As the saga of DHL’s announced plans to revamp its US express delivery market unfolds, reports are filtering in that the company’s plans to switch additional delivery areas over to the USPS is already in progress – sometimes happening in mid-stream of a shipment delivery, causing delays and some confusion.  (See What is the Real Story Behind Revamped US Plans by DHL?, DHL Responds to Questions about Service, Outsourcing.)

While such a transition would inevitably cause some issues, there are current reports of web retailers uncertain as to exactly what is happening with some of their recent deliveries. Packages are leaving the e-tailer’s fulfillment center with the expectation that it would be delivered by DHL directly, but instead are being moved over to the USPS in mid-stream for customer delivery.

DHL had always outsourced some deliveries to the USPS for rural areas, but has announced plans for moving even more local delivery to the post office, presumably including some larger metro areas, as a way to reduce its network costs.

The “Old Glory” blog reported getting this email from one e-tailer regarding an order that was placed.

“We were hit a pretty big blow this week when DHL announced they were cutting back on their delivery areas. Their announcement was made on Monday of this week, while your package was in mid-transit. Their change affected thousands of zip codes, and unfortunately your area was one of them.

“What DHL is doing is passing shipping along to the postal service, which your package was on 7/2. Many shippers are running into this and finding problems as they happen.

We had no way of knowing that this announcement would have been made”.

Any type of service transition like this will have to incur some period of at least modest confusion, but shippers using DHL or customers expecting time sensitive materials should keep on top of the developments and ask a lot of questions.