Deutsche Post online complaints form in English

Every now and then my postwoman can't be bothered to deliver my post and it gets returned.

I have spoken to her about the problem and she told me she is the only person to deliver post to this house and she quickly ran off.

If you want to complain there is now an English form online here: Deutsche Post - We are here to help you.

Maybe useful for those who don't speak or write in German.

Why are they so crap?

Ah, this is quite helpful. My experience is that Germans don't complain about Deutsche Post because they don't realise it's rubbish - they don't know any different. They probably think it's normal for mail to get returned or thrown away because of a minor error in the address, not realising that in other countries letters addressed with only maps or cryptic clues are being correctly delivered with only a slight delay. Therefore there isn't really a need for a complaint form in German at all, but only in English, French, Dutch etc.

I have had mail delivered to me even though it was missing the house number or had a wrong one, or wrong zip code. Someone in the post office corrected it. I have never had anyone tell me they tried to send me something and it was returned to them.
That is why I do not think the DP is that crappy.

the only thing crappy about DP is how sometimes when a package cannot be delivered, they just put it at the bottom of the mailboxes & hope someone will bring it in or up to your door or it just sits around. this happened to me a lot in munich, not so much more here in Mannheim where i can only pick up a package between 9 and 6 during the week!

I've received a postcard that had the correct address, but no surname, so that was quite impressive.

On the other hand when I put two birthday cards in one large envelope and folded it over to make it smaller, the bastards sent them back 4 days later requesting more postage because it was a large envelope. Missed the birthday date, of course.

My biggest gripe was the 27% increase in the cost of a Euro letter, though.

oh yeah, i like how they made a big splash about their massively huge 1-cent reduction from 56 to 55 cents for a normal letter but told nobody about the 15-cent increase outside Germany. we were mailing for an entire year at the old rate within Europe before we got a letter back saying we needed to add 15 more cents.

So Today I got a reply to my complaint!

Read below in Glorious D'Englisch! ...

Dear Mr Gonzo,

Thank you for your correspondence.

We understand their annoying about the return of a letter addressed to you very well. For this error of our coworker we ask you for apology.

The coworker concerned we referred in the meantime seriously to a careful function. We assume therefore such an incident does not repeat itself.

Yours sincerely,

Deutsche Post Service Team

C...(name has been removed to protect the guilty!)

*************************************************************
You will find additional services and support at your personal shipping and logistics portal www.mydeutschepost.de Register for free today.
*************************************************************

..wonder what happened to the coworker? taken out the back and made lick stamps till his/her tongue fell off??? What would be a good punishment for such a terrible mistake??? Any suggestions???

They could be forced to go to English lessons and then put to work in the complaints department...

Deutsche Post is fine with letters, but as the comments show, they lose the plot with packages. My present postman is great, but I think there are plenty who, for example, can't be bothered to climb stairs to deliver a package, so they automatically fill out an Abholschein and don't even bother to ring, which then means queuing up at some remote Zentrale for hours on a Saturday to collect it. I have long suspected that they take a perverse pleasure in wasting your time in this way.

A friend posted a package to me from Canada once, which was returned to them because it 'could not be delivered'. The name and address were perfectly correct, there was even someone at home all week in my flat so they could've got it from the postman. No message was delivered either that it had been left at the local post office

They don´t keep them very long. We came back after the Christmas holidays to discover that we had something waiting for us at the Post Office, but by then it had been there for more than 7 days and had been sent back again. Apparently they want you to tell them if you´re gone for more than a week, didn´t know that then.

