Garmin Delivery Is Bizarre And Sluggish

I can identify with your frustration but sometimes a cold Budweezer, or two, or more, can help soothe one's frustration.

I understand. I ordered a bunch of stuff on Cyber Monday, and of four separate orders, received two within couple days as expected, the third after over a week, and the fourth has still not shown any movement. I think the delivery services were swamped with Black Friday/Cyber Monday sales.

Enjoy the GPSMAP 64st, it's a great device, I have the 64s.

We aren't really in a particular hurry. We aren't going hiking soon. The Christmas gift is to ourselves.

This just makes no sense. In 9 days the GPS is further away than when we ordered it. Going east at a rate of ~260 miles per every 9 days it will eventually arrive.

While Garmin's inability to give you correct status of initial shipping information is a Garmin issue, the curious routing has nothing at all to do with Garmin other than their choice of using a cheap shipping method which involves DHL moving the package to one of their few coordination points with USPS.

A couple of times I've ordered something that started off in California and traveled well past the middle of Texas before getting handed over and traveling back this direction to Albuquerque.

UPS offers a similar mixed service, and I've seen a package which started in Minnesota travel straight to Phoenix, get handed over, and backhaul to Albuquerque.

Patience.

Remove some stress in your life by NOT worrying about how the package is delivered. Sellers by default use the cheapeast method to ship your order. Shippers use the cheapest method also, even if the package seems to you to be going off track.

Why do we need to know every little move a package takes to get to us? It will arrive, have faith.

...we would have been happy getting, whatever it was that we ordered, in two weeks. We knew that we had ordered something, but we didn't know when it would arrive. Therefore, it was always a surprise when we got the package, even though we knew it was coming. The order it today, get it tomorrow mentality, has made us a society whereby, we really don't know how to wait and anticipate the delivery and excitement of actually receiving a package in the mail. That was part of the fun 40 or 50 years ago. Today, all of the delivery services have their own hubs. For example, everything getting shipped by UPS goes through Louisville, KY. If something is shipped in California and it is going to an address in California, for example; it will go to Louisville and then get shipped back out to California. (This is according to a UPS driver that I know.) But, that doesn't mean that it is going to be delivered by UPS. It will probably be handed off and delivered by USPS and with it being the Christmas rush and with the USPS being what it is; well, the delivery time is going to be extended. Earlier this week, we received our mail at 10:00 AM, which never happens. We left the house and came back a few hours later. Low and behold, we had received another mail delivery. Nothing special, just a bill or two, and a bunch of junk mail. Why did this happen? Don't know; probably never will.

I'm reminded of time back in the 1950s when Sears was king. If you lived in town with a Sears store, you go to Sears and order through the catalog and pick up the order at the store a few days later. In Virginia all catalog orders came from Sears' Greensboro, NC shipping warehouse.

If you lived in the country, you order by mail from the Sears catalog and the order arrived by US mail. UPS wasn't much of a factor back then and Fedex hadn't even been thought about. For those of us with no indoor plumbing, the expired Sears catalog pages were repurposed in the outhouse.

Everything was much slower back in the day.

I ordered stuff on Cyber Monday and the goods were located in the same UPS zone. This should have been a one-day shipping deal. It took 8 days.

We are 10 days and counting into what should have been a 600 mile trip. Maybe not too much more counting though. With the data available from both DHL and USPS the package is now in Commerce City CO which is a mere 80 miles from home.

With both UPS and USPS I have never before seen intervening steps missing. In this case the transfer from DHL to USPS in St. Louis was unrecorded.

Thank you all for your support and explanations.

I have had that happen to me. I ordered something out of Massachusetts and they lost it in New York. I figured it added about two days to the delivery time. But, that’s the only time that I’ve had this happen.

Once Garmin hands off the package to the courier, Garmin is out of the loop. It's all on the delivery service. Garmin wants to ship out as quickly as possible so they can book the sales and revenue. Delivery services have to deal with traffic, loading and weather.

