This is a UPS rant.
I know they suck. I’ve heard the Crank Yanker tapes and seen the UPS 1-800 phone hijacking site, but do you think I listen to reason? Good lord no! They’re in my neighbourhood and closer than a post office (where the hell are the post offices these days?) so I used them to ship two identical boxes to Mike in Vancouver.
Two weeks ago. Two boxes. Identical. Going to the same address. Same day. $60+tax. 5 buisness days later, I get a call from the store on the Danforth saying that there was no door call number for Mike on the package. I email Mike for his buzz code. “It’s on the entry panel under my name,” he says. I can hear him roll his eyes from here. I call the Danforth UPS store back with his phone number and buzz code. Two days later, I get an email from Mike saying he has the delivery.
Wait 4 business days. Yesterday I get a call from an unidentifiable UPS store. The box I sent came back unaccounted for. Huh? I email Mike. “Were there two?” he asks. I can hear his eyes scrape the back of his head, they’re rolling so hard.
I call the UPS store.
“Hi, Ted here, I got a message from one of your staff saying a box I sent to Vancouver came back unclaimed?”
Pause.
“Can you help me?”
“I could if I could hear you,” says the cheery voice.
I repeat myself louder into the phone. “I sent two on the same day, to the same address.” I finish up. “He got one.”
“Those retards!”
I”m beggining to think that I am on an episode of Crank Yankers.
“You’ll resend, I’m assuming?”
“Yeup!”
“Do you need a phone number and buzz code for that box? I! Bet! You! Do!” I add sarcastically.
“Yeap!”
I give it to him. “I’ll email my friend and tell him to expect the box!”
“I’ll get right on it,” says Dan the cheeriest UPS voice, ever.
I fear that Mike will never get this box. I have tossed the receipt the day I got Mike’s first email thanking me.
Kids, always go with your gut. As soon as I walked into that store I knew I was going to have a problem. But then I thought Naaaah. That’s just a funny tv myth.
18 thoughts on ““Those Retards!” Or Why You Should Avoid UPS Always.”
Not really for UPS but with them on a number of different fronts. I’m going to give the staff at the Danforth location the benefit of the doubt that once they realized there was a problem they fixed it (shipping it free for you). One thing I do know about the UPS/The UPS Store system is that they are seperate companies. In the end, I would take UPS over Canada Post any day.
In the laps of the great UPS gods, I guess.
I’m assuming the second box went back to the Danforth shop, the originating depot. When I got the message that one box had come back, I was given a number to call, no addy. The UPS Store people identified themselves ok, but not where I was calling to. It could have been a bit warehouse somewhere north of Siberia for all I know.
If push came to shove, I would have asked where the box was and went and got it and re-sent it with Purolator or CanPost.
Do you work for UPS, Will?
Sat where for three weeks?
Will, that’s the shop I used!
In the end, they resent the second package (“with no cost to you, Mr Dead Robot!”) and it arrived nearly 60 days after the first. Remember, I sent the two of them at the same time. This customer is not satisfied.
No sorry. No woops! No phone call to inform me that they were at least still working on it. The box sat there three weeks before they did something about it, after I called twice.
I’ll never send with UPS again. Flat out no exceptions.
What a screw up… But please! Canada Post over UPS?!? I’ve been to a couple of UPS Stores and I’d take the Danforth location over most.
Blogs are rant recepticles. Feel free!
whoop – sorry ’bout venting all over your blog. Feel free to delete while I go make some calm-omile tea and roll myself something mellowing. ;->
So much to say, so tiny a comment box:
[warning: rant ON]
1. Until recently, the UPS Stores were Mailboxes Etc. They function very differently than UPS proper. UPS proper will send a cute uniformed delivery guy to your door to pick up your packages for the same price as dropping off at a UPS Store. At the UPS Store the not-nearly-so-cute-x-mailboxes-etc guy may inadvertently bill your huge shipment of porn to a US convention to some unsuspecting book publisher who happens to have a mailbox at their location. I guess that would make your shipping costs significantly lower, unless of course you are the book chick.
2. your post office (which is also my post office) actually won some sort of award for good service. I guess “good service” means randomly returning packages to the sender without contacting us; not bothering to buzz when they “attempt” to deliver and I’m sitting here in the home office watching them walk away; and taking a day and a half to get the package back to the post office location. I could crawl there faster. Good Service – ACK!
[rant over… for now]
Timmy’s ain’t got nothing on these guys! Especially since I got a couple free apple fritters the other day.
Okay, but if I hear a UPS office gets toasted….
Dont look at me, I’m just a whiner.
Nice to see the Tims I whine about over reacted hours after the Yonge n Bloor incident.
Oh my gawd! Somebody light up a Tim Horton’s!!! Okay, which one of you girls???????
your post office is less than a block away. it’s in the drugstore above the ben wicks pub, on the opposite side of parliament street. you could probably hit it with a rock thrown from your front window.
Probably damaged…damn Canadians!
I’m assuming that it’s being shipped back as I type this…
Did mike ever get the 2nd box???
Take the education that television has provided you and apply it. If Mrs. Garrett ever warned the girls agains anything, it’s probably true.
No these guys were Canadian!
oh no, this isn’t going to turn into one of those Tim Horton things is it?