When it comes to e-commerce, a failed delivery is not simply a minor hiccup—but a ticking time bomb for customer satisfaction, revenue, and business growth. When DHL, one of the biggest names in global shipping, doesn’t deliver (quite literally), it can leave e-commerce businesses scrambling in confusion.
Perhaps the package got ‘lost in transit,’ maybe it’s on an unplanned world tour, or maybe it just never actually left the warehouse. Whatever might be the reason, a failed delivery isn’t just frustrating—it can truly hit where it hurts the most—your bottom line.
The good news? You don’t have to take it lying down. You see, established names like DHL have policies and procedures in place for service failures, and if you know how to navigate them, well, you’re halfway through getting your refund.
In this article, we’ll discuss why DHL deliveries fail, how they can impact your business, and most importantly—how to claim what’s rightfully yours.
Common Reasons for DHL's Failed Deliveries
1 in every 20 online orders doesn’t get delivered in the first attempt, costing e-commerce businesses $18 USD per delayed delivery approximately. So, what causes this $18 USD loss? Here are some possible culprits:
Inaccurate or Incomplete Customer Address
Your package could have been picked up at the warehouse and traveled the distance to your customer’s city, but at the last step—it was returned to the carrier’s warehouse. All because the house number was incorrect. Alternatively, an incomplete address (missing street number, postal code, or house number) can also cause a DHL failed delivery.
Another cause of a DHL failed delivery is the customer not being available to accept the delivery. This is especially common if the package contains a big-ticket purchase. To tackle this, e-commerce businesses must coordinate with customers to ensure they are at the delivery location to receive the package.
Access Restricted at the Delivery Location
A DHL failed delivery can occur if the customer’s delivery location has restricted access, making it difficult for the DHL delivery agent to reach the customer. This is most common when customers give their work address, as commercial parks might have restricted access to certain areas or building floors.
Weather Conditions or Traffic Congestion
Factors like extreme weather conditions and traffic jams can also cause a DHL failed delivery. While DHL will try to re-attempt delivery, if roadblocks and weather conditions such as snowstorms, thunderstorms, and hail make the route unserviceable, DHL can fail to deliver, requiring you to file a DHL claim for service failures.
Delays Caused by Customs Clearance
Holdups in customs clearance can also cause DHL failed deliveries. These can occur due to incomplete documentation, regulatory inspections, faulty packaging, high shipment values, and changes in customs regulations.
Package Included Restricted or Prohibited Items
Like other carriers, DHL too has a list of prohibited and restricted commodities. Items on this list include dry ice, alcohol, and hazardous and combustible materials, to name a few. Even if these items get overlooked during their initial scan, if they get identified later in the delivery journey, DHL can fail to deliver them, requiring you to file a DHL claim for service failures to investigate the matter further.
Impact of Failed Deliveries on Customers and Businesses
Failed deliveries aren’t just a refund claims headache. They, in fact, have far-reaching consequences that can seriously affect your e-commerce business’s productivity and growth goals. Here’s a look at how failed deliveries affect you:
Financial Drain
Failed deliveries have a direct impact on your bottom line. You see, either way—if you decide to re-attempt delivery or refund the customer their money—you’re losing money. In the first case, you’re bearing the cost of re-shipping the package, while in the latter, you’ll have to lose out on the revenue.
Add to that—the rise in customer support costs as frustrated customers raise Where Is My Order (WISMO) tickets, requiring your team to seek, and share updates, and your financial strain just keeps getting worse.
Compromised Customer Experience
Ask yourself—how likely are you to return to an e-commerce business that didn’t deliver your previous order? Well, your customer thinks the same way. And so, when you fail to provide your customer’s order (your customer won’t stop to think whether the carrier screwed up or you did), you’re not just losing that sale but also any future revenue you can hope to gain from repeat purchases.
Further, considering acquiring new customers is five to seven times costlier than retaining one, you’re also driving costs while losing customers.
Damage to Business Reputation
If your customer doesn’t receive their order, or at least not on the first try, you best believe they’re not going to sit mum. They’re going to discuss it on social media, share their experience with friends and family, and generally view your e-commerce business in poor light—all of which will affect your brand reputation and business growth goals.
The Consequent Effect on your Supply Chain
Your supply chain is a complicated network of interconnected businesses that collaborate to deliver products to your customers. Any disruption in this network, such as a failed delivery that either results in a re-attempted delivery that is successful or the package getting returned to your warehouse, is going to compromise the network’s smooth functioning. This can have a domino effect on other deliveries.
How do you get a refund for a DHL failed delivery?
Getting a refund for a DHL failed delivery manually will typically involve the following steps:
- Tracking your package using the tracking number provided by DHL and gain insight into why the package’s delivery failed
- Get in touch with DHL’s customer service to understand next steps
- In case of restricted access or unavailability of the customer, request a re-delivery
- If the package still hasn’t been delivered, file a claim with DHL for compensation
It might look straightforward on paper, but that’s until you realize you’ll have to do all this while racing against the clock to ensure you file your claim within DHL’s refund window and as per their terms and conditions.
Instead, you can automate it with LateShipment.com’s DHL Refund Solution, which instantly identifies over 50 service failures and saves you 20% in shipping costs. It helps you streamline and optimize your failed delivery claims through capabilities like:
- Automated Shipping Invoice Audit: AI-powered systems scan your shipping invoices end-to-end to identify eligible service failures instantly.
- 50+ Service Failures Covered: Our tool runs 160-point checks to flag late deliveries, surcharges, lost and damaged parcels, billing errors, and more.
- Automated Refund Recovery: Submit your refund claims promptly to recover every last dollar you’re owed.
- Expert Claims Redressal: In case claims are denied, our experts will escalate and dispute it to ensure you get your money back.
- Automated Claims Documentation: All you need to do is select the shipment and upload proof. The rest will be managed by our solution. No piling paperwork anymore!
- Cross-Carrier Performance: Gain a comparative analysis of delays, late deliveries and other inefficiencies across all carriers to help inform contract negotiation strategies.
- In-depth Reports and Analytics: Gain insights into spending trends, discrepancies, shipping volumes, and their associated costs.
- Seamless Integration: Our tool connects seamlessly with leading shipping carriers such as DHL, UPS, USPS, FedEx, etc.
In short, LateShipment.com’s tool is all you need to automate and optimize your failed delivery refund claims.
Conclusion
We know it’s not ideal, but failed deliveries are, at the end of the day, inevitable. However, your e-commerce business doesn’t have to fall on the sword because of it. Whether it’s an MIA package, service failure, or a delivery running unfashionably late, you have the right to claim refunds from DHL. The challenge? Navigating their claims process can feel like running through the Triwizard tournament’s labyrinth.
This is why you need LateShipment.com’s Parcel Audit and Shipping Refund software that automatically audits your shipping invoices, flags late and failed deliveries, and files refund claims—so you don’t have to! With LateShipment.com, you can say goodbye to manual tracking, chasing down carriers, mountains of paperwork, and revenue slipping through the cracks.
Failed deliveries might be a headache, but getting your money back doesn’t have to be. Let LateShipment.com do the heavy lifting so you can focus on what truly matters—growing your business and keeping your customers happy.
