United Parcel Service can die

The BBQ Pit
21

While I can empathize with that story (it comes as no surprise), the thing is, your package wasn’t lost. When I say lost, I mean gone, not misplaced. Yours may have been delivered to the wrong place, but at least it was accounted for and you eventually got hold of it, so it wasn’t “lost” even by UPS’ own admission. The fact that the person lived right next door was practically fates aligning. In my case, UPS essentially shrugged its collective shoulders and went “Uh, I’unno, it dun disappeared!”

I wish my package ended up somewhere 30 miles away at the wrong address. At least I’d know where to go to get it myself.

22

A subtle yet important distinction, I agree.

23

How do you guys figure? If the seller shipped the item, and has proof that he did so, I would say it’s neither the seller’s nor the buyer’s fault. I’ve never encountered an eBay seller who would replace an item that was lost by the shipper at his own cost. That’s what shipping insurance is for.

24

I know you’re defending my position when you say it’s “neither the seller’s nor the buyer’s fault”, but this has been established since post one. I am curious, though, about what circumstance in this scenario would have made it the buyer’s fault, and please don’t say “not getting shipping insurance”. I know what shipping insurance is for and so does the seller. It’s an expensive item and we can all agree anyone would be an incomprehensible idiot not to insure it.

As far as I can tell, the only fault a buyer can have in any transaction is, um, not having the money to pay for it. So what else can they do wrong? I want to make sure it’s really not my fault …

25

That sucks. I had a similar issue with FedEx over Christmas.

My fiancee ordered me a refurbished iPod video from the apple website for a good price, and it was shipped FedEx. He ordered it Nov 21st. The FedEx tracking website said it got held up in San Fran for 5 days and then finally said it shipped. 3 days later it said it was delivered and signed in by our office. We called them several times, thinking they had lost it, but they could not find our package. Finally my fiancee called FedEx to see if it was ever actually delivered and after contacting the driver for our route they reported that no deliveries were made to our apartment complex that day, the driver never saw the package, and FedEx had no clue where it was.

Awesome. My fiancee filed a complaint and so far we’ve heard nothing. It’s officially lost in FedExLand.

Thankfully Apple is kickass and after going through all of this will FedEx, after coming out and telling me around Dec. 20th that unfortunately my gift was lost and it might be months before we saw it, if ever, my fiancee emailed Apple to let them know what happened.
They overnighted him another one and it arrived Dec. 23rd. Pretty sweet, Apple.

26

Although neither UPS nor USPS are models of efficiency, I find that generally UPS is worse. They seem to take a special delight in delivering… no not packages…but those little “missed delivery notices”.

Indeed, it is the sellers responsibility to get the good to the buyer- just as it’s the buyer’s responsibility to get the money to the seller. If the delivery ervice fails to deliver the purchase price to the seller, the buyer must resend it (or not get the merchandise, no seller I know will ship without payment), although he has a claim vs the shipper. The other side of the coin is that the seller is responsible for getting the goods to the buyer, and the fact that the shipper lost the goods only gives the seller a claim vs the shipping company, not the right to not deliver. It is the person who pays for the postage and ships the item that can make a claim vs the delivery company, not the person who expects to get the goods.

Thus, the seller must resend the mrchandise or refund, but he is entitled to a claim vs the common carrier and the buyer must cooperate and sign whatever is needed for the seller to recoup his loss. It is not unreasonable for the seller to ask the buyer to wait for the refund until the carrier makes good, but that is up to the buyer.

27

I know I’m misusing Schrodinger’s Cat here, but as a postal employee, it seems almost to fit. And if I worked for UPS, it would be the same. You see, just as the cat is alive and dead at the same time, so too is the parcel lost/late and not lost/late at the same time. This is because we work in percentages. We aim to get 100% of articles delivered on time. We get less than that, of course. I invariably come in here to these threads and defend the post office, but the fact remains that my “98.7% of articles delivered on time” is utterly meaningless to customers. They will either be part of the 98.7% who got their mail, and so they won’t give a shit, or they’ll be part of the 1.3% who got stiffed by us. For this latter group waiting on one item each, then that item is not 1.3% lost. It’s 100% lost. It’s hard to give these folks a satisfactory answer because they are 100% pissed off, and the stats are meaningless to them. They usually think we’re lying.

28

When I worked for (very large company name redacted), I was at one point a primary customer contact for lost shipments. We dealt in (small, fairly expensive electronic items), and when a new or replacement item was shipped by us & not received by the customer, I would track it with the shipper & file a claim if it appeared to be lost in transit. I spent about eighteen months where this was my primary responsibility, and I’ve dealt with thousands of lost shipments with several different carriers. And I’m here to tell you:

Airborne Express: :cool:
FedEx: :cool:
UPS: :mad: goddamn :mad: motherfucking :mad: good-for-nothing :mad: smooth-talking :mad: thieves!

