Thursday on the phone - and after the package was eventually collected, DHL confirmed that they would not be able to deliver it before 9am on the Friday. After many phone calls and follow up emails completing the necessary documents we changed the delivery to DHL at the airport.

On Friday enroute to the airport we phoned again and found out that the package was not at the airport but had been taken to Long Street in Cape Town centre.

Luckily we managed to reroute and collect it in CT. My daughter just managed to get the flight.

I couldn't mark this as ZERO stars. But this should be. The stress and added cost this caused us as a family cannot be measured in rands. We spent the last few days of our time together on the phone, (my daughter was leaving for a one year work contract and I had flown to Cape Town to assist her) spending hundreds of rands on cell phone charges.

We were horrified at the extremely low level of service, lack of communication and above all the absence of empathy and concern.

Perhaps DHL works for businesses but it certainly doesn't worry about the individual.