Some companies don’t permit personal items to be shipped to the office. This is, of course, an entirely rational response to the ANTHRAX CRISIS!!1! we had a few years ago.
I’ve never had any problems with our UPS driver–he knows me pretty well now. I think I single-handedly keep UPS and Amazon.com in business. 
Our FedEx driver, however, is another story altogether. I was expecting a package last week and it was about 3 days late when it finally got here. But that’s not all. On the front of the package, my name and address had been covered up with a new shipping label with the address of the people across the street and a note reading “Right address”. What’s even stranger is that it was addressed to a man that hasn’t lived there in 8 years. I still have no idea how it finally ended up on my porch.
We used DHL at my last office, and their online package tracking was terrible. It would say that the package was still at the origin station days after it had been delivered to the destination office.
Me to UPS: Says on youre tracking webpage the modem was delivered to my address and signed for on March 16th.
UPS Customer Service: That is correct
Me: I was home ALL day on the 16th No One came to the door, I had workmen here, so I wasn’t napping, I signed for nothing!
UPS-CS: Says here you did.
Me: Well, unless the driver signed him/herself I sugest you call and find out where the package is.
UPS-CS But it says here you signed for it
So now I’m a liar? My signature is Very unique, you are going to have to track the driver.
UPS-CS Just a minute. Oh the package is slated to be there tomorrow.
WTF!!
Next morning, package at door and no signature required!
Double WTF
Sure. A beautiful sunny day, two thirds of the drivers call in sick and go to the beach.
Heh. I have a coworker who used to work on the dock for one of these delivery companies. He has some impressive horror stories. My personal favorite was the method they used when the truck was just a little overloaded, so the boxes were sticking out to the point they couldn’t get the door closed. They’d get the forklift, back up a ways so they could build up some speed, then ram it into the back of the boxes sticking out. Do that a few times, and they could get the door closed.
Oh, and “fragile” on a box means either “treat me exactly the same as everything else” or “kick me extra hard” depending on how bad the worker’s mood is that night.
I’m convinced that “FRAGILE” just makes a box a target for any and all unhappy employees that want to stick it to the company every way they can, making the company pay out more insurance claims.
Well, since every single box is marked Fragile whether the contents are or not, the workers become kind of inured to the meaning of the word, you know what I mean? When I worked for RPS lo those many years ago I once saw a set of headers marked with a Fragile tag.
If you want the workers to respect the warnings on the truly fragile stuff, don’t slap the label on everything and eventually they might believe it.
I had a bit of a scare recently. I was expecting my new $2700 bicycle to arrive by FedEx, and was counting on my apartment office to receive and keep it for me. I checked the online tracking during the day and sure enough, it said “Delivered.” I went home and of course, it wasn’t there.
I called FedEx, they said they’d have the driver call me back. I wait for an hour, no call.
During that time I noticed the driver had called me during the day and left a message - not much of one, basically a “hey, are you there?” call, but I do have the number via call waiting, so I call that number.
Me: “I left it at the office.”
Driver: “I was just there, they said they don’t have it. Hmm… Did you leave it at the correct office?”
Driver: “Yeah, the one at the end of the street.”
Me: “Which end, east or west? The one at the western end is not our office, but for the other apartment complex.”
Driver: “You know, at the end of the street.”
Me: “East or west?”
Driver: “Uh, at the end, on the right.”
It was at the other office, fortunately. Amazingly, the same exact thing happened a week later with FedEx.
I ordered some records from Insound back in December, and they were shipped to me via DHL. I didn’t bother to get a tracking number when they first went out, but when they hadn’t arrived in about 5 days, I called to check.
The online tracking info said it had been in their sorting facility in Ohio for three days. I called DHL, and they apologized profusely and said they’d get right on it.
I went away for a few days, and when I came back, still no package. I checked the online tracking info again–and it said the package had been delivered two days ago. It obviously hadn’t.
When I called DHL this time, they said that they were having “labor issues”–specifically, the guy who drove out to my rural location had quit, and they didn’t have a replacement. So it was “delivered”–to the US Post Office in Lexington, KY, from which it was mailed to me.
Moral: when I actually want something to get there, I use the good ol’ USPS. Apparently that’s what DHL does
Maybe they lied to you because they thought you wouldn’t be able to handle the truth?
This happened to my company one time. We were trying to mail an overnight letter to East Bumfuck, TN. We expected it to take a couple of extra days, but it ended up taking over a week. When it arrived at the DHL sorting facility in Memphis, it was “handed off to a 3rd party courier” since the delivery address was “out of their service area.” Well, it must have been out of THEIR service area as well, because they put it in a manila envleope and added 83 cents worth of postage.
We didn’t pay for that one, and only sent things to that address via FedEx from then on.
I used to work in a corporate mailroom, and hung out and drank with a few of our UPS and FedEx drivers…
On heavy parcel days, it was common for drivers to just automatically log residential deliveries as “No answer at house, attempt redelivery tomorrow” to keep schedule. Especially for large parcels to out-of-the-way homes.
Quality ranking of service and staff was:
UPS: Elite envied playboys with cushy routes.
FedEx: Flashy frat boys who get the job done and aren’t afraid to brag about it.
USPS: Draft horses working tirelessly to get you your bulk advertisements 2 days late.
Airborne Express: Slimy door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesmen who equate early morning priority with 4 p.m.
DHL: Package? What package? Let me check in the back of the Pinto under the old McDonalds cheeseburger wrappers…