UPS: The Revenge! (cymbal crash)

November 24th, 2004 Posted in Essays

Those of you who read this page regularly might remember the huge pain in the ass I had a while back when UPS lost my package, charged me extra for having not delivered it, then tried to buy me off rather than look for it. The fact that I did eventually receive my package (it was found many weeks later in, logically enough, a storage closet in Utah) did surprisingly little to ingratiate me to the company.

Naturally I was furious when I found out a desk I’d ordered from Sears last week, at 135 pounds, didn’t meet Sears’ minimum weight requirement to be delivered in person by Sears, and had been subcontracted out by–pause for frustrated emphasis–UPS. (Feel free to read that as U-P-motherfucking-S from now on to better emphasize the theme running through this post.) Still, as the package was already in transit and I had no other options, I was prepared to extend my olive branch (or, in keeping with the theme, my motherfucking olive branch).

Granted, I remained convinced that the company was retarded. But I was prepared to admit it might at least be functionally so. I’d never actually seen a UPS van on fire, for instance, or received a package full of thumbtacks and pudding. Conceivably, they must deliver enough packages even by accident to their proper destinations (and not, as I suspect most go, into the briny depths of the ocean) to avoid bankruptcy.

After all, I had asked them to deliver an entire computer from Ontario, Canada to Los Angeles. That’s in a new country, for crying out loud! Utah’s pretty darn close, considering. This time I’d be getting a package sent to me from one part of the city to another not-even-very-far-away part, reducing the amount of time in which UPS would be able to sink it to the briny depths of the ocean. Additionally, with the package weighing almost 150 pounds, it would be difficult and expensive to accidentally transport across the country. The odds were on my side.

I gave them a friendly ring today to find out when they’d intended to deliver my desk, so I could plan on leaving work in time to meet them.

“Say, could you tell me when you’re coming with my package?” I asked cheerily.

“Of course we can’t, sir!” a woman politely responded.

“Of course you can’t! You’re UPS!” I said, and we shared a laugh.

I was told my package would arrive at “some time” during a 24-hour period. Specifics remained shrouded in mystery.

“Hmm,” I said. “I hadn’t counted on that large a window. I’m at work all week during the day. Maybe we’d better change the address to my work,” I explained.

“Right away, sir,” the UPS woman helpfully said, adding, “That’s what I’d say if we were allowed to do that. Our protocol demands that we attempt a delivery to the address one time before accepting any substitute directions.” Again we shared a laugh.

“Okay,” I say. “Wow, I hate you guys so much.”

“Thank you, sir,” said the UPS woman, turning to a poster of me on her wall reading WE HATE THIS MAN and, I suspect, spitting at it.

“Well, tell you what,” I countered, not out of ploys yet. I’d trick them into actually delivering my package if it killed me. “Let me give you the buzz code to my building, you can have the guy just pop it behind the door.”

“Sir, we cannot take any directions from you on this order.”

“Oh. Did you need ID confirmation or something? I’m the guy you’re delivering this package to.”

“No, we know.”

“Oh.”

“It is our policy not to change or amend an order in any way until a delivery attempt has been made at least once, sir.”

“But… but I’m telling you. I’m at work tomorrow. I’m TELLING you this. You’re wasting money and your delivery man’s time. Simply give him my work address. Or the buzz code. Hell, give him my number and have him call me, for God’s sake. Just type it into the order. You’re looking at the screen right now.”

Suspecting I was slow, she once again helpfully explained to me UPS’s policy to deliver packages to customers only once they’ve been assured by the customers that they will be unable to accept them.

“So I need to stay home for 24 hours if I want this package,” I clarified. The woman told me this was in fact the case.

“Um,” I asked, a nagging thought hitting me, “Do you even have a telephone number to call me at when you arrive at my apartment? Sears didn’t ask me for that on the form I filled o–” But of course she’d hung up.

I phoned Sears to explain my problem. After listening to me lay out the situation, the Sears woman cut in, suspecting I was slow.

“Why don’t you just ask them to deliver it at work, sir?”

I explained why.

“What?” she said. “Well, can you get them to put it behind the main door for you?”

I explained I couldnt.

The Sears woman gave me an exasperated sigh. “So they, what, just expect you to sit there for a whole day?”

I explained that this indeed seemed to be their expectation.

“Let me give them a call,” she said, aggravated. Now this was promising. It’s one thing to have a customer complain to UPS–they’re so used to the sound of that it must be like bird chirpings to them. But to have a partner company complain? That sounded consequential. I waited for the Sears woman to call me back.

“Jay Pinkerton?” the Sears woman asked when I picked up the phone. “Yeah, we shouldn’t use UPS. They won’t change it until they deliver it.”

“Do they even have my phone number?” I asked. I heard the sound of keyboard clicking.

“Hmm. No. They have your buzz code, though, right?”

“No.”

“Why didn’t you give it to them?”

“They refused to take it.”

“They refused to take your buzz code? But they’re a delivery company.”

“I… don’t want to talk about it.”

Surely it can’t be in UPS’s best interest to have this as a policy. The gasoline costs and manpower necessary to drive packages around America that their customers have explicitly stated they won’t be there to receive seems like a money loser when compared to the alternative: say, putting half of that money and effort into arranging to deliver the package correctly the first time.

I miss the personal touch that somewhere along the way got swallowed up by the mega-omni-corps of the world. A small delivery service’d be just as likely to lose your package in the briny depths of the ocean, of course, but at least there wouldn’t be as many pairs of hands involved. How much would it cost to equip the UPS guy with a cell phone and a clipboard of the 20 deliveries he had to make that morning, anyway? “Hi, this is Greg, your UPS guy. I’ll be there in about an hour. What’s that? A buzz code? Cool, let me get that down. Okay, see you soon.”

But that’s just burning money, of course. Better to let Greg deliver the same package to the same address three days in a row with no response. That way he can drop if off in the ocean on the way home, with plenty of time left over to take his mandatory UPS productivity seminar.