S@H Shenanigans?

psu_ericksen · Post by **psu_ericksen** » Tue Oct 30, 2007 1:30 am

So, I recently placed my first-ever online Pick a Brick order. S@H notes: "For custom LEGO Factory and Pick A Brick online products ordered, please allow up to an additional 10 days processing time before the products are shipped." OK, says I. I can kinda see that, depending on the number of different elements ordered. (Troy does better with a larger selection, but whatever...) This was on 10/21. On 10/23, I get an email notice that my order has shipped. Hey, I guess either my order wasn't that complex or they were sandbagging it.

From 10/23 until the evening of 10/27, the DHL website said that my order was "acknowledged". It wasn't picked up until 7:57pm on 10/27. Did DHL forget to pick up my package? Did it get misplaced? [1]

This afternoon, it said "with delivery courier." Cool, it will be there when I get home for work. No. They delivered it to the post office two towns over. WTF? So, they ship it DHL to a local post office? Maybe I'll get it tomorrow? Anyway...

My problem isn't so much with the extra 10-day processing time. And they are still within that window at this time. My issue is with the seemingly premature ship notification.

[1] Here's what I think might be happening. There is likely internal pressure to ship LEGO Factory and Pick a Brick quicker than 10 days. So, they enter the shipping info into the DHL system. It gets acknowledged and a tracking number is generated for my order. To the casual observer (i.e., management), my order has been "shipped." In 2 days. Good job, guys! Then they take 4 more days to fill the order and then set it out to be picked up by DHL.

Sean

P.S. A similar thing happens when they ask you to pull forward at a drive-thru to wait for the rest of your order. They then get credit for "filling" your order in the allotted/expected time.

Post by **SavaTheAggie** » Tue Oct 30, 2007 7:20 am

Just to add to the discussion, I recently placed an order from S@H that included a PaB order, but also contained a few sets (for a series of custom sets I plan to sell). I got a shipping notification a few days later just as you did, and I've already had experience with DHL delivering to my post office (which seems a really conveluded way of doing things since they could have just mailed me my order through the USPS), but when my order arrived without the PaB order, with a note saying they would be delivered separately.

Sure enough a week later my PaB order arrives in a tiny little box in my mail box.

--Tony

Brickzone · Post by **Brickzone** » Tue Oct 30, 2007 9:10 am

A PaB order I did followed much the same pattern.

However, I thought the notification wasn't quite a confirmation of shipping. Whatever wording mine was, I assumed it meant that the order had been forwarded to whoever does the actual "picking".

In the case of my order, the PaB was received seperately a few days after the other items in the order.

psu_ericksen · Post by **psu_ericksen** » Wed Oct 31, 2007 12:27 am

SavaTheAggie wrote:I've already had experience with DHL delivering to my post office (which seems a really conveluded way of doing things since they could have just mailed me my order through the USPS)

The shipping label on my order actually has 2 delivery addresses: "DHL Deliver To: Post Office" and "USPS Deliver To: Me. I guess that's one of the ways that DHL works. But, I know they've been to my house before too. Weird. I'm guessing that it would take even longer to ship USPS directly from PAB. And you wouldn't get tracking. For $6.95, I wonder if they could have just shipped it directly to my house by UPS Ground? I'll have to play around with the UPS machine at work.

Brickzone wrote:A PaB order I did followed much the same pattern.

However, I thought the notification wasn't quite a confirmation of shipping. Whatever wording mine was, I assumed it meant that the order had been forwarded to whoever does the actual "picking".

Mine was clearly a shipping notification. "Your LEGO order has shipped. The tracking number is xxxxxxxxxxx and you may check the shipping status here."

In any case, I got my order today. Yea! But, I still think they're being shady.

Sean

Starwars4J · Post by **Starwars4J** » Wed Oct 31, 2007 4:44 am

I actually posted awhile back a problem I had with this...when they switched to DHL, their shipping not only got much slower, but they actually lost two of my packages. They shipped it to the mail office two towns away...where it sat for three weeks. Finally I got fed up and called the post office itself, eventually being transferred to whomever was in charge, to find out they didn't have it. Apparently the post offices hate DHL, at least the ones around Baltimore did.

I complained to S@H about this, and they shipped out a second set on priority shipping, which is the only way to get it delivered directly to your house, with an excuse of "well we're switching to a new service, so this stuff happens".

"Fine", I say to myself "it happens". The next time I ordered from them, I had the same thing happen. This was about 6 months ago or so. I only use S@H as a last resort now...[/i]