Sooooooo true. I have had several letters, wedding cards, birthday cards that friends and family have sent me from home (Downunder) marked return to sender and have ended up circumnavigating the globe only to end up back in Perth. At first I thought they might not have written the address properly but on all occasions the address was 100% right. I even had registered mail sent back home because the postman/woman couldn´t be bothered to deliver it in person and this was even sent to my now husband´s company so there could be no excuses that the postie didn´t find anyone at home at the time of delivery. This was terribly annoying as these were documents urgently needed for the Kreisverwaltungsreferat for our marriage. Having lived in Switzerland and London (of course Australia too) I find that the standard here is shocking. It also often takes 2 - 3 weeks to get letters from home. This is alarming when in the UK and Switzerland the turn around time was often as low as 4 days. It obviously has to mean there is a problem in the German system. I thought the Italian system was bad but in honesty I have actually only had mail go missing once and I guess that is not so bad considering how disorganised they are! Thanks for the link, I have been trying to find a valid avenue about where to complain about these problems. Let´s see if it makes any difference.

we've started using Hermes. Very reliable service so far. They also collect parcels to be sent from your address, saving you the hassle of having to queue up with all the eBay muppets at the post office.

thank you sooo much for posting this form. we recently moved to an apartment which is on the 7th floor (that's the 8th floor in english speak) and since then DHL NEVER bothers to try to deliver our packages. they always slip a form into our box (which always turns up 2 days after the so-called delivery date). i know they never try to deliver our packages because i work from home.

I've got no complaints at all about the postal service around here, in fact their all very nice friendly, never had anything retrurned, we regularly receive jars of Marmite from England.No problem, if we go away which we do sometimes for six weeks, we just put a note on the letterbox and get it sent to the pub next door and pick it up when we get back, and we don't get anything like the amount of junk mail we used to in the UK. But then again we live in the sunny Sauerland and not in Bayern.

That's 'cause you're German


Jesus fucking Christ with litigious linguistic libel and bells: "we ask you for apology".

I hope you apologised profusely and promised never to complain again!

Is the community aware that it is a legal requirement to identify yourself by (sur-)name on your doorbell and/or mailbox? If the postman cannot find the same name on the door as he has on the envelope he is delivering then he is not obliged to deliver it. Some do, many don't. Clearly this is of paramount importance on an apartment block with many residents, but many house occupiers think their house address is unique to them and don't bother to label it. The conscientious mail man won't then leave them their mail...

That happened to me once. Husband's and my last name on the mailbox, his last name only on the doorbell. I didn't think it was necessary to change both since the two labels were in plain view of each other. My mother sent a birthday package addressed to me. A good month and a half after I was expecting it to arrive and several weeks past my birthday, I got a letter saying it was sitting around a warehouse in Frankfurt. It kind of confused me how a letter to the exact same address could find its way to me just fine, but not the package. We fixed the label on the doorbell at any rate.

That's because they are differnet people delivering them. I have a situation where the postman has a key to get into the foyer to the letter boxes, but until recently the man from DHL delivering the parcels didn't.

So if there was no-one in, he wrote out a postcard that he couldn't deliver the parcel, but if no-one opened the door to him then he had to take this back to the post office and get the normal postman to deliver it, which was often one day later.

I've had parcels returned because I was not in and did not get notified. At first the post office wouldn't believe me, because they said such things didn't happen. So I had the parcel resent, and then went to collect it on the day it should have arrived (again, no postcard in the letterbox). Lo and behold the parcel was in the store room and I was allowed to collect it without the postcard. The manager promised to talk to the delivery staff.

Next day, a postcard was put into my letterbox, for the very parcel I had already collected. So out of cheek I took it to the counter staff that hadn't believed me the first time round, and let them search for a parcel that I knew was already safely in my flat. Eventually I owned up, but it had proved my point. (and the refunded my postage costs)

I have experienced this when sending as well - letters and packages get returned as undeliverable, but the address is correct. I have even resorted to printing off telephone directory entries and aerial photos from Google Maps to prove to the counter staff, that the person and address exist.

BUT I must also say, that this has happened to me once with Hermes as well - the driver eventually reported (on the 3rd attempt) that he couldn't find the address. The parcel was due to be returned, so I called the call centre, with a view of the building on my screen and got them to try again. This time their driver found the address and delivered the parcel.

