DHL "Lost" My AirTag Parcel (but I knew where it was)

ten weeks ago i set out to test how well apple's new ear tags could track parcels being shipped overseas to test this i sent three air tags to different locations one to tim cook at apple one to elon musk at spacex and one to the german embassy in north korea after noticing that the north korean parcel was held up in dhl's frankfurt facility i decided to send the second one this time to a government-run film commission in pyongyang if you haven't seen that first video yet i highly recommend that you do now a lot of exciting things have happened since then in fact one of the attacks was even sent back to me now i haven't opened this parcel yet but it seems as though there's a letter inside also thanks to the air tags i stumbled across what seemed to be some pretty dirty business practices from dhl so let's get into it [Music] so let's start with the north korean parcels after attempting to send the first air tag to the german embassy in pyongyang the parcel ended up in dhl's logistics facility in frankfurt airport and hadn't moved in over two weeks with no updates on the track and trace i called dhl to figure out what was going on and was told that i would need to open an investigation well after requesting an investigation online i was told i would only get an answer in about three weeks time which prompted me to send another air tag to north korea now two weeks after submitting that investigation i got this email from dhl hello jonathan unfortunately your above mentioned shipment did not arrive at the recipient abroad in spite of intensive research we could not find your shipment so essentially dhl lost the parcel did an investigation and couldn't find it now that was hilarious because i could clearly see that the parcel was still sitting in dhl's facility in frankfurt airport not only that but i was getting updates on its location every five to ten minutes quite ironic that i knew exactly where the parcel was and dhl hadn't a clue even after their so-called intensive investigation they then wrote in order to compensate you for the damage we need the completed and signed form please send us the required information within the next seven days i thought huh within the next seven days and what if i don't do it within the next seven days you're not gonna compensate me so eight days later i sent dhl an email requesting more information on their so-called investigation i asked them to provide me with the parcels last known location how it could have been lost and to detail which steps they took to locate the parcel i couldn't wait to hear their response now you'd expect it to be easy to contact dhl after they've lost your parcel well it's not their letter was sent from a no reply email address and the only contact details they provided was a phone number which was conveniently located in the small print of their letter and trying to find an email address on dhl's website is by no means an easy task essentially dhl me contacting them as hard as bloody possible i hate it when companies do this meanwhile the second air tech parcel headed for the north korean film commission actually made it out of frankfurt airport after having only stayed there for four days so we were back in action the parcel was driven to a dhl facility in leipzig airport after sitting there for just over a week i picked up its signal in a really weird location a wind farm in the town of lunsburg which is just north of leipzig airport based on the weird location i was confident i had picked up the airtag's location mid-flight again which is absolutely insane but i couldn't find any flights that had left leicester's airport which matched the time that it was pinged so i was kind of left scratching my head a few days later and i still hadn't received any more pinks from that air tag which was strange because if it had flown somewhere it would have arrived at its destination airport already and should have started pinging its location again i knew i couldn't have gone directly to north korea because while no such direct flight between germany and north korea exists at least not to my knowledge now when i checked dhl's website i noticed they had provided a track and trace link for career post which is a south korean postal service when clicking on the link i was given a page error no surprises there but it got me thinking did dhl send my parcel to the wrong career i thought surely no logistics company can be that stupid well after sharing the screenshot on my youtube community page one of you brilliant souls managed to figure out which flight the attack had taken and shared the flight number with me and sure enough the damn thing was sent to south korea the wrong career check this out look how accurate the air tags location info was when compared to the flight radar information it's literally pinpoint accurate and matches the time the plane flew over this location so cool what i find truly fascinating about the air tags is how much plausible information you can deduce from one airtag ping in this example we were able to figure out that the air tag was on a cargo flight this flight was at 6000 feet at the time of the ping given it was a cargo flight it's likely only two pilots were on board the plane meaning one of those two pilots had to have an iphone which communicated with the air tag and that iphone had to have an internet connection so was likely still connected to a cell tower at six thousand feet and perhaps most ironically of all the pilot's iphone was not