UPS: When five-day ground takes ten (and other misc. shipping rants)

“What can Brown do for you?,” the commercials ask. “Flush,” I answer. When you proudly give your company a nickname that makes people think of FECES, I just don’t think you’re setting your sites too high.

UPS Ground has always provided me with markedly worse service than USPS, Fedex Ground, and Airborne Express Ground. I’m getting so sick of seeing Pricewatch merchants offer only UPS shipping, or offer, say free UPS shipping, but charge $10 if you want anything else. It’s gotten to the point where I will often go out of my way and pay more money for the same product from different merchants just to avoid Brown.

Last week, however, I didn’t have that luxury. I’m building a computer, and, since it’s for my wife’s friend’s family, I’m really trying to get the most bang for my buck. I want Kingston RAM, but I want it cheap. Same deal with the kickass Enermax PSU, Asus motherboard, etc. So I had to go with UPS on a few of the items. I promised this family that I’d have their computer up and running for them by this weekend, because the lastest estimated delivery date was Thursday from Airborne.

As of today, Friday, I have everything but the motherboard. If I was missing, say, the DVD burner, I could have still assembled the computer, gave it to them for the weekend, making a couple kids very happy, and brought the burner over on Monday. But no. It’s the motherboard. The motherboard that was shipped last Friday. The motherboard that, when I checked on Monday, was still estimated for delivery on Wednesday, despite the fact that it took over three days just to get out of California.

I checked again on Tuesday. Four days after shipping, it was only in Albuquerque and now the estimated delivery date had been rescheduled for Friday. Fucking fuckers! If I had the motherboard on Wednesday, I could have built the computer and installed the OS that day, then tossed in the DVD-burner when I got it from Airborne on Thursday, and given it to them that night. But no, UPS had to go and fuck everything up like they always do.

I checked the status again on Thursday night, hoping UPS had realized how far behind this package was and expedited it accordingly. Nope. As of last night, my package had just arrived at a dock over 300 miles away in Jackson, MS. Now, seeing as how the delivery had already been rescheduled once, you’d think they’d ship it right out of Jackson the same night. It’s only about a six-hour drive from Jackson to here. Nope. Friday afternoon and it’s still sitting in Mississippi. Estimated delivery has again been rescheduled, now for fucking Monday. That’s ten days if you’re counting. And still no guarantee that it will even be here on Monday. Stupid me. I should have known that Brown would shit all over my plans.

I guess if there’s anything good about UPS, it’s that they don’t just leave the packages in front of my apartment door when I’m not home like all the other shippers do. I mean, I live in a little fourplex apartment. My neighbor’s door is just a few feet away from mine. My neighbor is a crackhead. Do the fucking math.

I have a very small barbecue grill right outside my door. One of those cheapo $10 models with a diameter not much larger than that of an LP. One time, FedEx lifted the lid of the grill, placed my package in the grill, and put the lid back on. Clever. Oh, but did I mention that the package was big enough to stick out of the grill on all four sides?! Look, I know crackheads have a reputation for being stupid, but give them some credit! Christ.

USPS, Fedex, and Airborne have all left >$100 computer parts sitting right outside my door for anyone to steal. Apparently, when those companies say “Ground,” they mean it literally. They’ll toss your expensive goods right on the ground for anyone to grab.

At least Brown doesn’t do that. Although, to be fair, sometimes they don’t even get a chance. Once I ordered a $200 digital camera shipped via UPS. Or at least that’s what it was when it left the company. By the time it got to my door, it was a re-taped empty box and my camera was the “bonus” of some unscrupulous UPS employee (probably in New Orleans, where the package sat for five fucking days). It took me four months to get my money back on that one.

Damn, this post has gotten rather long. Sorry about that. I’m just blowing off some steam. Feel free to add your own shipping rant to the fire.

UPS sucks rocks. I have never had a good experience with Brown. Their employees are incompetent and their service reeks. FedEx is the only way to go.

I dunno, I ordered something with 3 day UPS shipping and it came overnight…

If you order from NewEgg, their FedEx deliveries always (I’m pretty sure, mine did) require a signature. I’ve never actually gotten shafted by UPS, but I’m beginning to think that’s because of the small sample size – I think I’ve had stuff shipped to me that way about 3 times.

I recently purchased a used telescope; the seller shipped the scope via UPS, and used UPS’s packing service to pack the telescope for shipment. Not only did UPS leave my $3000 telescope sitting on my front porch where anyone could have made off with it(no signature required), they managed to break the $1000 telescope mirror (that they themselves packed for shipment).

Thank goodness the seller insured the shipment! But although UPS may have to pay the replacement costs for the mirror, the package insurance doesn’t do anything to reduce the hassle factor involved in getting my telescope repaired. Needless to say, I’m not real happy with UPS at the moment.

IMO, they ought to change their name to UPF, cuz they always act like they’re doing be a big effing FAVOR when they deliver my crap.

If you changed “company” to “university,” you’d have a great cheer for tomorrow’s game at Baker Field. Roar Lion Roar!!!

The last package I got via FedEx from NewEgg was delivered to a house eighteen houses down the street from mine. They let a ten-year-old girl sign for it. Luckily mom gave me a call that evening.

Oooh! Oooh! Can I chime in with my own ‘UPS sucks’ story? Well, too bad, I’m going to anyway.

Back in my el cheapo student days, I found a good deal on used textbooks via the net, and I had them shipped to me via UPS. Had everything gone perfectly, they would have arrived a few days before the semester started, and the only difference between buying the books locally vs. online would be an extra $150 in my pocket.