One other complaint I have had is the lack of knowledge that some counter staff have about their own services. In particular sending books overseas - "BUCH INTERNATIONAL". A lot of them just don't know about it and want to charge me for a "Päckchen". Since I don't want to pay those rates unnecessarily the manager usually comes and tells his staff that I am right but once when he wasn't there I had to persuade the counter staff to send the book anyway for the rate that I wanted to send it for. They told me it would come back because of insufficient postage - of course, it didn't and got delivered safely.

It also confuses them when you pre-print your postage with Stamp-It. If you are sending registered post ("Einschreiben"), then you still need to hand it in at the counter in person, and the computer prints off a little receipt but you don't get charged for it, because you've already paid online. They often want to re-weigh and re-measure the letter, then start calculated the cost to send it as registered post, completely oblivious to the fact that it's already printed on the envelope.

Yeah, I bet they check the name and see if it sounds German enough, then decide whether to deliver it or to "lose" it.

Hmm, maybe Aussie have more problems than others? I've had horrendous troubles with DP delivering (or rather, not delivering) and sending them back to Australia. They are all correctly addressed, I've lived in this place for over a year and I've got my full name on the letterbox. Although, now I think of it I also had a lot of trouble receiving letters from Japan. And of course sending to both countries as well! I think DP is just a bureaucratic mess!

Get this, the other day my boyfriend had to pick up a package. We went to pick it up and he had forgotten his ID, so they wouldn't give him the package. They WOULD, however, allow him to sign the back of the pick-up card that authorized ME to pick-up the package, because I had my passport on me. Isn't that just a little bit non-sensical?

I had problems when I moved to Berlin, the DP postman never bothered to ring the bell, just left cards for pick-up and I was always home on those days. We complained at the Post Office twice, got a bunch of stamps for free and the (grumpy) postman now actually gets in the lift all the way up to the 13th floor and delivers the package to my door!!! I was quite happy to go downstairs when he rang the bell, so this is a bonus.

The DHL couriers are all very friendly and never gave me any problems. In fact, they often ring my bell to give me parcels for other people ... I am such a doormat! Still, neighbours do it for me and it's a fun way to meet other people in the building.

I recently followed the link provided by the OP to complain about the dismal state of the www.deutschepost.de site. They've started making changes and most links don't work, error messages left right and centre. Here is the cute response I got:

Dear Mrs ...

Thank you for your correspondence.

It does wrong to us that you are not content with our appearance in the InterNet. We take up your reference as suggestion.

Yours sincerely,

Deutsche Post Service Team

Claudia Langpeter

I rely on postage calculator for my eBay mail as I like to quote shipping costs in advance. When it works, the site is just great and most of it in English too ... bliss When I go to the PO, it only takes a minute.

Many of the problems described above are ones we have also learned to live with and endure, in regards to dealing with Deutsche Posts inefficency...then oneday we were pleasantly surprised -
a parcel arrived on my doorstep..it had been sent from NZ to my sister ( who also lives here) , it had her name which differs from my own but the sender had forgotten to include Street name or number. I asked the postman how come it was being delivered to me and he said they had a discussion at work and decided I was the most likely candidate they knew to be getting a parcel from NZ...dont know what surprised us most the fact it arrived at all or the fact they actually went to the effort to think of a solution. It did inspire hope that perhaps things could improve in time

A friend of mine lives very high up and he always gives the parcel guy a Euro or 2, never loses stuff. He also uses the package delivery points. I always give my parcel man 10 Euros at Christmas and I always get my stuff if he is working. I have had a couple of problems when he wasn't working and I phone up the number and give them hell, works every time. DHL is a big international firm and don't mess about.

I got an actual response from my online complaint. I already posted in another thread, so I won't repost the whole story here. Just thought I'd make others aware of the response to the English form.