switched to flight mode during takeoff it just goes to show you how powerful this technology is even at six thousand feet so now that i knew the air attack was sent to south korea instead of north korea there were two things i needed to figure out why wasn't i receiving pings from the air tank in south korea and why was it sent there in the first place well after checking the south korean apple store i could see that air tags are available for purchase however they only advertise precision finding as the key feature and mention nothing about the find my network after further investigation i found out that apple's find my network is not supported in south korea some speculate is due to south korea's privacy laws while other speculators due to their security laws however i couldn't find any concrete information on this this basically meant that iphones in south korea couldn't communicate with my air tag pretty interesting discovery yet at the same time also a shame because it meant my parcel was now untraceable what's funny is the shipping status on dhl's website said that the parcel had arrived in the destination country so i could only assume that this was clearly a mistake on dhl's behalf at this point i considered this parcel a lost cause so i put my focus back to the original ear tech parcel which was still stuck in frankfurt airport 10 days had passed since i'd requested information from dhl about the investigation and with no reply i decided i had no choice but to give them a call this was a nightmare despite offering an english customer service line i was constantly being transferred to an agent who couldn't speak english so i ended up having to ask my german friend matthias to help out when we called dhl all the agent was able to tell us was that the investigation was still open this completely contradicted their email which concluded the parcel is being lost so confusing he also told us that it could take up to six weeks before we get the results of the investigation we then asked the agent if there was an issue delivering parcels to north korea he assured us twice during the phone call that service to north korea was fully operational with dhl proving unhelpful once again i decided to submit their refund request form but i left all the refund information blank and wrote that i'd like to wait for the results of the investigation now here's where things get really suspicious the very next day after submitting that form i got an update from dhl informing me that the parcel was now being processed to the destination country coincidence i think not one could only speculate as to what happened here but at this point i was fairly certain that no investigation ever took place at least not until i submitted that refund form my speculation is that dhl sends this refund form as a kind of cost efficiency test if the value of your goods is low they just pay you out close the case and no investigation is needed if the costs are more significant only then will they get a human involved to figure out where your parcel is and with that seven day deadline they try to impose on that refund form it certainly seems as though they prefer paying out customers as opposed to carrying out the investigations now i know that may sound completely illogical but it's kind of like how big online retail giants have been caught throwing truckloads of return goods away simply because they've calculated it's more cost efficient than restocking them keep in mind the processing of parcels these days is highly automated not only that but the volume of parcels which dhl has to deal with is insane so humans likely only get involved as a last resort again i'm only speculating here but i can't help but think that if i had submitted that refund form properly and on time dhl would have just paid me out and thrown my parcel away but speculation aside the good news was we finally had the parcel back on track and heading for north korea and this time the parcel flew directly out of frankfurt airport and arrived in beijing china this was really exciting because the majority amount going into north korea typically goes through china it was starting to feel as though this project might actually work after the parcel spent a few days in a facility in the city of beijing it was then transported to a facility in beijing airport and it sat there with no activity for over a week then seemingly out of nowhere the other north korean parcel appeared in beijing too dhl finally figured out they'd send it to the wrong career and put it back on the right path good job dhl you figured that one out all by yourself so with both air tech parcels now in beijing i'm starting to feel pretty happy with how things were progressing but on the 10th of july i got an update on the film commission parcel informing me that the shipment cannot be imported into the destination country and of course dhr offered no information as to why so i knew i had to call him again luckily for me this time i managed to get someone who spoke with me in english he told me that either the parcel had been declined due to containing dangerous goods or because the customs declaration form had fallen off the package now neither of those reasons seemed likely to me highly frustrated with the response i managed to find an email address for dhl in north korea so i wrote them an email asking if they were still receiving parcels into their country to my surprise i got a reply the very next day dear customer thank you for your inquiry on our service operation i'm sorry to inform you that we can't accept any inbound shipments from other countries into the dprk because all international flights are suspended from china to the dprk due to the government measures to prevent covert 19 from other countries we are not sure when international flights will be resumed right now if we have any updated information on our service operation i'll let you know asap honestly i can't say i was surprised but man i literally had two customer service agents at dhl assuring me that shipping to north korea was still possible and to this date dhl's website still shows a green light for shipping to north korea i mean how does dhl not know their service in north korea is suspended do their departments not communicate with one another or that if it's seemingly for nothing now the day after receiving this email i noticed that the parcel was making its way back to me in germany but right now i'm in croatia so i won't be there for when it gets delivered now although the other parcel is still being processed in beijing i expect that it will receive a similar fate yeah i'll come back to this but for now let's find out what happened to the parcel i sent to elon musk well after the parcel arrived at spacex on the 25th of may it chilled there for about two and a half weeks then finally on june 11th it had been taken to a new address it's uh it went to a middle scrap yard the very next day the air tech sent its final ping in castaic california rip i guess i went to a recycling facility or something now i'm not disappointed with elon musk or spacex i'm sure they get a ton of fan mail and well they can't reply to them all so it's fine but as for tim cook's airtag well after the parcel arrived at apple park on may 24th it sat there for almost 6 weeks doing nothing then on the 3rd of july i noticed that the air tech had left apple park and it made its way to cologne and germany that could only mean one thing they had sent the air tag back to me the very next day i got a knock on my door from fedex and i was reunited with my air tag it was so tempting to open the parcel but i decided i wouldn't open it until i was ready to shoot this video and now here we are so let's open this bad boy and find out what's inside oh i'm almost a little bit nervous oh there is a litter inside oh it's so exciting oh look at that official apple letter that's crazy what the hell okay they definitely repackaged the ear tag as well which is interesting there she is i'm like shaking honestly i've had this parcel for two weeks and finally after sending this parcel i don't know how far away it is like 7 000 miles away i'm overwhelmed with joy honestly there's the unicorn ear tag back in my possession this is sick all right the moment of truth the letter let's see what they wrote to me okay okay look at that it's crazy all right okay so they wrote dear jonathan thank you for sharing about your project for apple air tags we're delighted to hear about creative uses for the air tags and how they can improve our customers lives as you can imagine mrcook receives hundreds of letters each month from customers like yourself unfortunately he is unable to respond to every request but we hope you continue to enjoy your airtag as it returns from its unique journey across the world sincerely administrative assistant office of the ceo apple incorporated okay so it wasn't a letter from tim cook himself but hey i have to give props to apple here because i mean for them to actually go ahead and take the time to write me a letter and return the air tag i mean that's pretty cool and apple if you're watching this thanks for being a good sport and returning the attack to me props on making a really cool product i've had a lot of fun with it so far now one last thing i want to mention about this letter is i don't know much about paper but it looks like a special paper of some kind and i couldn't help but crack up when i saw that the edges are curved apple's all about their curved edges at the moment i don't know it's pretty funny so that pretty much wraps up this little experiment i'm really sorry i couldn't pull off sending an attack to north korea if anything interesting happens with the parcel that's still being processed in beijing i'll be sure to give regular updates on my instagram and of course also via youtube community posts who knows perhaps i'll retry a game when north korea's borders reopen oh and dhl if you're watching this i want a refund on my two north korean parcels also if you want to clarify what happened to my parcel investigation feel free to reply to the email i sent you 40 days ago i'll happily share your side of the story on this channel thanks again for watching see you guys in the next one

Channel: MegaLag

Views: 5,382,458

Keywords: Apple, AirTag, AirTags, Apple AirTags, DHL, Parcel Tracking, Shipment tracking

Id: W8SER24F0U8

Length: 14min 41sec (881 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 20 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/maltNeutrino]

Why is this guy inexplicably smug the whole time?

[u/[deleted]]

Its really cool to see the capabilities of the Airtag, especially the pings from In-Flight.... but good lord.... the rest of the video gave me PTSD flashbacks for all the times lately I've had to deal with USPS/UPS/FedEx delivery issues. I had to tap out midway cause shit was giving me anxiety.

[u/Bahamuts_Bike]

Is this guy doing an impression of that Kyle guy on SNL?

[u/Redditchoosemylife]

That was a good video

[u/chuby1tubby]

Where can I get some Apple letterhead paper? 👀