posted
So I order myself a video card from Newegg, whom I love, and I notice that they've changed their shipper from Fed Ex to UPS.
One of the things that I (and most people) love about Newegg is the speed and fair price of their shipping. So I figure Newegg knows what they're doing in switching - I was so very, very wrong.
I ordered on Friday of last week - they processed the order Saturday and the package left location on Monday. All standard speediness on Newegg's part (given that I ordered after business hours on Friday night). I got 3 day shipping which, you know, should get here in 3 days.
UPS's tracking system, however, is abysmally bad. Their scanning system is nowhere near as comprehensive as Fed Ex's. My package went from an arrival scan in Oregon to "on vehicle for delivery" in Redmond, WA...at 12:17 a.m. on Wednesday morning.
Ok.
I happen to have Wednesday off, and I spent most of the day at home, anticipating this package ('cause any computer geek here can tell you, new video cards are EXCITING!). Time passes...noon...3 pm...6 pm...and soon enough it's 7:20 and I have to leave to go do a secret santa exchange. I'm mildly irritated, but things happen, so why worry, right?
I check the tracking page (after Hatrack) when I get to my friend's place, and sure enough..."DELIVERY ATTEMPT 1 OF 3 AT 7:25 P.M."
At this point I'm pretty irritated, but I get home and find the notice on my door, and guess what? Signature required on delivery. I don't know about most people, but I work during UPS delivery hours, so that just doesn't work for me. I call their 800 number, and they say they can't do anything - the package will simply get delivery attempts two more times and then get back to sender, and I should tell the sender next time not to require a signature.
Thanks guys, I appreciate it, but clearly you're minimum wage earning morons and I spit all over people like you, since I was a minimum wage earning moron for years and I actually did my job. After searching for the local UPS shipping center's phone number (another 20 minute saga), I find out that of course they can do something about it, the people in the national call center are just (you guessed it) minimum wage earning morons. They can't just leave the package on my doorstep (because they'll still be liable for it, which makes sense), but they can change the delivery address for the redelivery the next day. I say sure, please deliver it to me at work!
Thursday passes. No delivery.
I get home on Thursday night and hey! Another delivery attempt notice at my apartment! Apparently the morons are in more than one place.
I call them back, again, because this is really starting to piss me off. I ask them what happened and they said that the package should have been delivered to my work place and oh, we're SO SORRY! So I sigh, go to sleep, and hope Friday will be better. They promise it will be delivered between 2 and 4 p.m.
5 p.m. rolls around on Friday and, of course, no such luck. I call the shipping center, again, and they have no record of me ever requesting the address reroute, or of me calling on Thursday to confirm that the change took place. My only solution at this point is to drive to the shipping center (15 miles away) and wait for the UPS delivery man to come back with my package so I can pick it up.
The catch: they close at 8:00. The delivery man is supposed to return at 7:45, but they make no guarantees - and if he returns after 8, I'm what they call SOL, the package gets bounced back to Newegg, and nothing happens for a while since the weekend's here again.
I'm glad everyone I work with went home already, or there'd be a messy corpse to clean up right now.
Posts: 4313 | Registered: Sep 2004
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posted
How odd. UPS delivers stuff to my house that isn't even addressed to us. Our address, but former owners. No signature required apparently, because they just dump it by the back porch (not even on the porch) and run. They don't leave a yellow sticker thing on a door or even bother knocking to see if anyone is home in the first place (which I always am.)
Posts: 9871 | Registered: Aug 2001
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posted
My husband used to be a FedEx driver and, while some of their practices certainly are screwy, they are nothing like this. FedEx was required to get signatures on things like alcohol, medication and firearms but if other things required a signature, there was a place for that on the delivery attempt form. Also when you call the shipping center, you are not calling the 800 number, you are calling the local guy who works at the warehouse, who then calls the driver, who usually calls the recipient of the package. My husband made frequent attempts even in the same day to people trying to get a package, especially around the holidays. The only time he refused to deliver was when he could not get ahold of the recipient by phone after numerous attempts or they had a vicious ankle-biting animal. I am so sorry for your inconvenience. I too think new video cards are exciting but even if this were instructions on how to fix your garden hose, you should not get this kind of run around. Ugh! You should definately call again and ask to speak to a supervisor and then call and complain to Newegg.
