It’s here! And a day earlier than promised! (5 days total, including weekend).
Note to future recipients in the Netherlands:
I got a SMS with the tracking info from DHL as soon as they picked up the package in Singapore. Tracking system said they would deliver on Tuesday (dinsdag), and displayed a note saying they deliver to private addresses between 17:30-21:00.
Tracking showed arrived at delivery facility in Amsterdam on Saturday, but continued to indicate delivery on Tuesday throughout the weekend.
This morning I got a SMS saying they would deliver today. The note about the delivery hours disappeared from the tracking system, and it just displayed “out for delivery” with nothing more about timing. Eventually arrived 15:30.
FYI and good luck!
Cheers. Good to know, since if it does a similar maneuver for me (I’m just outside AMS myself) I might need to keep an extra ear out for the bell since I might be sitting in a meeting with headphones on… (Good thing my doorbell has a “wake the dead” mode… )
FYI The tracking in the email did not show an update but when entering the tracking number into DPD in the UK, it now shows out for delivery. I hope i’ll receive it today. Until yesterday it still showed in transit.
So UK people: Try tracking the tracking number via DPD.
Mine arrived 1hr 30mins ago. Have put it together (DIY edition i7) and if this old woman with athetoid cerebral palsy can do it anyone can! Brilliant design but I have made one rookie (which for someone who has written software as long as I have is appalling!) forgot to format the thumb drive to fat32 AND forgot the size limit on fat32! Ordered 32GB thumb drives from Amazon. which should come tomorrow then I can load Xubuntu onto the machine and have some further progress.
I am just not happy with the delivery. I got a text from DHL this morning that the package would be delivered to my home address. No problem here.
But without any intervention from my part they brought it to a DHL point close by to me, and I get a text that I can pick it up there. Annoying but still no mayor problem.
At the pickup point they just scan the package and hand it over, I am ready to give my id and they tell me it’s not necessary. That the system doesn’t ask for a id or signature.
So randomly a 1600+ euros laptop gets diverted to a pickup point where anyone can claim it’s theres and no one asks id. To make it worse it has the full price of the laptop on the outside of the box and says that is contains a laptop.
I have seen this as a bit of a pattern, too. Pre-covid, I always had to show ID for almost any kind of delivery. Nowadays, pretty much only the PostNL Pakketpunt at Karwei bothers. Direct deliveries from PostNL not so much, and DPD, DHL etc are even happy to hand me packages for the neighbors even though they are tagged to prohibit that AND tagged to require ID… (My apartment is the first one on the door intercom, so I always get poked by all delivery drivers and could have stolen soooo much stuff…)
Starting to make me avoid expensive purchases for delivery where at all possible.
True as well, though the “no ID” thing is especially suspicious in this case, since one of the Covid measures in NL was that this was eliminated. (To avoid people handing objects - ID cards, passports etc - to delivery workers and thus causing a lot of exposure for them.) Initially it was meant to be the case that you should give them the last four digits of the document number (much good that does…) - but straight from the start of that directive they just seemed to take it as “no ID needed”. I suspect there’s a lot of parcels released to me with document ID “1234”…
Combine that with the pre-existing squeeze on delivery workers and you get an opening for this kind of stuff to become endemic.
What I also find weird is why it went to the DHL point at all, I was home waiting for the package and suddenly I get a delivered message. Had to re-read it to figure out it was delivered at a DHL point.
Laptop arrived safely! Fast process. But at the end a bit weird.
Shipped mail: 28 march
Arrived at Singapore at 30 of march
Passed through baghrein at 31 of march
And arrives in Germany at 31 of march
Then silence, I was away for work, but my parents where home.
DHL did stop at my house, but concluded from a distance nobody was home. Both my parents where home. Then DHL decided to bring it to their collection point.
On 4 of April I get a text that the delivery guy is out for delivery, confusing because it looked like DHL was going to try to deliver again at my house.
But no, received later that day, that the laptop was at the collection point.
To conclude, fast shipping without to much trouble.
Most likely a case where the driver got an unrealistic amount of packages to deliver in one run, and at the end of the shift just brings everything that’s left to the DHL point. Even PostNL has been getting caught giving contracted drivers borderline illegal working conditions and bonkers volumes to deliver on schedules that violate the laws of physics…
Note to future recipients in the Netherlands:
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I’m glad you got it safely.