A couple of weeks ago, I came home to find a large, rolled up rug had been delivered to my house via UPS and was on the porch. Confused, I asked Mr. Obsidian if he’d ordered one (so very, very unlikely). He said no. We checked the address, there was no name and the house number doesn’t exist on our street-- it’s numerically between us and our left neighbor. We asked a bunch of neighbors. No one claimed the rug. Then we called UPS, and they promised to come get it.
Three times. It’s been three weeks now. We live on a numbered avenue and I’m guessing there was some transposing of the numbers involved, but I’m not going to start knocking on strangers’ doors in various permutations. The rug is wrapped in plastic, but the fog & dew has made the label unreadable. At this point I couldn’t tell you what company shipped it. I’m tired of it being on my porch.
Can I legally take it inside and keep it at this point? Give it to goodwill? Chuck it? Post a “If you lost a rug in shipping please come to 123 4th Ave and get it off my goddamn porch” ad on craigslist?
The one time I WANT someone to steal something off my porch. Don’t any of you people who leave cigarette butts and condom wrappers and beer cans want a free rug?
I know I should just take it in. But I feel strangely guilty, like I’m stealing. But, it was left on my porch and I can’t convince UPS to come get it. How much am I supposed to try anyway?
(And there’s some poor person at 432 1st St. going around and around with UPS insisting that their rug was delivered, and they insisting they never got it)
Are you able to tell from the return address what company shipped it? Maybe you could call them and let them know the issue. They could either advise you to open it so they can pull the information or they could get the information from the UPS tracking number and work UPS from their end.
I think I’d give UPS one more try and ask to speak to a supervisor.
It sucks that you’re trying to do the right thing and UPS doesn’t want to comply.
By the time I thought of that the label had gotten damp from several weeks of morning fog and is now impossible to read. It was only a tiny “sender” area-- there aren’t any company labels.
Which makes me wonder if UPS would be able to do anything with it. I’ll check if the tracking number is still legible.
When I moved from Chicago to NC I ended up leaving about 15 boxes of stuff with a friend to be shipped to me later. (Long story - I was shuttling back and forth for a month and a half and there was a bunch of stuff that didn’t get packed in time for the movers to take it.) He shipped it all UPS, and when the delivery came all the boxes got put in the spare bedroom until I could get to them. Shortly after this, I got a call from UPS asking if I’d gotten an extra package. I went over and counted, and got the same number that my friend had shipped, so I told them no, I hadn’t.
A day or two later, UPS shows up at my door with a package which appears to be part of the earlier shipment that had gotten separated from the others. So I looked more carefully at the still-unpacked pile of boxes and find that one of them is not addressed to me, but to a local BMW dealer. It was about the same size and shape of the rest of the packages, so it didn’t stand out from the others. I called UPS, rather embarrassed, and told them that I did, indeed, have their missing package. They sent someone over to pick it up (by this time I was practically on a first-name basis with the UPS driver, BTW.
I sometimes wondered what was in that box, and what kind of trouble the delay in delivery caused someone, as it was at least a month after the initial delivery before UPS got the package back.
This happened to me once. UPS delivered a whole box of Mp3 players (we opened the box assuming it was something we had ordered) and when we called, the guy tried to give me directions to come drop it off. I was like “Nope. You left it on my porch, you can come get it off my porch!”
If you can still read the tracking number, you can go here, enter the number and get the info of who sent it and where it is supposed to go. Since the intended person didn’t receive their package, hopefully they would have noticed it was delivered somewhere else and put a tracer on it. This prompts a UPS investigation into what the hell happened. Meanwhile, keep the package somewhere.
Again, see if you can get the tracking number, that will help you immensely.
Keep it, and do with it what you choose. Legally, you are not liable. UPS assumes the liability of leaving items without a signature, and they cannot prove they even delivered the item to you.
When the person who ordered it gets tired of waiting, they’ll file a claim and the company they purchased the rug from will ship them another one. UPS will eat the cost of the original and charge it off as operating expenses.
I can speak on this topic with a reasonable amount of certainty because I owned and operated a small package delivery franchise for about 7 years.
Bolding mine…
Sure they can (sorta). The driver can verify it was delivered to 432 1st St. on d-day, t-time, with a note on the order that says “Left on porch”. He just may have gone to the wrong 432 1st St.
Now, UPS automatically insures packages for $100. If UPS can’t fix the SNAFU, then the shipper can file a claim and get some money. The guy that bought the rug will have to deal with the rug company.
Keep the rug on hold for a bit. Worse case, you have a new rug.
UPS delivered a package to my neighbor at an apartment building I lived in a number of years ago. It sat on her doorstep for weeks, she was a notorious party girl and would sometimes not come home for a month or more. We were moving out, and as I packed boxes I stacked them outside the door for our friends to carry down to the truck. Fast forward a few days, and my in-laws are helping us unpack in the new place. I cut open one box and pull the items out with a gasp… a black lacy bustier with various uh, accessories. I frantically turned the box over and realized it was addressed to my former neighbor, and had somehow gotten tossed in the moving truck with our stuff.
I taped the box back up and very discreetly drove back over to the old place and left it on her doorstep. I don’t know what I would have done if we had moved far away. Probably thrown it away; it would have squicked me out to keep it!
But, even if they know where they delivered it to my house, am I responsible for keeping it safe? It’s been on my porch for weeks, and while my neighborhood is not bad, per se, it’s not somewhere that I’d leave stuff on the porch, either. This isn’t Mayberry. Anything I order I have sent to my office because I wouldn’t trust it to survive an afternoon sitting unprotected in front of my house.
I will say, UPS’s apparent policy of leaving it at the nearest house when the address is wrong sure inspires confidence.
It would be funny if you put it on Craig’s list, someone bought it, and when they came to pick it up, told you “I tried to buy a rug JUST like this one and it never showed up!”
If it’s been that long, then I’d say it’s yours. The original customer would have certainly reported it as not delivered and the shipper would have filed the necessary complaints by now and considered it lost. Even shipped UPS ground, delivery across the country isn’t more than 7 days (and that’s with really out-in-the-sticks places). I’d say do with it what you like. What’s it look like? Maybe someone on the dope would be interested in it?
Since the shipping label on the outside is unreadable, have you thought about opening the package and seeing if there is a packing list somewhere inside?
I wonder if this would fall under the same laws as those scams where fraudsters send businesses unwanted and un-ordered items, only to later send the business an invoice (often with ridiculously high prices). I seem to recall that anything sent to a business or home cannot be later charged for.
Anyone know if my memory is correct and / or if the OP’s situation would fall under such laws?
Unordered merchandise which is sent through the mail is the recipient’s to keep or dispose of as he/she wishes. However, this would not apply to the OP’s situation because: a) the rug was shipped via UPS, and b) the item was clearly ordered, but not delivered to the intended recipient.