Posts: 1319 | Registered: Jul 2005
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I love and respect Fed Ex - they have always gone out of their way to get my stuff to and from me and have never given me trouble over the few damage claims I've had to file (as in 2 or 3 out of 3-4000 packages mailed).
UPS, on the other hand...
Oh well, at least the people at the service center were understanding and helpful, which helped alleviate my extremely bad mood.
Tell your husband that people like him are the reason I give good delivery people cases of beer for Christmas :-D
Posts: 4313 | Registered: Sep 2004
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I agree that FedEx has great service. Too bad they treat their employees so badly. There is a national class action suit against them by former employees (that my husband has signed up for). He did get really friendly (not like that) with his tupperware girl that he delivered to and she gave him tons of freebies.
Posts: 1319 | Registered: Jul 2005
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Wow. The service you seem to have gotten from UPS is the service I typically get from FedEx. o_O
Posts: 14745 | Registered: Dec 1999
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Same here. UPS hardly ever gives me problems, but I almost always have them with FedEx. However, neither of them compares to our local post office-- I swear, someone will be held accountable for my Harry Potter book. (The one time we had a DHL delivery, it was quite nice. But I haven't had enough to establish that as a pattern.)
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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I've never really had a problem with UPS. I know that my house is near the end of their delivery route, and really, it depends entirely on how many packages they have to delivery that day, that changes when they make it to your house.
But if I'm ever not there 3 times in a row, it just goes to the local distribution center and you get to go pick it up. I've always found them to be rather quick. Whenever I choose the free 5-9 day delivery with Amazon, it's usually here in 3 days. There's only a delay if Amazon is having a problem with product availability, in which case, why pay for the super shipping when it isnt there to be shipped anyway?
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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quote:But if I'm ever not there 3 times in a row, it just goes to the local distribution center and you get to go pick it up.
My problem is that I am almost never home during delivery hours (since they never get to me in the morning, it's almost always in the afternoon sometime, probably just a consequence of route). And I think that if I leave a signed, dated note saying "Please leave the package, I assume all responsibility for the contents being damaged or lost beyond this point," I should be allowed to have the package left on my doorstep, especially since my "local pick-up center" is 15 miles away from my work place, which is 10 miles away from my apartment, and there's rush hour stop'n'go traffic in both directions because the only way between is a two lane, five mile bridge.
And honestly, on the whole, I'm usually satisfied with UPS, but this transaction had so many things go wrong with it that by the time I was done I just wanted someone(s) to die in a fire.
Posts: 4313 | Registered: Sep 2004
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UPS refused to leave any packages at our door, release form or not, when we lived in an apartment complex, and our driver came by during the workday, so we spent a lot of time out at the distribution center. It wasn't long before we didn't have to tell them what address we were picking up, they'd see us and either get the box or tell us our driver wasn't back yet.
I don't know about your center, but ours closed at 8 too, and we always just went in the "Employees Only" door onto the truck floor to wait. No one ever questioned it, and we were usually angry enough about the policies that had us sitting on this stupid truck floor for over an hour in the evening every few weeks that we probably would have given them hell if they had.
Oh, and bring something to do! Posts: 1681 | Registered: Jun 2004
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I'd just like to point out that UPS pays more than minimum wage. I know a great many guys who worked their way through college by working for UPS.
Posts: 4753 | Registered: May 2002
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I've had trouble with both, but generally, I usually don't have shipping hassles.
The one thing I'm worried about this year is I ordered a practice balance beam and a tumbling mat for my gymnast daughter - big part of her Christmas as neither item was inexpensive, I assure you. The shipping is free and supposedly guaranteed to arrive by Christmas but the catch is it's all delivered by truck to the gym, not to my home and I have no control over the shipping, can't track it or anything. So far nothing - I'm getting nervous.
And Primal Curve is correct - UPS pays very, very well I know people who worked there during college and never left, they made more money with UPS than they would have getting a job in their degree field.
They also have good benefits, especially for women. Their policies for pregnant employees are admirable, I've known more than one female driver who was extremely loyal to the company because of the way they were treated in their pregnancies. They were all re-assigned to jobs that didn't require lifting during the duration of the pregnancy (with no cut in pay) and after generous maternity leaves they returned to their old jobs without any trouble.
