Does UPS intentionally delay packages?

Factual Questions
1

Does UPS intentionally delay regular ground (2-7 day) packages so that they’re delivered on the 6th or 7th day since the order?

Sometimes I’ll get a package from close - a 5 or 6 hour drive - and I’ll track it so that by day 2 after my shipment it’ll be at the local hub - minutes away from me and well within their normal route - but the package won’t actually be delivered for another 4 or 5 days.

So, do they intentionally delay these packages as to make the service non-competitive with their more costly 2-3 day service, perhaps?

2

thats probably part of it. But you must realize they have TONS of stuff to ship. things with priority simply get onto the trucks first.

BTw, you can just call UPS and arrange a self-pickup at the hub.

3

I’ve always wondered this, too. I was pleasantly suprised, though, when on Thursday I recieved a UPS shipment from JC Penny for an order I placed on Tuesday night. It was something I didn’t really care all that much about – a laundry hamper. But when I ordered my Power Mac G4 last year, I tell you it was frustrating watching the tracking information several times a day waiting for my toy. “Toledo! It’s been there for two days now! Come on!”

4

Recently I paid for 3 day shipping and got it in 2 days. I don’t think they intentionally delay stuff, they just make sure all the 1 and 2 day stuff makes it on time and the other stuff sits around until everything else is delivered.

5

Doesn’t UPS send everything to a central hub, regardless of where the package originates or where it’s going?

I’ve had some bad luck with UPS (“Unbelievably Poor Service” and “Poo is Brown”). Last year I ordered a watch from a company I didn’t realize was an hour’s walk away from my apartment. They shipped UPS. A week later I got a notice that UPS had tried to deliver. I don’t use UPS because I can’t be home to receive packages. Unlike the Post Office and FedEx, they are not open on Saturdays. Also like the Post Office and FedEx, their depot is in a scummy area in downtown L.A. (unlike the other two, which are a mile or less away). So I called and routed the package to my office. For some reason UPS cannot find the office – that they deliver other packages to on a daily basis – when someone reroutes a package there. It took at least another week and half a dozen phone calls to get my watch. It took a lot of the fun out of wearing it. And this seems to happen every time I route something to the office. (Again: They deliver stuff there all the time, and we are a well-known company.)

Another time I took the day off of work because something had to come UPS and I didn’t want it to go to the office. I phoned UPS to tell them that I am at home and am waiting for the package. When the package didn’t arrive in a reasonable time I called back. They said they had a note that the I called and told them to hold the package and that I’ll be down to pick it up. I had quite clearly said – more than once, since I wanted to make it absolutely clear – that I was at home and that I was waiting for delivery. How did that become “Hold the package there and I’ll drive down and pick it up”?

And then there are all the times that the UPS driver would not even try to go to a recipient’s home, but would just leave a call tag on the gate. If he even bothered to leave a call tag. There have been times when the first notice I got was the final notice.

Does Poo-is-Brown intentionally delay packages? Probably not; but I think that their system requires the packages to be moved unnecessarily (if I’m right about the hub) and that many UPS employees (at least the ones I’ve had to deal with) are incompetent or lazy.

6

on a side note

NEVER EVER EVER EVER mark a package “fragile”. my friend who works for fed-ex says that Fragile is code for “drop kick into back of truck” just some FYI

7

…i am a UPS driver in NJ…nothing gets"held" or "delayed " on purpose…we are not a storage company and do not make any money warehousing packages…we do not leave any packages of noticable value at front doors or porches without a written consent(delivery notice)…the profit from a package would obviously go way down if we have to make a 2nd or 3rd delivery attemp so we will always try to get rid of it on the first day(we charge for shipping,we do not charge double for going back a 2nd day or triple for a 3rd attempt)…on the brighter side ,I could tell you guys some great stories about certain “deliveries”…lots o’ weird people out there(even on my mostly residential route on the Jersey shore…):smiley: :smiley: :smiley:

8

GUINNESS: As a UPS driver, can you explain the problems I’ve had with deliveries? Back when I didn’t mind using UPS, the driver who delivered to my area was notorious for poor service (not only to me, but to my neighbours). I had assumed that we just had a bad driver and union rules prevented UPS from doing anything about it. But being “unable to find address” of a company UPS delivers to daily seems to point to a deeper problem. And not being able to understand “I have taken the day off. I am at home and am waiting here for you to dliver my package,” indicates that maybe UPS should spend more time ensuring their telephone workers have adequate comprehension levels.

I am under the impression that UPS is not concerned with consumers, but wants to make themselves a “business-to-business” company and to hell with the individual. (Of course, they make more money from businesses. As you say, they often have to make multiple trips to residences. Simply being open on Saturdays would eliminate a large number of these multiple attempts.)

So again, as a UPS driver, why would the residential UPS service be so bad here?

9

I was sending a package to a cousin in Minnesota a few years ago. As a joke I wrote “caution, human remains” on the box. Somewhere in transit someone took that box and placed it in a larger box with a bunch of styrofoam peanuts and slapped fragile stickers all over it and also wrote “caution human remains” on it. My cousin’s mail man would not take the box out of his mail truck, he made my cousin come out and take the box out of the truck. All I had sent my cousin was some pictures and a couple CD’s.

10

i’m really not sure there was a specific question i can answer(except the why would it be so bad?)…and i obviously cant answer that question…i’m not there,i dont know your driver(is it the same driver or are there a few different)(it might be a training route you live on))…there are sucky UPS drivers and there are good ones as there are sucky people and good people in every part of society…dont let big brown make you lose any sleep…i dont…i’ve been there for 15 years and have seen some people get “burnt out” (mostly managers)…i love my route and most of my regular customers,but i know of some guys that dread coming to work in the morning…

11

A little bit off topic, but dont ever try write cute messages to your mailman on the outside of your packages…

Once when I was about 14 years old, I wrote on a box something like “Ancient Chinese Proverb: He who works in post office should not throw packages.”

