About a month ago I ordered a vintage phone from a website to be shipped to me via UPS. At one point their tracking site said they had delivered it “Left at front door”. But I never got it. I called them and they said “Yeah we delivered it, the driver left it at your front door.” So I called the merchant and informed him that I never got it. I asked him to sent another one. He said he wouldn’t do so without charging my card again. He didn’t seem to understand that, without a signature as proof that I received it, he can’t charge me for it. So I disputed the charge with the card company. (The dispute has not been resolved yet.) I ordered another vintage phone from another company (at a higher price) and received this second phone (FED EX this time). (It’s a 1950’s style wall phone if you’re interested.)
Here’s the interesting part: Three days ago my neighbor came over with the unopened box with the first phone. She had been out of town and her parents were house-sitting and didn’t realize the package had been delivered to the wrong house. I’ve notified the merchant telling him he needs to have UPS come pick up the package and ship it back to him. I expected UPS to be here by now. My thinking is that UPS should pick up the package and return it to the merchant and refund all shipping charges to the merchant. Does anyone have experience with this kind of situation? Or am I going to be stuck paying to ship this back to the merchant?
If the package is unopened, you should be able to refuse it, just as you would a USPS delivery. Call UPS, tell them you want to refuse a delivery and schedule a pick-up time. I have no idea how UPS deals with shipping charges on returned shipments, though.
I’m a retired letter carrier and saw situations like this surprisingly often. The town I worked in had several streets with similar names and it wasn’t uncommon for other delivery services to confuse them (everybody makes mistakes) and since UPS doesn’t know when someone is out of town, a package could sit on a porch for quite a while before anyone noticed the mistake.
We were friendly with the UPS drivers and tipped them off if we saw something like that, but there are no guarantees that that will happen.
Just tell the seller it was UPS’s mistake and they should pay for it. Who knows if they will, but it’s not on you. You may want to take it to a UPS store and explain the situation, though. That’d be faster than waiting for a pickup.
The first thing I did when I got the package was call UPS and ask them to come get the package and ship it back to the merchant. UPS said that they couldn’t do so on my say so. Their contract is with the merchant. So I sent an email and called the merchant to ask him to do ask UPS to do this.
Before the neighbor brought it over, this situation was clear. I never got it and don’t have to pay for it. My suspicion is that UPS considers that since I now have the package their job is done and all is well. My concern is that the card company will go along with the UPS view. So my question was if anybody had been in a similar situation or worked in a capacity where they would have an insight as to where I stand.
Sometimes I wish I had never told anyone about the neighbor bringing it over. :rolleyes: