Beijing, China
December 7th, 2007
By Dan Murdoch
Hey Friends,
As you may know (see previous post) the cars are broken and we urgently need a small box of parts to be sent from Hungary before we can do repairs. Unfortunately DHL want $1,000 to send the box. We politely asked for a small discount, seeing as this is a charitable venture, and they politely gave us a stream of spurious nonsense about why they couldn’t help (see email trail below).
If anyone fancies firing off a quick email imploring them to help (come on it’s a Friday, you’re not really working), and maybe calling them tight-fisted corporate ball bags, then the kind lady in charge is:
Cessalie Bruce
Corporate Citizenship
Cessalie.Bruce@dhl.com
Her US number is: 954-626-2678
If you could link this to any other blog sites that would be smashing.
Here’s the story so far:
When our great friend and supporter Michael Moore originally asked DHL for help, and outlined our trip, this is what he received from Mrs Bruce.
Dear Mr. Moore,
Thank you for making DHL aware of the Trabant Trek. Unfortunately, this is not an activity which we are able to support at this time. Please understand the decision in no way reflects the quality or caliber of the event. It is based solely on our available resources.
We do, however, appreciate your interest in DHL and extend our best wishes for your success.
Regards,
Cessalie Bruce
Corporate Citizenship
Cessalie L Bruce (DHL US) Cessalie.Bruce@dhl.com
So Mike sent this:
From: Michael Moore
Date: Dec 6, 2007 2:16 PM
Subject: Re: Need Help from DHL to Complete Round World Charity Rally
To: "Cessalie L Bruce (DHL US)"
All we are asking is to get about 60 lbs. of spare part from Hungary to China or bangkok.. All 3 cars are now out of commission... Please, we need help.. even if it is a discount on the freight.
Thanks
Mike Moore
And she replied:
On Dec 6, 2007 2:42 PM, Cessalie L Bruce (DHL US)
Mr. Moore,
We are still unable to offer you a discount. If a discount were offered through our office, we would have to absorb some of those costs. Regrettably, we are not able to do so.
Regards,
Cessalie Bruce
Corporate Citizenship
954-626-2678
So I did a little research into her excuses, then I sent her this:
Dear Mrs Bruce,
Thank you for taking the time to reply to our requests, and offering you best wishes for our success. Unfortunately your best wishes won’t help our little box of bits get to Bangkok, wont help our little cars get to Cambodia, and wont help the little children there who are relying on us.
All we are asking for is a little discount on getting our parcel of spare parts out here, so we can fix the cars and complete our charitable mission. At the moment you kind folk are asking for $1,000 to send a 60 lbs box from Hungary. We’re terribly over budget, and these costs are threatening our project: we have a budget for living expenses of about $7 per day.
We here on the Trek (and most of the people in our Beijing hostel) find your reasons for rejecting our plea a little flimsy.
I did a bit of research to see if I could support your claim that DHL would be ‘unable to absorb some of those costs (of a discount)’.
Well 2006 was a pretty good year for your German parent company, Deutsche Post World Net. According to the 2006 Annual Report (the latest one available) revenue was up 35% to EURO 60,545,000,000 (count the zeros). That’s $88.4 billion. (http://financialreports.dpwn.com/2006/ar/thegroup/ataglance.html)
Of course, the profit from operating activities (EBIT) was just $5.6 billion. And these are last year’s figures, so I suppose this could have been a terrible year for the logistics industry.
But surely the cost of knocking a few hundred bucks off a small shipment in the name of charity could be absorbed? Sorry Mrs Bruce, don’t buy that one.
Oh but you ‘don’t have the available resources’?
6,500 offices, 420 aircraft, 76,200 vehicles, 1.5million shipments a year to 120,000 locations in more than 220 countries and territories. (www.dhl.com/publish/g0/en/about/network.low.html)
That’s a lot of resources.
You employ more than 285,000 people across the planet, not you personally Mrs Bruce, you are responsible for ‘corporate citizenship’.
Being unfamiliar with this important sounding title I looked up ‘corporate citizenship’: “The role of a company in considering its responsible involvement within the wider community”. (www.ccd.net/resources/guide/glosary/glossary1.html).
Well as a company with a global reach, I think in this case the wider community certainly stretches to the needy kids in Cambodia. And maybe your responsibility is to look a little further than the profit when you can help out a worthy cause.
And if it is vital to have the ambitions of DHL furthered by this charitable gesture, we would happily put your logo on our cars, on our website, on our t-shirts, on a documentary, on our webisodes, and on our blogs, which are read by thousands, and have appeared in newspapers across the world from the Washington Post to the Mongol Messenger.
I’ve put a copy of our correspondence on our websites (www.trabanttrek.org, www.myspace.com/trabanttrek, http://danmurdoch.blogspot.com) so that the tens of thousands of people supporting us can see how DHL have helped.
We do appreciate your interest in Trabant Trek and extend our best wishes for your success.
Regards,
Dan Murdoch
Trabant Trek
+86 150 471 87602
If you fancy bombarding the good lady with emails, and linking this terrible slight to other sites, that would be beautiful.
Ends
Mrdanmurdoch@gmail.com
For more of Dan’s blogs visit: danmurdoch.blogspot.com or www.trabanttrek.org
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