Posts: 14428 | Registered: Aug 2001
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posted
Seeing as how I work for UPS, I thought I'd just point out the reasoning behind the signature required bit: it's the driver's ass that's in the fire if he doesn't follow procedure correctly, and something goes wrong. It doesn't even have to really go wrong, the customer can merely claim it went wrong.
So the driver's got his computer, and it says such and such about this particular delivery, and by and large, that's what he's going to do. He's got twenty stops before and after yours, he doesn't have time to call back and find out if this particular case is really different from what his computer tells him, or it's just someone wanting to steal some merchandise.
Just the other day, a driver I know got hit with a $500.00 deduction from his paycheck because he didn't follow procedure to the letter, and something went wrong.
quote:Thanks guys, I appreciate it, but clearly you're minimum wage earning morons and I spit all over people like you, since I was a minimum wage earning moron for years and I actually did my job. After searching for the local UPS shipping center's phone number (another 20 minute saga), I find out that of course they can do something about it, the people in the national call center are just (you guessed it) minimum wage earning morons. They can't just leave the package on my doorstep (because they'll still be liable for it, which makes sense), but they can change the delivery address for the redelivery the next day. I say sure, please deliver it to me at work!
Well, this was your fault. You didn't tell the sender not to require a signature. Most likely what happened is the driver knocked or rang the doorbell, and you were on the phone or in the shower or watching TV and didn't hear.
So despite your rant about spitting on minimum wage working idiots...they did their job. You didn't select the right service, and decided to blame them-in that rant, at least.
As for the rest, well, that sucks. It does sound like they dropped the ball on that one-sometimes that happens during the holidays, when shipping volume jumps by at least 30% in a smallish town like mine, and we have a lot of new drivers.
But I don't feel bad in pointing out (due to the part about spitting all over) that had you selected the type of service you actually wanted and not expected us to, y'know, read your mind, you'd have had your video card on Wednesday...three days after it shipped.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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posted
I've ordered from Newegg, I don't ever remember a chance to select "don't require signature." Is it there and I missed it, or am I expected to call them and demand that change?
And Rakeesh, please don't take the "it must be the customer's fault" support line. It may very well be (and often is), but different UPS places and different drivers make a huge difference. Our regular driver, the one that delivered to us for years, was always faultless and friendly. He retired. The one that replaced him for this area still, five years later, delivers to the wrong address and generally acts sullen about it.
So despite your rant about spitting on minimum wage working idiots...they did their job. You didn't select the right service, and decided to blame them-in that rant, at least.
If you read the rant, it appears that twice a promise was made to get the delivery made in an agreed-upon manner and both times it didn't happen.
One of my coworkers had a similar run in over computer parts which had previously never required a signature (he works an hour away from his apartment and can't be there for most deliveries). It took him four phone calls and a lot of heated arguments to get to a local number, where the local representative was friendly and happy to deliver to his landlord. My friend said the difference between talking to the different reps was night and day. This was a few months ago, by the way, not during holidays.
Posts: 7790 | Registered: Aug 2000
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Well Chris, I didn't at all take that line. After the quote you italicized, I went on to say
quote:As for the rest, well, that sucks. It does sound like they dropped the ball on that one-sometimes that happens during the holidays, when shipping volume jumps by at least 30% in a smallish town like mine, and we have a lot of new drivers.
quote:So despite your rant about spitting on minimum wage working idiots...they did their job. You didn't select the right service, and decided to blame them-in that rant, at least.
1) Nowhere in my rant did I blame the driver. The anger in my rant is directed almost entirely at the people in the national call center (for claiming "they can't do anything about it" when, in fact, they certainly could - even if it was only providing me with the local service center's phone number, which they didn't do) and the people who took my change of address at the local service center (because they claimed they did it - twice - and it didn't happen). I was mildly irritated at the fact that the driver made a delivery attempt at 7:25 p.m., five minutes after I'd left, but that's just bad luck, not the driver's fault.
