My girlfriend's dad (GFD) worked for a well known high street jewelers
they were in the process of closing one of two stores in Perth, Scotland (this bit is important). He has been called in as manager of the other store to help pack up and take note of all the stock as it would be getting moved to his store.

There was still a fair amount there so they called in a courier to take all of the jewelry to the other store in the same town, Perth. It all gets collected by the courier who's name escapes me but might have been DHL, and everything's fine. it'll take a day or two to be processed by the warehouse and sent out says the guy from the courier.

4 days later it's still not arrived, so he phones the courier and gets their central call centre. the woman pulls up the delivery on the screen and says that they tried to deliver it that day but the street didnt exist in Perth. It clearly does replies GFD, I'm standing in it. Oh says call centre monkey you dont sound australian...

Yep that's right, they'd sent it to Perth, australia 9119 miles from its intended destination
(Clashrock is being stalked by his brother on, Wed 29 Feb 2012, 9:08, 18 replies)

DHL quite often do that
I guess they have a drop down menu or something for dispatching parcels, and sometimes hit the wrong one.

If you regularly look at their tracking info, you'll often see a parcel for one destination take a detour via a similarly named city on the other side of the world.
(username failed moderation, Wed 29 Feb 2012, 9:19, closed)

They can drop it at my front door.
I should be home to sign for it.
(Misery McUglywife an attention seeking sociopathic fuckstain., Wed 29 Feb 2012, 9:29, closed)

I'm stunned,
that you can't just have a courier take something from point A to point B. Why would it need to go back to their depot? Clowns.
( monster munch person, man, woman... camera... TV?, Wed 29 Feb 2012, 9:42, closed)

Umm,
just think if every parcel was taken from point A to point B, and what that would mean for couriers. Sure, it works if you have very few parcels, all for delivery within a smallish area. But if you're delivering over a large area then grouping them into delivery rounds makes much more sense. In fact there's an interesting linear-programming exercise you can do to optimize your depot set up. The other problem, of optimizing your delivery routes, is much more complex. I leave it as an exercise to the reader to demonstrate exactly how much more complex it is (10 points)
(Smale is stuffed, Wed 29 Feb 2012, 9:46, closed)

I've run the
analysis through my CRAY MPx supercomputer, using advanced heuristic polynomial modeling algorythms, with multidatapoint weighting, and it has come up with the answer:

It is MUCH more complex.
(username failed moderation, Wed 29 Feb 2012, 9:51, closed)

This seems fair,
but if I were to hire a courier to move a box of stuff between two shops in the same town, I don't really think it'd be an efficient process to have it diverted to a depot in the arse end of nowhere.
Meh, good thing I'm not running a courier service, I suppose.
( monster munch person, man, woman... camera... TV?, Wed 29 Feb 2012, 10:33, closed)

Most small courier companies would go directly
But big organizations like DHL or the Post office are set up to work via Depots.
(username failed moderation, Wed 29 Feb 2012, 11:16, closed)

To be honest,
most of my knowledge of courier services comes from playing Frontier. All I can really be sure of is: slaves + [forgetting to install life support] = fertiliser
( monster munch person, man, woman... camera... TV?, Wed 29 Feb 2012, 11:36, closed)

We prefer to think of ourselves
as "some-where's arsehole". Thankyou.
(Misery McUglywife an attention seeking sociopathic fuckstain., Wed 29 Feb 2012, 13:42, closed)

My apologies
to the good people of Oz.
( monster munch person, man, woman... camera... TV?, Wed 29 Feb 2012, 16:28, closed)

I think in this case it was because his shop wasn't open when he had the stuff picked up so needed to be delivered the next day or so
(Clashrock is being stalked by his brother on, Wed 29 Feb 2012, 9:53, closed)

I remember something similar from waaaay back
With Royal Mail?

Letter was posted from London and addressed to W1, but managed to go to West Indies, Wisconsin and somewhere in Canada (maybe Winnipeg) before it was delivered correctly.
( Ghoti Fingers, Wed 29 Feb 2012, 10:06, closed)

I think the Women's Institute had a pop at it too.

(FartThroughAWalkieTalkie wished you were dead in ditch on, Wed 29 Feb 2012, 10:33, closed)

Yeah, they'll have a pop at anything, that lot.

( Ghoti Fingers, Wed 29 Feb 2012, 19:43, closed)

I was talking to a Postman from Doncaster, England
Who said they often received letters in their sorting office addressed to The Doncaster in Australia, especially if The letter writer had made the VIC ( short for Victoria ) at the end of the address look like UK by making V look like a U and the putting The C a little bit too close to the I .
(Mackeson_drinker, Thu 1 Mar 2012, 7:25, closed)

As I mentioned in the grot/grime/filth QOTW, as a young Quackblast I worked in Waitrose, HerTford.
One morning after unloading the fruit and veg from the delivery truck, I was surprised to see a whole other delivery truck turn up two hours later.

he had 'HerEford' written on the delivery documents and had fucked up big time.

It's not quite the other side of the world, but it's not exactly just round the corner, either.
(FartThroughAWalkieTalkie wished you were dead in ditch on, Wed 29 Feb 2012, 10:10, closed)

So they sent it half way around the world
without even checking to see if the delivery address was real?
( P-MONKE We're all fucked, Wed 29 Feb 2012, 15:31, closed)

Let me see if I understand this
Your GFD worked for a company which had to move a quantity of jewellery from one part of Perth to another. Perth is a small town. The maximum possible distance you could have between two shops in Perth is two miles, and if both were in the town centre it would be a few hundred yards.

So instead of sticking the stuff in the boot of a car, or a van, or a taxi, or just carrying it in a cardboard box, your GFD claims that they went to the trouble of packaging it and then hiring a courier company to move it? A courier company sufficiently centralised that they would take it to a depot away from Perth?

Bollocks. Bullshit. Crap. Balderdash.

You've been had. Hope she's worth it.
(ubergeekian, Thu 1 Mar 2012, 9:49, closed)