Truth: we had a candidate for County Assessor here who lost my vote when I found out he used to be a UPS claims adjuster. Unless he was fired for paying customers who’d been screwed, that leads to a presumption of evil from my point of view.

Our packages would often arrive opened & empty. Then our claims would be denied due to ‘inadequate packaging’. One of our warehouse managers told me that was code for ‘able to be cut open with a razor blade’. :rolleyes:

The company went bankrupt owing money to FedEx and Airborne; they couldn’t collect on the bills, but they weren’t required to accept their business anymore. So they had to shift to UPS exclusively for their shipments. hatehatehatehatehate

29

I’ve never had a problem with UPS. Not directly.

This past July, a bunch of friends were getting together from all over the northern hemisphere. We ordered T-shirts etc. to commemorate this event. They were all sent to one person who was attending, to bring along and distribute - thus saving about a hundred dollars in shipping.

My friend got the UPS tracking number from the vendor. Watched for its delivery with bated breath. Was out of the house during the day of the delivery but that’s no big deal, UPS can safely leave packages there.

She got home. No package. Website said “Has been delivered”. Nope.

She wandered the neighborhood looking for it in case it was misdelivered. No luck. So - chargeback on the credit card, and nobody at the big gathering got to wear matching T-shirts. Rats. UPS swore up and down that they delivered it.

Two weeks later, she got a phone call from the lady at 601 Any Street (my friend lives at, say, 201 Any Street). Mrs 601 had been out of town on vacation for 2 weeks. Came back and surprise, there was a large parcel tucked behind a bush at her front door, addressed to this total stranger at 201 Any Street.

But I hear horror stories about all the various big delivery groups. It must just be the luck of the draw. We live about 4 miles away from major UPS and FedEx depots which may help with better luck than the average.

30

I just went through a UPS nightmare myself. Let me give you the details.

A few weeks ago, I ordered a projector system (projector, screen, and mount). It was shipped UPS ground. UPS’s tracking site showed it in transit, with an arrival three days hence. I was planning on being home that day to receive the package.

On the third day, it still showed ‘in transit’. So, I went to work.

The next day, it was still ‘in transit’. So I called UPS, and they could tell me nothing more.

The day after that, there was a note on the tracking page that said, “delayed by weather”. Okay, fine. I can accept that. But now there was no way I could be home to receive the package, as I had meetings for the rest of the week at work that I couldn’t dodge. So I called UPS and asked them to hold the package at their depot. No can do. You see, their system doesn’t let them change the address until a delivery attempt has been made at least once. You actually have to wait for a the driver to come out, miss the delivery, get your ‘could not deliver’ notice, THEN you can ask for the address to be changed. This is a stupid, stupid policy. Not only does it add an additional day for the shipment, but it forces UPS to make a useless delivery trip.

So then I thought maybe I could take a morning or afternoon off, but UPS won’t guarantee any delivery time other than “Sometime between 8 AM and 8 PM”. Think about that - if you’re a residence, you have to take a full day off work to receive a package. If you’re a business that closes at 6, you run the risk of repeated misses of the package you need. In contrast, Fed Ex will guarantee delivery before 10:30 AM, and if they can’t do that they’ll give you a relatively short block of time when they guarantee it will be there.

Anyway, I wait for the delivery notice, and finally get it. I call UPS, and tell them I want the package held at the depot for the next day, and I will pick it up. Sure thing, they say. So the next day, guess where my package is? Out for delivery. Not at the depot. I go home, and find a ‘second delivery attempt failed message’. I call UPS, and they have no record of my request to have the delivery diverted. I ask them to PLEASE hold it at the depot the next day. Sure thing, says UPS. Later that night, I check the web tracking system, and there is indeed a note that says, “Order held for customer at depot. Do not deliver”.

So… I go to the depot the next day to get my package. Guess what? It’s out for delivery. Or is it? Someone ‘seems to remember’ my order in the back, even though the system says it’s out for delivery. They go to the back, come back with a package, give me some paperwork to sign. I sign it, and say “Where are the other two packages?” There are no other two packages. This is the whole order. So I look at it very carefully, and it’s not mine. They gave me someone else’s package without even double checking. It turns out that the driver left the wrong delivery slip at my door, and when I gave it to them the wrong order came up. The guy who’s order they gave me? He’s probably expecting it to be delivered, but instead it’s being held at the depot and he has no way of knowing since the notice to that effect was put on my account.