2) I didn't make this clear in the original post, and I probably should have, but every other time I've ordered from Newegg (100+ orders to date), they've shipped FedEx and done it without requiring a signature, so I was not expecting them to require a signature when they changed over to UPS, since not every UPS delivery requires a signature (as evidenced by the fact that they have left packages at my door in times past).
quote:Seeing as how I work for UPS, I thought I'd just point out the reasoning behind the signature required bit: it's the driver's ass that's in the fire if he doesn't follow procedure correctly, and something goes wrong. It doesn't even have to really go wrong, the customer can merely claim it went wrong.
I understand that, hence why I said:
quote:They can't just leave the package on my doorstep (because they'll still be liable for it, which makes sense)
The vast majority of my anger and irritation is at the fact that they screwed up my reroute not once, but twice, causing a completely unnecessary delay and the extreme inconvenience of having to drive to their shipping center and waste two hours of my life.
I work in customer service, and I always have: I understand that people make mistakes. They just happened to make way too many mistakes all on the same transaction in my instance, and that's what really irritated the crap out of me.
Posts: 4313 | Registered: Sep 2004
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quote:And Primal Curve is correct - UPS pays very, very well I know people who worked there during college and never left, they made more money with UPS than they would have getting a job in their degree field.
That's good to know, although it only makes me more irritated that this happened.
Maybe I'll go work for UPS.
Posts: 4313 | Registered: Sep 2004
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Maybe UPS pays very well for an entry-level job. But they really don't pay "very, very well".
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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I ordered a copy of Doom 3 from amazon recently, 25 bucks. I go to school everday, and so am not home at 2pm to get the package, I have no other adress. SO guess what? they attempt three deliveries despire COPIOUS notes and calls from me, then send the thing back. My response, screw you ups and amazon, I am not reordering, I'll go to the store and just buy the thing from someone who cares about customers
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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posted
Ps.. isn't anybody else REALLY Freakin tired of the fact that possession is 9/10ths of the law?
Thus, we have your package so eat it. We have your money in the bank so eat these ATM charges. We have your gift certificate so eat this service charge, no change allowed. We got your money for this camera so eat it if it doesn't work. etc...
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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quote:it's the driver's ass that's in the fire if he doesn't follow procedure correctly, and something goes wrong. It doesn't even have to really go wrong, the customer can merely claim it went wrong.
I can vouch for this since it's the same for FedEx. My husband got stuck paying for 2 things that customers claim they never got, even when he followed the correct procedure.
quote: So the driver's got his computer, and it says such and such about this particular delivery, and by and large, that's what he's going to do. He's got twenty stops before and after yours, he doesn't have time to call back and find out if this particular case is really different from what his computer tells him, or it's just someone wanting to steal some merchandise.
Only 20 before and after??? That's all??? Count yourself lucky! My husband averaged 70-90 stops a day on a rural route. He drove over 300 miles a day most of the time. And during the holidays, it was more like 120 stops. AND since he would just have to redeliver the next day and the next if someone wasn't home, he made the time to call the customer (I know it's not quite what you're saying but still) when it was signature delivered and there was no one home. With the invention of cell phones, I just don't buy the idea that the drivers don't have time.
Also UPS and FedEx differ in how they pay their employees. UPS, as I understand it, is a union company so pay and benefits are a little better (and customer service is a little worse). FedEx Home Delivery drivers provide better service because they are independent contractors and are screwed when it comes to pay (they get paid pennies per mile, per stop, and per delivery). Benefits are non-existent. Hence the nationwide class action suit, which follows on the coattails of a recent victory of the same type in California. He is happily working in another field now.
All that aside, bad service is bad service. UPS is certainly guilty of that in this case. My advice is to call the local warehouse and complain, not about the driver but the lack of communication with the national call center. Get a supervisor on the phone if you have to. Let us know if there are any further developments.
Posts: 1319 | Registered: Jul 2005
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Maybe it depends on where you are. In deepest darkest Nevada, the brown truck gets the job done. No one else even trys. A kid with a ring in his nose and a yellow pickup truck who comes in from Truckee once or twice a week, can just stay home for all the good he does. And the red, silver and blue guy can't even read a map. The guy on the brown truck knows where I live and where I work. He makes sure I get my stuff.
posted
I have to agree with Rakeesh, when I really need a service to leave a package at the door then I put that down in the order. Otherwise there is a good chance it'll require a signature and that is very difficult for me. If I can't leave that instruction, well, then I think long and hard before ordering in the first place. The only person to blame is myself, when I forget.
