DHL asking for me to pay a charge SIX MONTHS after receiving item

So yeah i got an invoice from DHL on Friday telling me to pay the sum of £23.00 for an item i received over 6 months earlier. I frankly am appalled by this. If they can't get their shit together in that time frame then why should i have to pay for it. I'd all but forgotten i ever received a package from them. Oh and to make it even better whilst it took them 200 days to ask for the sum i have to grand total of 7 days to pay it or they'll pass it on to a debt collector who will only add his own charges on top!!

So given this society we live in i now go onto the internet and try to pay for this frankly BULLSHIT charge. Only their method for excepting payment for the charge doesn't work!?!? that's right it won't except the payment or actually the site gets stuck in an endless loop of asking me to fill in my details. After the first time it takes me back to the page only this time the form is broken! Well that's great i now have to contact these idiots and plead with them to give me a solution to the problem of not being able to pay this charge. Because as I'm sure you have guessed I'm more than eager to do so lol

Being British there was only one thing to do and that's write a stern letter. But given this is 2012 i decided to type an email instead. Which went as follows

Hello,

A few days ago i recieved an invoice claiming i owed DHL money for an item i received over 6 months ago. As you can imagine i found this to be quite surprising and frustrating. To be asked to pay a sum of £23.00 six months after receiving the package i struggle to find why i should pay for it at all if DHL can't even manage to send me the invoice in that time frame. Regardless though given the threat of this invoice being passed onto a debt collector and then incurring further charges i decided to just pay up. Even if DHL are so inept to take more than 6 months to deliver an invoice and then threaten to pass the charge onto a debt collector within 7 days should i not pay! Where is the logic in that? We'll take 200+ days to ask for the money and you'll have less than 10 to come up with the sum!?

So i go onto the website, enter my details and press confirm payment. I'm then taken back to the same screen and asked to do the process again. Confused I attempt to do this except this time the drop down menu's aren't functioning and the entire form is broken. I click confirm having not filled in the form for a second time thinking perhaps its just an error and perhaps the form isn't meant to have loaded for a second time and all the site wants me to do is to confirm once more ,not uncommon. After clicking confirm again i'm greeted with the error for not filling out the form and by now i can guess you know where I'm going. I'm stuck in an endless loop on this rubbish website. If you have the audacity to ask for a payment over 6 months later than at least don't have the complete ineptitude to create a broken system for excepting that ridiculous charge foregoing me to contact you to question how do i make this payment. Because as I'm sure your aware of by now, I'm not particularly keen on making said payment in the first place!

I'm in the right mind to tell DHL to lump it. As frankly i don't see why i should be made to to pay for something after so much time has passed anyway? Especially after attempting to do so and finding this happening! All that with the threat of legal action to boot if i don't comply. How very sporting of you DHL.

So then DHL, any suggestions other than ring this number? I would much prefer you told me to forget about the whole thing but i'm not so stupid to believe you'd do that. Now you have remembered i suddenly owe this money i shall better well pay it i presume? Got any suggestions on how i might do so since your first idea didn't succeed? Perhaps until you get your act together i should wait? I'll expect to hear from you sometime next May then!?

Now i wait for their reply with bated breath lol

Anyone else have this shit pulled on them? Was it DHL? or another company?

The customer service representative that reads your email is in no way responsible for the delayed invoice you had received. I prefer being polite.

I had it happen with FedEx. Sent me a bill for an item shipped to me months earlier. As I understand, pretty much all third party delivery companies will do this for international shipments as part of their brokerage fees.

Basically it means you're paying for a private customs line; the idea is that it'll be quicker than going through regular customs with normal mail traffic, but it's generally more expensive than just customs. Normal customs do need to be paid at the time of delivery and in this case DHL paid that on your behalf, so I suppose the act of giving you time to pay is 'nice' from their perspective if it wasn't for the charging extra thing.

My advice is what I did, pay the bill and don't use third party companies for international packages.

If you don't pay, expect letters and calls from the collection agency, followed by their lawyer. The lawyer will usually seek to settle for a lesser amount than what you owe, but just dealing with the problem ASAP and counting it as lesson learned is probably the best move.

The customer service representative that reads your email is in no way responsible for the delayed invoice you had received. I prefer being polite.

@SushiX: I figured as much. I will pay the charge BUT i would rather they held the package and asked for payment and upon receiving the payment they will schedule the delivery. That or at least get this charge sent out within the month. Its just a feeling of if the shoe was on the other foot ya know? I'm sure they wouldn't be so inclined to pay me back if i remembered they owed me money 6 months after the fact. And I'm 100% certain if i gave them a deadline of 7 days they'd tell me to stuff it.

@tarvis: As far as I'm concerned I was polite. I didn't swear and everything was written in a understandable and structured manner. The Representative is precisely that, they represent the company. So if i have a problem they are unfortunately are going to be the one to be on the other end of that. I'm sympathetic but considering i wasn't abusive I'm also inclined to think that having to receive emails like that is just part of the job. If the company they represent were better at building their sites and not causing me this problem in the first place then i wouldn't have sent the email at all.

If I received that email I would have read about a quarter of it and replied with sorry for the inconvenience.

@tarvis said:

The customer service representative that reads your email is in no way responsible for the delayed invoice you had received. I prefer being polite.

This. Sometimes, being rude or very insistent can be beneficial and get you what you want, but is also the best way to guarantee the barista will spit in your coffee. Shit happens - learn to roll with it like a decent human being.

It's 'accepting'. Also, capitalise the letter I.

If a customer service rep reads an angry email and takes it personally or harshly or feels bad after doing so, and it wasn't meant for them personally, they should find another job.

I wouldn't pay them. If it's only 24 squigglies-with-lines-through-them then I expect they'd probably write it off rather than actually pursue legal action, unless it's some sort of government agency. They were probably just trying to scare you into paying it.

I'd look for some sort of consumer law that protects consumers against seeking reimbursement after a given amount of time. Fairly sure they exist.

Then I'd tell them, look chumps, if you're going to send collections after me, I'm taking you to small claims court.

You can represent yourself there, and DHL will have to use expensive company lawyers. For 24 euros. Which they don't do.

E: Oh, and also, whenever I want to complain about any company, I send my complaints directly to the board of directors. If they find something to be amis with their company, they're going to fix shit right fast and kick some ass.

Send an email to whomever your respective consumer protection agency is. I wouldn't be surprised if DHL tell you to go fuck yourself, so it would do you well to be able to quote the law when you're corresponding with them.

Usually, if a company is hassling you, telling them that you've contacted an agency is enough to make them back off. Even if they are technically right, the cost of fighting you wont be worth the small amount of money they'll be making from you.

I'm having trouble following your logic regarding two central conclusions here:

A company is behind 6 months on delivering an invoice, therefore, it does not need to be paid.

A company takes forever to send an invoice, and this in some way inconveniences the customer to the point that he becomes annoyed.

Getting irritated at the payment process not working is the one part of this that makes sense to me.

Righteous indignation generally only works with proper capitalization.