Finally, someone else remembers seeing yet another order that might be mine. They go into the back, and this time come up with two boxes of my order. The correct ones, even. Where’s the third? They have no idea, but they’re ‘guessing’ it never got taken off the truck. They try to page the driver, but he’s not answering.

While all this was going on, three other people came in to get their packages. Two of the three were also lost. One of them had driven several hundred miles to pick up his package after UPS itself called him and told him it was waiting for him at the depot. When he got there, they told him it was still in transit, and whoever told him that was 'probably in Moncton, and they don’t know what they are doing." Nice for a UPS employee to tell a customer that their own company is incompetent.

Anyway, while waiting for my third package to be found, I observed what is laughingly called their process. The depot was a disaster. Shipments all over the place. No logical ordering to it. Some boxes were stacked in an office, others stacked in a corner, and they relied on the memories of the staff to find them. Unbelievable. In addition, they kept telling everyone that ‘Moncton’ was a disaster and constantly gives customers incorrect information about their package status.

Oh, and I still don’t have my third package. It was indeed on the truck, so now I have to wait until Monday to get it. This shipment has been in the city for a full week and I still don’t have all of it.

UPS is now my shipper of absolute last resort. I’d rather have a package sent by the post office than UPS.

31

Oh, another person who I know ordered the same projector system, and UPS delivered it his front door, and finding no one at home, just left it there. Thousands of dollars of electronics just sitting on his step for 8 hours, in plain sight of the neighborhood. He’s lucky he got it.

32

I left out the details of the clusterfuck they call a distribution center in my OP, but it ain’t no different here, Sam. Wow. Just, wow. I will absolutely never use them again for anything, ever.

I am also considering writing a letter to some top executive at UPS just to be sure they know this … maybe him and a few of his buddies. Like they give a fuck.

BTW, SCSimmons, Airborne Express was absorbed into DHL a few years back. They are no longer around. :slight_smile:

33

I ordered some reproduction military uniform equipment from a firm in the US about six months ago, and had the choice of paying an obscene amount of money to have it sent via UPS in three days, or a slightly less obscene amount of money to have it sent by the USPS with an arrival date of “Eventually”.

The last time I had something delivered by USPS, it took three months to arrive, so I opted for UPS.

Three days later, the item still hadn’t arrived, and according to their website tracking, it was still in the US, having been accidentally sent to Hawaii via Pennsylvania.

The next day the item was apparently cleared through Customs at Sydney International Airport, so I figured “Hurrah, it will be here tomorrow!”

Wrong. According to their website the next day, an “exception” had occured and my package had vanished off the face of the Earth.

I rang UPS and asked them what the fuck was going on, with a polite addendum to the effect that I’d paid a small fortune for my package to be delivered within three days, not whenever the fuck they felt like it.

Their response? Basically “Fuck you, it’ll be there when it gets there” without the “Fuck you”. Their attitude was basically how dare I wonder where my incredibly overdue package was, and they just weren’t interested in listening beyond that.

I contacted the firm I bought the products from in the US and told them “Not Happy, Jan!” and they apologised most profusely and said they’d chase it up from their end- which they did, to their credit.

Next day, my package still hadn’t arrived- but had somehow managed to be both scanned out from San Francisco after it had been scanned in for arrival at Sydney. Again, another phone call, another “Fuck you” brush-off.

Package finally arrived the next day (the UPS driver was very friendly and pleasant, so no issue there). I contacted the sender and told them the stuff had arrived and was even better than I expected, but that UPS had been extremely unhelpful and that they may wish to consider offering FedEx or DHL as alternatives for overseas customers.

The company I’d ordered the products from were great- genuinely concerned, wanting to help, and friendly. I’d gladly order from them again, but they still only offer USPS or UPS shipping, and I don’t appreciate delivery companies effectively telling me to go fuck myself when I politely enquire as to where stuff I’ve paid lots of money to have delivered on time has gotten to.

34

FWIW, my last employer had to switch from FedEx to UPS because our shipments were routinely getting stolen (approx. 12% of everything shipped in 2004 either didn’t arrive or was torn open and missing items).

35

The unconscionable thing about any parcel service is that any employee, anywhere along the line, has the power to indefinitely detain a package if he/she takes exception to the written address on it, for any reason whatsoever.

This is particularly likely to take place with large, conspicuous, easily smashed-up parcels. I’ve gotten 20 FedExes with no hangups, and then had to wait two weeks for the 21st (a tenor saxophone in a case and huge carton) to turn up on the tracking system and get delivered –to the exact same identical correct address. The one that’s in their database.

