Bloggit's Journal - How bad IS UPS?

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How bad IS UPS?

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Bloggit's Journal started as an experiment, but has since morphed into a window into Bloggit's technical addiction. And honestly, I had no idea I was so unbalanced. So enjoy the fruits of my condition.

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How bad IS UPS?	Feb. 28th, 2007 @ 04:58 pm

I gripe about UPS regularly. They find the most astonishing reasons to fail to deliver packages. Such as, "a half-inch of snow fell, even though it didn't stick" or "we didn't expect sunlight in December."
In the last six packages they failed to deliver,

Four were due to "weather" even though the weather did not deter the post office or Fed-Ex, or UPS at the office a few miles away on any of those days!.
Another was due to them actually repeatedly losing the package, sending it to the wrong depot and back several times.
And another they simply returned to the sender as "refused" even though they never attempted delivery!

Those were six of the last eight packages sent to us via UPS!

It's so bad that it's reminiscent of Newman from Seinfeld; he was the letter carrier that wouldn't deliver if it rained. That's not the post office here; it's UPS.

It may not be quite that bad, but out of roughly 12 packages I've had shipped to me by UPS in the last 12 months, eight have failed to be delivered on time by UPS. This includes packages from Time-Life, CostCo, Amazon, New Egg, the National Geographic Store and others.

Time-Life's customer support claims that UPS 2nd Day Air is "2-3 Business Days". The UPS website claims otherwise:

Delivery Commitment
Delivery by the end of the second business day
Some locations in Alaska and Hawaii require additional transit time

But perhaps UPS has a lower level of service for stores, providing a lower rate.

At least I'm not the only one. See here,, here, here, here, here at ConsumerAffairs on failed deliveries and here on damages, here at PlanetFeedback, and especially here for more UPS woes. Note the links page at UPS Smashers also.

Either way, I avoid UPS whenever possible. Unfortunately, again perhaps due to price, they are typically the only choice. Bummer.

Incidently, I'm pretty pleased with the U.S. Postal Service. The prices are a lot higher than they used to be, but the reliability is high. My only gripes in the past twelve months have been a Delivery Confirmation they neglected to confirm and returning as undeliverable a credit card bill even though our address never changed. (That was a first for us! Hasn't happened again.) And we've only had one problem ever with FedEx... but that was about fifteen years ago and they worked extremely hard to solve it right then. Where as UPS has barriers set up so that even their customer service reps cannot actually talk to the dispatchers!

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