I don't think that there is any security/privacy issue providing the DHL link (which provides the USPS link). A boredom issue,,, maybe!

At any rate the box arrived in Commerce City CO 24 hours ago and some kind of error occurred. "Kindly allow an additional 24 - 48 hours for delivery. Thank you for your patience." I spent yesterday in Denver and Commerce City is a suburb. There was no weather issue.

http://webtrack.dhlglobalmail.com/?trackingnumber=9361289937...

The post office says that "The item is currently in transit to the destination." There is no usual line item indicating that the package ever left Commerce City.

My daily amusement quota has been met!

Had a refurb sent from Garmin this fall. Took forever via DHL.. UPS is the best.. here anyway.. or Amazon Prime..

I have had similar misrouting adventures and longer than necessary delivery times with eBay purchases that used DHL. The items have always been delivered eventually, but often taking 10 or more days when a direct USPS shipping would have arrived in 3 or 4 days. I have actually avoided a couple of eBay purchases that listed DHL delivery and gone with a different seller that had a higher price but used a better shipping method.

I've also had 'strange' issues with DHL....

Especially so if package arrives from overseas! That seems to have package go in circles.... then go toward me...

It's the 'Luck of the Draw'

I think, that all those problems are generated by inertia in market. We see big increase in Internet sales, when in-store sales are declining. But companies still have sales and logistics departments set like in times, when on-line sales were just supplemental income. And if you are not ready to work with increased number of orders you will fall badly behind with deliveries.

A couple of days after my order thru Garmin (23NOV) Sportsman's Warehouse had the same sale, and they have a local presence. It is likely that I'd have the GPS now if I purchased it from them.

I just checked and USPS's most recent checkpoint said:
December 6, 2018, 12:21 pm
Arrived at USPS Facility
COMMERCE CITY, CO 80022
Your item arrived at our USPS facility in COMMERCE CITY, CO 80022 on
December 6, 2018 at 12:21 pm.
The item is currently in transit to the destination.

Commerce City is 80 miles away and the major hub with frequent connections to Colorado Springs where I live. To summarize: DHL screwed up with their St. Louis craziness, and USPS screwed up with 3+ days and counting in Commerce City. Two errors on one shipment seems improbable. What could explain both errors? A faulty mailing label? A destroyed package? I can't think of anything else. 3 days with no indication that it left Commerce City. 3 days and it hasn't arrived 80 miles away in Colorado Springs.

To be thoroughly trite, tomorrow is yet another day.

USPS lost one day this week because of the Bush 41 funeral. Still, it shouldn't take 3 days to leave the postal hub.

with the approach !

...as a COW for his blow-by-blow description of the perils of the ordering and delivery process. He has kept us up to date on the delivery process and has generated quite a bit of discussion on the topic. I have been in his shoes and know how aggravating it can be, but being on the other side at this time, I can say that I have enjoyed reading about the long delayed delivery. (You know the saying about someone else’s ox being gored. Hopefully, it gets delivered today.)

Give me a break.
The OP self-proclaimed this as a rant, and a very detailed one for sure, but is this what the forum has become?

This tale of woe might be at an end. Might.

Yesterday, the appointed day for requesting a second GPS, came and I called customer support. They talked me into waiting one more day and then, if necessary, they would ship the second on FedEx two night service. I would not need to request the service.

I arrived home last night and the box was there on my doorstep. Intact! No damage!

This morning I checked and according to Garmin, DHL, and USPS tracking, the box remained in never-never-land. The customer service rep would notice that without my calling and initiate shipping the second package. So,,, I called customer support and tried to explain that I wanted to insure that they did not ship the second package. I probably explained it about three times but it seemed more like six. The hard part was that I didn't have the order number of the GPS that hadn't been ordered yet. I probably won't receive a second package and I probably won't have to return the package that wasn't sent. Probably.

Thanks for listening. This rant might, might, just be at an end!