Alas, I used UPS. Needless to say, everything did NOT go perfectly. Oh, it looked like it was going to - I tracked the package online every step of the way, from the east coast to the point where it was put on a truck leaving St. Louis, the closest UPS hub and a mere 90 miles away from where I lived. “Sweet,” I thought, “they’ll be here tomorrow.”

Until I noticed that my package had been put on a truck bound for…SAN FRANCISCO. “What the fucking fuck?” I said, and called UPS. The surly customer service rep informed of the following things: no, they wouldn’t retrieve my package at an intermediate stop; no, they wouldn’t give my package any kind of expedited status once it finally got off the truck, and no, they wouldn’t refund my shipping costs. Their general attitude was “meh, this stuff happens; deal with it.”

And so I watched via the net as my box o’ books crawled halfway across the continent, sat in San Francisco for three days, and then crawled back to me in Missouri. In the end, what should have been a 2-3 day delivery took TWO AND A HALF WEEKS due solely to UPS’ incompetence, for which they were totally unapologetic. And in the meantime I had the fun experience of trying to make it through the first two weeks of the semester with no books for any of my classes.

That was three years ago, and it still makes me mad. Fuck you UPS. Fuck you good.

Oh good - a rant about UPS.

The other week I sent a video tape to a friend UPS Red. Now you’d think they couldn’t screw up sending something overnight, right? Wrong.

I checked the tracking number two days later to make sure it got there and I saw that they noted an “exception” and that it wasn’t delivered. I click on the details and the reason given for it not being delivered was “wrong street number”. Then, in the same note, they also said “postcard sent”.

Huh? So they claim that the address was wrong, so instead of, oh, I don’t know, calling the shipper for a correct one - they mailed a postcard to that “wrong” address to let my friend know she had a package.

Is anyone surprised that they postcard actually made it to my friend but the package was eventually shipped back to me because they claimed “wrong street number”?

I’m still fucking pissed off at that - why would the mail something to an address they claim is wrong??! GAH!

A couple of weeks ago, it was raining mightily in my neck of the woods – so hard that I think I saw my neighbor rounding up local animals and putting them in a boat he had built in his backyard. It had been doing so all day, and the previous day as well.

Anyway, we live in a house with a front porch. Most delivery services leave packages in front of our door, on the porch. Where it’s dry.

Not UPS. An order of books I had expected from Amazon was left on the concrete steps to the front porch. In the rain. In the pouring rain. They were ruined. And all because some dummy couldn’t be bothered opening the door-thing to the front porch and walking three extra steps. Even though it was obviously raining, was obviously going to continue to rain, his choice of location was clearly not a dry spot, and a dry alternative plainly existed. Moron.

Amazon, on the other hand, rules. They sent out a fresh set of books and comped the shipping to return the ruined set, no questions asked, even though it really wasn’t their fault that the books were ruined.

No specific stories to add, but I will chime in to say that the last two or three items I’ve had shipped UPS have taken at least twice as long to arrive as advertised.

I will pay quite a bit more to use another carrier.

Lord knows I have my problems with UPS, but UPS Ground is a 7 - 10 day service. If it gets there on Monday, 10 days after it was shipped, I’m not entirely sure you have a complaint. Now, if it still hasn’t come by next Monday, I’d start bitching.

As to the discrepancy between the estimated arrival and actual arrival, you have to realize that they may have gotten a flood of overnight and next day packages the same day yours was shipped. Since they have a 10-day window on yours, it likely got bumped to the bottom.

Since when? Here is the UPS Ground service map. There’s only a few little specks on the map that are six-day service from my zip code (7050x). Everything else is five or less. The package came from 5-day territory in California.

Gotta say I’m surprised by all the people who had UPS leave their packages outside. I figured something like that would be corporate policy, but apparently it varies by location. UPS never, ever leaves something outside my door. They always put that Post-It note-style notice on my door and redeliver. Of course, half the time, the notice falls off the door and flutters away in the breeze before I get a chance to see it…

At least for my local UPS office, that seems to be up the individual driver. Some leave the box at my door, some leave the notice. The lack of consistency drives me batty.

But my last couple UPS deliveries have been after I’ve gotten home from work, so I’ve actually signed for them.

neutron star

I’ve had the exact same experience twice !! Motherboard or RAM arrived last and late !#%!? And the second time, I needed the computer working by a certain date. To be fair, it wasn’t UPS at fault. In both cases, I bought the mobo, RAM first and paid quickly. And both times, the bloody merchants delayed shipping.

Yeah, same here.

Fortunately they send postcards (sometimes) after three notices have fluttered away (as happened to me once). I hadn’t seen one notice and they were telling me that they were going to return the package to the sender.

And personally, I wish they would just leave the package at the door. Or at least, let me sign the little notice so that I could get them to leave the package at the door. Instead, what usually happens is: (1) They come when I’m at work and leave a note, saying they’ll come back the next day. (2) The next day I have to work again (how odd!), so I’m not home when they arrive to leave another note. (3) Strangely enough, I work a third day in a row! I guess most people don’t work for three days in a row, but I find it to be a necessity. They leave a third note complaining that I wouldn’t quit my job and stay at home just to please them.

Actually, though, now I’ve got neighbors who will take my package from the UPS guys and hold it for me, fortunately.

Which makes it just as unsecure as if they had simply left the package at the door… except that the UPS guys have a (could be completely fake) signature.