I may be a former city slicker who will just never “get it” when it comes to small town life (as I’ve noted in past threads, I always lock my home and car). OTOH I live in the most densely populated part of a town/city of nearly 20,000, on a very busy street–not on some rural dirt road or something. Within a block of my house are four multistory apartment buildings with dozens of units each; within a three block radius, there are probably ten more such buildings.
Yet UPS just leaves everything I order in plain view for anyone walking or driving by. I remember being especially thrown by this a couple years back when it was a 42 inch TV, clearly labelled as such on the outside of the box. And now it was a computer and a couple smartphones (yay, EITC!).
Admittedly, nothing’s ever been stolen. But it still seems kind of crazy. I suppose they get their routes done a lot faster than in bigger cities!
That’s not crazy, that’s their job. But their are a number of different delivery options available so this doesn’t happen. For example, they can be held for pickup at the local UPS office (if there is one), where the package is to be left, or if you want it left with a neighbor.
Some years ago I read that UPS designates areas of a city where packages can and cannot be left at a door or on a porch. It was based on both city crime statistics and the past experience of UPS in that area. Also, the shipper can control this by requesting a signature upon delivery. If I were shipping a large TV or a computer, I’d want proof of delivery.
Isn’t it the company who shipped it to you to make the call on whether a signature is required? UPS has no idea what is in the packages, unless it is marked as ORM-D or alcohol or something. The only thing I fault UPS for is making it difficult/impossible to tell me whether a package needs a signature or not before I get the “missed you” notice on the door (maybe if I sign up for the free version of their website?).
The TV does sound weird though. Would the smartphones be conspicuous?
I suppose the smartphones were too small to be conspicuous, it’s true. But the big “DELL” box, like the TV, seems like easy pickings. In both cases they were likely out there for several hours before we brought them inside.
I remember years ago when UPS refused to leave a package at my door.
I work in book publishing, and there was a rush job that I had to correct and repage for second pass pages. So they were going to send it UPS overnight to my apartment for delivery Saturday morning. I told the people shipping it to make sure they noted no signature required. I wanted this done because I had no idea what time UPS was going to show up (anywhere from 7:00 onward), and I usually go down to the corner store to get my coffee and stuff in the mornings.
Well Saturday morning comes around, and I go down to the local corner store to get my coffee and newspaper. I make sure to leave a note on my door saying I ran down the street and will be back in a few minutes. I’m only gone about ten minutes. I get back home and I see the UPS truck driving away. I notice that there is no package left. So I drive off after him and flag him down. He had my package.
He said he didn’t think it was safe to leave it in front of my door. And that he had intended to bring it back to the UPS center so I could pick it up. I asked if the package said “no signature required,” and he said yes. I then asked again why he didn’t leave it. He said he didn’t feel it was safe.
Anyway–I signed for it and drove back home.
And the thing is, he never even left a slip on the door saying he had been there. If I hadn’t seen him when I came home, I never would have known he was there. And, I would have sat there all day waiting for a package that would never arrive.
Thank God I saw him! If not, I would have been screwed. It was an important author whose book I was working on and it had a very tight deadline.
I can’t believe the UPS guy just decided on his own that he didn’t think it was safe to leave the package outside my door, especially since I left a note on the door that I had ran down the street to get coffee. And the package instructions clearly said no signature required.
And it’s not like it’s a bad neighborhood or anything.
The crummy part is that if someone did steal your package, how can you prove it. Call up UPS "yeah, that box you said you delivered? It’s not on my porch. "
UPS can just say you must have taken the item and are lying about it. How can you prove that someone stole it?
At my last house I’d get packages dropped off on the porch all the time. No problem. It was great - just me and the wife, usually no one was home, if we had to go to a distribution center to pick up or packages it would never happen and they’d get sent back.
One day we got a package dropped off that didn’t belong to us. It belonged to our neighbor. We weren’t good friends or on good terms or on speaking terms. We pretty well actively hated each other. But it’s not my package, it’s their package, the UPS guy made an honest mistake and I’m cool with him. I walked it over and dropped it on their doorstep and rang the doorbell and sauntered on back home.
