contract-law germany breach-of-contract shipping
Can a shipping company offer a parcel delivery that does not include at least one attempt to deliver?
<p>Suppose you order some item online and then you pay a shipping company to deliver the item to your home address. What exactly is the shipping company contractually obligated to do?</p>
<p>In spite of how this process is desribed, the shipping company does not make a promise to actually deliver the package to you. But it was my understanding that they are obligated to make an attempt at delivery. So they have to bring the package to your address and if you are not there this is not their problem and they have fulfilled their part of the deal anyway. You get a note in your mail box and can then pick up the package at a location of their choosing. So far so good.</p>
<p>Recently I had a situation where the package never came near my home address at all. After the announced delivery date the online status of the shipping company changed. The wording was something like 'We planned to deliver the package today but were too busy with other things. So we didn't manage to come by your house. Please pick up the package at the following post office.' No note or similar was in my mail box.</p>
<p>I don't know whether somewhere in the fine print it says that they are allowed to do that. But it seems to me they can't sell a service 'delivery of package to specified address' if this kind of thing is allowed. That looks like writing a contract for some service and then writing in the fine print you might not actually do it. It also seems wide open to large scale abuse by the shipping company (it happened to me only once). Is this legal?</p>
<p>Jurisdiction was Germany.</p>

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<p>Can they have a clause in the fine print that in laymans terms just says 'we might just not fulfill our side of the deal'.</p>
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<p>That paraphrase appears to trivialize the actual terms of the contract (of which fine print you mention you don't know in detail).</p>
<p>Germany's <a href="https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/bgb/BGB.pdf" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch</a> (BGB) at <em>§262</em> entitles the shipping company --insofar as obligor-- to a <em>choice of service</em>, provided that the company duly informs the customer, <em>Id. at §263</em>. The latter section of the BGB is not explicit as to whether the obligor's notification ought to happen <em>at the formation of the contract</em>, although I am almost positive that that is so and is premised on the BGB itself.</p>
<p>Since delivery at the post office and delivery at the home address are mutually exclusive (i.e., they preclude each other), by virtue of <em>§262</em> the company may outline in the contract both alternatives and thereafter decide for one of these unilaterally.</p>
<p>If the company makes its contractual [post office] alternative contingent on &quot;<em>being too busy with other things</em>&quot; and the customer proves that the company opted for post office despite not being that busy, the customer could prevail on grounds that the company contravened <em>Treu und Glauben</em>. See <em>Id. at §162(2)</em>.</p>
<p>The &quot;<em>I will mow your lawn</em>&quot; <a href="https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/57169/can-a-shipping-company-offer-a-parcel-delivery-that-does-not-include-at-least-on#comment116166_57169">example you outline</a> is not a good analogy. The shipping company may argue that, even if the product is not delivered at customer's home address, the customer still benefited by having to retrieve it from a location --such as a nearby post office-- that is closer from the location where the product was commercialized or manufactured. The customer would prevail only if delivery were at a location which is more inconvenient to him than if he discarded transacting with the shipping company. See <em>Id. at § 226</em>.</p>

<p>Depending on the type of parcel, some types have been suspended from being handled at the door due to Coronavirus in different delivery services.</p>
<p>Most notably &quot;Nachnahme&quot; is currently not done for DHL but is only for international DHL Express shipments. Any other such services are automatically sent to pickup points where one can pay. Similarly, ID parcels are (or were) suspended.</p>