There is some small logic here. Better for the company to chuck something with a questionable address straight to the warehouse than send a driver out to a possibly spurious location.

But the fact that the judgment of one dangerously stupid individual can outweigh the terabytes of info in a multi-zillion-dollar computer network says quite a lot about the way these organizations are run. Make peons of your employees and they’ll begin playing their own little power games in whatever way they can. For all I know, their union bargained and won the right not to have to look stuff up in the database unless blah, blah, and blah.

36

I think if you want them to hold on to the package unless someone is there to sign for it, you have to request that. It’s not the default. Most people don’t want to wait at home all day just to be there when a package arrives.

37

I do agree they can be idiots, though. I got a call from UPS on a package they were supposed to pick up. They left a cryptic message on my machine (something about being unsure of my street name) with no phone number, department, or contact name. I called the main UPS number and explained that I was returning their phone call. The CSR I got looked in the system and said she couldn’t find out why they had called me, and started to tell me that I need to do such and such to figure out who called me. I cut her off and explained again that I was returning their call, that I didn’t “need” to do anything, and that she needed to find out why they called me and what information they needed from me. Then she got upset and started getting a “tone” with me. I mean, sheesh - is it too much to ask that you should know why you called someone?

38

When I was in college I shipped my things home from school via UPS. About ten boxes of various things, from clothes to furniture to books.

Boxes are delivered two and three at a time, despite being all shipped the same day. Every box of books has been opened and there are damaged books and books that don’t belong to me. I have no idea how many of my books ended up in someone else’s burst open box. Television is broken. This would be the television bought to replace the last television they broke. The receiver from my stereo system is missing, as is one speaker. And then just damn stupid things, like the knob is missing from a fan so it can’t be turned on and the piece that holds the back of my desk chair on is missing so the chair can’t be re-assembled.

I report it and the inspector comes out. He denies the television immediately because it’s not packed in the styrofoam packing that would have been in its original box, which I didn’t have because it was a floor model which I had to buy because they refused to pay full replacement value for the first TV they broke. Then he realizes that I took the items to a store that does UPS in the back so under UPS rules I’m not the shipper of record, so I can’t file a claim. I spend the next three months trying to coordinate me, UPS and this drug store in Texas (who didn’t have to give a damn but were very conscientious) so that I can get reimbursed for at least some of the things that they lost, broke and stole.

I will never do business with UPS again. If a business will only ship its items UPS then I won’t buy from them. I don’t have much experience with Fed Ex but what experience I do have has been positive. And I have never once in my life had a single problem with the post office. They’ve never lost so much as an issue of a magazine.

39

UPS also consistently lies. When my sister was getting married, I ordered bridesmaid dresses online, even though I knew I wouldn’t be home to receive them and would have to make other delivery arrangements. Shortly thereafter, my sister lost her job (fired for asking to be paid for overtime, 24 hours after her first prenatal appointment, but that’s a rant for another day), so I figured at least I could have the package redelivered to her apartment, which was only a mile or so away - at least she would be home to receive it.

Three times, although she was home all day and managed to receive all sorts of wedding gifts via Fedex with no problems, UPS left delivery slips stating that nobody was home. Finally, when they were about to ship the two very expensive, custom-ordered silk dresses back to the manufacturer, I finally decided “fuck it” and spent a Friday evening driving an hour away to the depot to get the damn dresses. I suppose I should count myself lucky that both dresses were in the box, and nothing was damaged.

40

I guess I have been really lucky, as I have never had a problem with UPS, Fedex, and only one with USPS. And we have about thirty packages a day coming or going at work. The USPS thing was a personal letter mailed to my home. I got a letter from the post office, it contained in a ziplock bag the mangled remains of a letter sent to me, and an apologetic letter explaining the the remains of my letter had been found in the belly of a letter sorting machine when it was disassembled for scheduled maintenance. The mangled letter was post marked a month earlier. It would have been far easier for them to throw it away than to piece it back together to find the address and actually deliver what they could. I would say that was a very determined effort to do the right thing. They also admitted it was their fault as it was their equipment that ate my letter. Of course there was no monetary claim to be made, so accepting blame had no financial ramifications. But all in all I have had no major issues, and I have sent over forty packages to military in Iraq via USPS, (realizing after New York APO takes over). Every one arrived within a week. Perhaps I just have a charmed life, parcel delivery wise. Things happen, packages get lost. That is reality. Failure of the carrier to recognize this, and stone-walling to avoid responsibility for said loss is truly pitiful, and pitable.