Track & Trace explained

[DS Doll Europe]

Hi,

following the route of a package with the Air Way Bill (AWB) and the shipping company's Track & Trace tool can be fun, but sometimes it's a bit scary. Since it's a frequently asked question, I'll show a couple of T&Ts and try to explain what is going on.

Those T&Ts below are taken from actual shipments with DHL Express.

awb-dhle-fast.jpg (189.63 KiB) Viewed 1426 times

This is an impressive T&T; the 3-piece shipment (right column) was picked up on Monday in Shenzhen and delivered in Berlin, Germany, on Wednesday. I think this is as fast as it gets with default courier services; such a fast shipping time is only possible if the pickup location is really well connected to the air routes.

awb-dhle-regular.jpg (223 KiB) Viewed 1426 times

This is a typical T&T from Dalian, China, to Berlin, Germany. It usually takes a total of 5-7 days.

This shipment has two interesting details; scan #4 ("customs status updated" in Leipzig, Germany) happens several days before the package physically arrived in Germany. What DHL Express is doing here is to electronically forward the shipping papers to the customs broker. In this case, customs are cleared based on the customs declaration in the shipping papers. German customs do not physically touch the package in such a case.

The second interesting detail is scan #16 ("shipment on hold" in Leipzig, Germany). In this case, a whole day was lost because there was not enough free volume in the container after customs has been cleared. The package was put on hold until there was enough space. Since Doll Sweet cartons are rather large (158x44x38 cm for 15x/16x line), just the size sometimes causes this kind of delays.

awb-dhle-lost-found.jpg (196.2 KiB) Viewed 1426 times

This is a shipment that caused us some headache; after customs were successfully cleared (scan #11), the package was directed back to Frankfurt, Germany, and got lost afterwards. It took DHL Express two days to retrieve the package in Leipzig, Germany.

The interesting detail in this T&T is that the scans not necessarily are accurate in regard to the physical location. In this case, a container scan misguided the package.

This shipment left me with some more gray hairs, but in the end I was impressed about the capability of DHL Express to retrieve a package among approximately 100.000 daily shipments within two days.

awb-dhle-customs-inspection.jpg (210.85 KiB) Viewed 1426 times

This is a rather inconvenient T&T. This package was selected randomly by customs for an actual visual inspection. That means that the package will be opened and the contents will be checked by a customs officer. German laws require customs to do this with a witness being present, so this is an event you might rather want to avoid when doing the imports yourself.

In this case, the package was queued for inspection on Friday and as of today (Wednesday), it has not been processed yet (scans #13-#17). The ugly thing about this procedure is that there is no way to speed up this process.

So think twice if you want to do imports yourself; it's only fun as long as everything goes smoothly

Cheers, Sandro

[DS Doll Europe]

This shipment could have been super fast, like the first one from the last post:

awb-dhle-almost-fast.jpg (175.93 KiB) Viewed 1394 times

DHL Express picked up this shipment on Wednesday in Dalian, China; one day later, the package was already in Frankfurt, Germany. During the night from Thursday to Friday, the package passed customs - and was put on hold.

DHL Express could have delivered this package on Friday, but again they had not enough free space in the delivery vehicle. So the weekend is lost, which turns a possible 3-day-record to another 6-days-shipment.

Sight… Sandro

[DS Doll Europe]

In this shipment, DHL Express finally cracked the thee-day-barrier for a 50 kg/158x44x38 cm package. It's hard to believe how they did it:

awb-dhle-fast.jpg (200.02 KiB) Viewed 1356 times

The package as picked up in Dalian, China, on Monday. One day later, the package departed China through Beijing and arrived in Frankfurt, Germany. On Wednesday, the package passed through Leipzig, Germany, cleared customs, and was delivered in Berlin, Germany.

Total time from pickup in China to delivery in Berlin: 3 days! How cool is that?

Sandro