Oh, and I love UPS. I use it a lot.
Posts: 1014 | Registered: Jul 2005
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At the office where I work, the UPS guy comes every day with stuff. (Love that sexy brown uniform, by the way). The guy on our route just cracks me up. He hates everything about his job. He tells us how awful it is to drive those big brown vans, how heavy all the packages are, how he hates carrying things up to people's doors, hates getting signatures from people, hates the holidays when people keep ordering more stuff, hates the new Bowflex machine that he had to deliver, hates the Ab-lounger that he has to deliver, hates that he has to go to the same offices every day -- why can't they just get things delivered once a week, hates the winter cold, hates the summer heat, hates springtime allergies, and hates all the school buses on the road in the fall.
I asked him if he ever considered another line of work. Nope. He's set on being a UPS driver.
quote:We have your gift certificate so eat this service charge, no change allowed.
Okay, that one is illegal in CA. A gift certificate cannot expire, cannot have "service" or "maintenance" fees on it, and must be equal to the cash value paid for it. Either change or a remaining balance must be returned to you. (The only exception is certificates for a particular good or service, like See's certificates good for "one pound or equivalent merchandise", which can be sold at a discount for less than their cash value, as a fund raiser, and which is redeemed for a specific amount of merchandise, so you don't get change on it. But they don't charge you tax when you redeem it-- tax on that amount of purchase has already been paid.)
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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We're Teamsters, Tante. Griping is in the contract.
Edit: Mandy, I was just talking about drop-offs. In any case, all of our trucks either leave or come back full-in some cases both.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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I am so mad. I specifically told them to LEAVE THE PACKAGE AT MY DOOR. It's hay. No one wants to still hay. Now my rabbit has NO HAY LEFT except for this crappy hay. I knew they were going to do this. I am so mad. There is no way he'll want to eat this dry terrible hay. It really is a bit of an emergency.
Posts: 9942 | Registered: Mar 2003
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I don't love UPS either. Amazon shipped me Serenity on the 19th. I got it TODAY. It was tracked to the nearby distribution center and was out for delivery the morning of the 23rd. It took FOUR DAYS for them to deliver it once it got less than 15 minutes from my house. It meant that it didn't get under the Christmas tree like it was supposed to, and I paid for premium shipping that wasn't so premium. *grumble*
Posts: 5948 | Registered: Jun 2001
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Crappy service is crappy service and I can understand how you'd be upset.
You might try looking at it from another point of view though. In my fairly immediate family there have been several incidents of package companies leaving things outside the door that shouldn't have been left at least in our opinions. These various items include: a brand new wooden English Horn (worth several thousand dollars and did have a signature requirement) which was subsequently rained on an therefore ruined, several thousand dollars worth of kitchen equipment, and a brand new sleep number bed worth about $3000.00. These items were left in the driveway and in full view of anyone in the neighborhood who might want to get something for nothing.
As for the option to select whether or not you want a signature Rakeesh, most websites don't give you that option, they decide about a signature and they don't tell the customer which option it is. Frankly, it sucks because some companies which should require a signature don't. Why? Answer: because if the customer is not home the shipment is returned to them and they have to refund the money to the customer. That's right, they won't require signatures because they could lose out on a sale. They don't give their customer's the option for the same reason.
I realize that if no signature is required it is completely at the driver's discretion whether to leave the package or not. Frankly, I wish more drivers would not leave packages if there wasn't someone at home. Thankfully, I work at a company whose mail room will accept packages for their employees. It's great for small things. It sucks for larger packages though because it's inconvenient to have a large and/or heavy package delivered to your work address.
posted
FedEx has limited delivery attempts and then they hold your package for pick up for something like 10 days before shipping it back. But after attempt number 3 they won't come again they'll make you pick it up.
Posts: 1214 | Registered: Aug 2005
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FedEx once left two, very important, packages on a door of neighbor I didn't know. Lucky he wasn’t home and I found the paycheck (decent sized one too) and the job offer (decent one too).
I chewed FedEx a new one the next day needless to say. That was fun.
Posts: 2845 | Registered: Oct 2003
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