About a week later the UPS truck showed up and there was a knock. I was in the other room and figured the UPS man was running back to his truck and I’d get the package whenever. There was a knock again so I answered the door. The UPS man was there with someone who looked like a supervisor and he asked about the package. I said I definitely got the package, it was clearly not mine, I walked it over and placed it on their doorstep and rang the bell. They asked what time, I told them what time I thought it was and they thanked me and walked next door. They came back about 10 minutes later and asked again if I got the package, what I did with it, what time, I volunteered what the package looked like and what size and shape it was to the best of my recollection and estimation. They thanked me for my time and drove away.
After that UPS never left another package at the door.
That’s a lot of hypotheticals. You don’t have to “prove” anything. UPS, FedEx, et al. don’t try to scam you over on one delivery like a shady taxi driver.
There’s a woman in the Seattle area who has been caught on security cameras several times walking up to doors, taking packages and casually going back to her car. Apparently, she’s suspected of a lot more package thefts as well. She’s been doing it for quite a while and as far as I know, hasn’t been caught yet.
In my experience sending tens of thousands of shipments to customers, UPS is pretty capricious about signatures. They have an option to require a signature or even an adult signature, but aside from using those you can’t count on anything.
I’ve had angry customers complain the UPS driver wouldn’t leave the package without a signature, even though we never requested it. I’ve also had customers tell me UPS knows they aren’t allowed to leave them packages without a signature, but that they did it anyway for my shipment.
Pretty much every combination of expectations and results with no clear explanation. The best I ever got from UPS was that they leave it up to the driver to do whatever he wants.
Obvious, sure, but difficult to discreetly make off with. A big TV requires time to load into a vehicle, and you might be noticed because loading a fully boxed TV into a vehicle in front of a residence is not a normal thing to do. Then you sell it on Craigslist for a few hundred? Probably not worth it.
You don’t have to prove someone stole it. They don’t even really care if someone else stole it or if you stole it. They’ll take your word for it because you can’t pull that scam enough to affect their bottom line. If too many things get stolen from your place, they can just refuse to deliver to your place without a signature. Again, they don’t care if you’re a thief or if you’re being cased by one. They just know it’s a bad idea to leave stuff on your porch.
In many cases, yes, pretty much. Might someone lie and get two copies of something? Yes. But they are confident that the vast majority of complaints are legitimate, and that outright fraud will be detectable.
I have no trouble with deliveries, until I didn’t get one one day (two hard drives, not obviously marked). I got pissed because it was an atypical courier (not the big 3, although USPS might’ve been involved in interstate transport), and I thought they just claimed they knocked when they didn’t. But then the SO didn’t get something she was expecting that same day, so I reported it. They (Newegg IIRC) resent it right away, with no complaint.
My wife saw the UPS truck come to our house, the driver walk up the driveway, empty handed, stick the delivery attempt notice on the garage door and run back to the truck before she could get downstairs and out of the door to stop him. This was the third delivery attempt and we were home for both the previous ones as well.
I guess it’s one way to speed up the route. They must have targets for packages delivered OR attempted. Wife called UPS while he was still in the neighborhood and he came back in a few minutes. Insisted that he rang the doorbell.
Usually that is the case. But many of the companies I order from will toss the ball to me and ask if I want it left or want a signature required. Being like 3 feet off the sidewalk and not very trusting, I usually request signature required and then make arrangements to pick it up once the “failed delivery notice” pops up on my door.
I’ve been in both sides of this. I asked for my large-screen TV to be delivered Saturday, when I was home.
It came Monday, after I had called UPS and complained about the lack of Saturday TV.
There it was, sitting in plain view on my porch.
This was in sharp contrast to a few months prior, where a $45 part from Dell was held at the local UPS depot. I was expecting to be able to sign the waiver on their failed delivery slip. Nope. This thing was so important the only possible option was my driving to the depot to get it.