I thought it was cute at the time, and I didnt expect the mailman to actually read it.

Well, the package arrived at my friends house, absolutely crushed, as if run over repeatedly by a mail truck.

They put the remains in a plastic baggie along with a prefab note that said, not in these words, “Sorry, shit happens”.

That was the USPS, and not UPS, but I thought I would throw it in here anway.

12

Annoyingly I’m not even supposed to have it shipped UPS - amazon was offering fedex super saver shipping (which I’ve had good luck with in the past) which I used for my order - and they ended up sending it UPS ground for some reason.

13

I was going to make the same point. It costs UPS a lot of money to store and monitor all that crap. If they had any kind of policy of holding stuff, they’d probably have to have more warehouses–an expensive proposition. And having the packages in their system opens them to more liability. If something were to happen at the warehouse and they had to reimburse people…yikes! They’ll try to get it out out of your possession and into yours ASAP. If your item is at the warehouse for a few days, it’s not because they want* to keep it there. They don’t.

It can only be good for them if they deliver it earlier than the stated delivery time if possible. If someone pays for regular service and gets it early, they think they’re getting great service. I find that I almost always get things earlier than expected because they build some leeway into the estimated delivery times. If someone starts to depend on that, well that’s their mistake, and UPS will gladly tell them so.

We have had some MAJOR problems with UPS lately. but it was problems at the hubs and warehouses. I can’t say that I’ve ever known of an actual UPS guy to give anything less than very good service. And some really go the extra mile. Several times, our guy thought that a package might have been valuable and didn’t want it to be seen from the street or by the neighbors, so he came up the driveway, went to the back of the house, and put the package in the back seat of the car! (Yes, he leaves a note when he does that).

And having worked extensively in retail, I’ve gotten to know quite a few UPS guys who do the business routes. They really try to give excellent service and do any favors they can think of. Of course they get payback in that we’d always try to have the shipments 100% ready and sign for the received stuff ASAP so he could get on his way. When I worked in the Bridgewater Mall, the UPS guy was typically great. The mall was his whole route, and he was THE source for useful information not available through official channels. (As you all probably know, UPS has an extremely strict dress code. Since the route was entirely indoors, however, they let him wear shorts year-round. And since it was kind of an upscale mall, they let him make one concession to fashion–he was allowed to wear argyle socks. Black and brown, of course!)

Which brings me to my final point–there is UPS the company, and there is the individual UPS man or woman who interfaces with the clients and forms relationships with them. By fostering positive relationships, the UPS guy makes his own life easier because people are nice to him and willing to help find a way to allow him to leave packages on the first delivery attempt. As Guinness says, that’s a huge time-saver for him. Good relationships also allow him to help to protect his own job by making UPS service seem as good as possible and make people want to keep using it. And expediting shipments as much as possible is the most direct way to make the people and businesses on his route happy. Unfortunately, the people in the hubs and the warehouses don’t get as much of a direct benefit from giving good service, so they are less motivated.

Interestingly, while allowing customers to view tracking information directly has probably saved them quite a lot of customer service costs, it has also led to new opportunities for customer dissatisfaction.

Johnny L.A.: Sounds like you got a real lemon of a UPS guy.

GUINNESS: Please please PLEASE start an “Ask the UPS Guy” thread! Please?

14

Not exactly off-topic:

Individual UPS people can be fantastic. Our regular guy knows us and our dog by name. He personally made sure that a particular package I was expecting from India was correctly rerouted from our house in Austin to our hotel in New Hampshire, since you can’t have re-routing done without at least one delivery attempt, but I knew we would alredy be gone by the time that attempt would be made. The package contained my wedding dress! The folks in India screwed up by sending it so late, but the UPS guy made it all OK: it arrived the day before the wedding.

On the other hand, I’ve had some serious trouble with packages that got lost in the system. I think that’s going to be inevitable in such a huge operation.

15

…ok GREEN BEAN…i’ll do it. I cant imagine anyone with any interest in it though…does it go in the MPSIMS section?

16

One more coming down on the “you get some good ones and you get some bad ones” side.

The company I used to work for got a lot of stuff delivered UPS, and we sent a good bit of stuff UPS.

We had some guys who’d be on our route for a year or so, and they’d wave hello to you if they saw you walking down the street. Good guys, who knew their job and did it well - and were as customer friendly as you could hope.

We had some others who didn’t do their jobs well and weren’t customer friendly at all. The record for shitty service is held by a guy who did our route for about two days. Besides delivering some of our stuff to a company on the other side of the block (I must admit, they had a similar name - but it was still the wrong street and number) he came in (on what turned out to be his last day) to make a pick up and didn’t have his dolly (two wheeled thingy you use to make it easier to carry heavy boxes - I’ve been over here too long sackkarre) so we loaned him one of our push carts to haul the stuff to the truck. We never got that cart back. He loaded it up and went back to UPS and got fired that same day. His replacement turned out to be one of the better guys, though, so it wasn’t a total loss - and after that we always reminded anybody who borrowed a cart to bing it back.

17

The OP is asking whether they intentionally delay the packages, and the answer to my mind is Yes. Having sent packages at various price points and also being able to track them via the internet shows this to be the case.

In other words, paying extra for ‘quicker’ delivery is a question of semantics. If I don’t pay for the 2-3 day service, the package is going to sit at some hub for a day or two, regardless.