What is the issue with UPS?!!! Major Rant, Blowing off steam!!
rwgast_logicdesign
Posts: 1,464
So I was suppose to receive a micro medic kit today! Wooooo!! I spent the day cleaning up boxing projects on hold etc, even brought in a VGA monitor to use as a display until the 4x40 LCD I ordered arrives. Ive been busting my butt to really learn SPIN in depth the last week in preparation for this contest. I was all ready to sit down and use a color pal to analyze my urine and display the info on my monitor!
As I watched Ben Heck to kill time I started getting antsy, it was 5:30 and UPS still had not arrived. The tracking info said it was scheduled to arrive today, it was scanned in LA at midnight, last night, I live two hours away. Then I started thinking it is kind of strange it was never scanned in to my town and marked for delivery, so I called UPS. They told me it was most likely lost, judging by the last scan time!!! Then they told me I would need to call parallax in the morning and parallax would have to call them so they could start an investigation!! Why should I have to bother the nice folks, busy, doing there jobs (unlike UPS), so UPS can start an investigation! What is wrong with the packages recipient dealing with finding the package shipped to them?
Normally Im a pretty layed back guy about stuff like this, but ill tell you what really makes my blood boil! A few months back I ordered my girlfriend a purse for her birthday, it was shipped via UPS. It took her 3 weeks to get her purse, because UPS scanned it in to New Mexico, then sent it up to Illinois or Iowa or something, where it sat a week before it was shipped back on its way to California!!
So the only two times ive gotten something via UPS in the past 6 months they have royally screwed me!! I order stuff from China all the time via, USPS and the Chinese mail system, it hardly ever takes more than 12 days to arrive and never gets lost! I do a lot of trading with a forum member in Washington via USPS, packages usually arrive back and forth between 2 and 3 days, never get lost. I never have issues with the good old US Post Office. Parallax sent the Micro Medic kit out Friday, Rocklin is seven hours away from me, what is the issue with UPS! Ive never had such lousy service in my life.
As I watched Ben Heck to kill time I started getting antsy, it was 5:30 and UPS still had not arrived. The tracking info said it was scheduled to arrive today, it was scanned in LA at midnight, last night, I live two hours away. Then I started thinking it is kind of strange it was never scanned in to my town and marked for delivery, so I called UPS. They told me it was most likely lost, judging by the last scan time!!! Then they told me I would need to call parallax in the morning and parallax would have to call them so they could start an investigation!! Why should I have to bother the nice folks, busy, doing there jobs (unlike UPS), so UPS can start an investigation! What is wrong with the packages recipient dealing with finding the package shipped to them?
Normally Im a pretty layed back guy about stuff like this, but ill tell you what really makes my blood boil! A few months back I ordered my girlfriend a purse for her birthday, it was shipped via UPS. It took her 3 weeks to get her purse, because UPS scanned it in to New Mexico, then sent it up to Illinois or Iowa or something, where it sat a week before it was shipped back on its way to California!!
So the only two times ive gotten something via UPS in the past 6 months they have royally screwed me!! I order stuff from China all the time via, USPS and the Chinese mail system, it hardly ever takes more than 12 days to arrive and never gets lost! I do a lot of trading with a forum member in Washington via USPS, packages usually arrive back and forth between 2 and 3 days, never get lost. I never have issues with the good old US Post Office. Parallax sent the Micro Medic kit out Friday, Rocklin is seven hours away from me, what is the issue with UPS! Ive never had such lousy service in my life.
Comments
By any chance, would your concept for the microMedic include treatment for hyperventilation?
Hey, relax, it's gonna be okay. One way or another you'll get your kit. Probably get it tomorrow. We feel your pain. Everyone here, at one time or another, has had similar experiences.
Now, about that medically instrumented paper bag....
Thank you I needed that. Im sure the kit will arrive soon, I was just so mad because the two out of two times a package was sent to me via UPS this has happend.
I will give you my honest assessment of UPS as I see it. After > 2 decades in tech and a stretch of unemployment, I went to work for them. Part of my motivation was that I had always gotten very vood service from UPS (esp. compared to US Postal); and I wanted to see what their "secret" was. No secret really, just a very capitalistic company with a serious commitment to service. In fact, most people don't know that UPS gaurentees every level of service and is automatically insured for $100. e.g. if they say that a ground shipment from CA to TX should take 3 days, the customer, i.e. the shipper is entitled to a full refund if it takes 4.
I tried the delivery job, but it is really hard work with long hours, so I just work PT now. I can tell you that returning with even a single undelivered package (not for want of a signature, etc.) is highly frowned upon.
I have seen mangers running down a truck with a last minute package, and managers personallyt driving packages to their destination to make service.
That said, they aren't perfect. I would say that ground service is >99% reliable and air is >99.9%.
Most of the packages that end up "lost" have been poorly packaged/labled etc. Some things just plan get mis-sorted, but you can be sure that the person responsible will get a talking to about even a single mis-sort.
I've been using UPS for >20 years and I can count on one hand the number of times a package has arrived late or damaged. I've been lucky to have never completely failed to recieve a package.
As for having to contact Parallax, it has to be that way because they are the actual customer in this case. When you do contact them ask about their stats for each delivery service. I'd be very interested to hear.
Taking to people that ship a lot, they say that UPS and FEDEX are pretty comparable. Dunno about US Postal but I find it annoying that so-called Priority Shipping cannot be resonably tracked nor can they give you a firm delivery date, just an est. range.
Maybe you could hire Lance Armstrong to help out. I hear he's looking for a way to raise cash for legal fees.
-Phil
@Rick
Its funny I was just commenting earlier on how UPS is suppose to be a premium service and costs more than USPS most of the time, what you described very much leads me to believe that is true. I few years ago I use to compete in overclocking competitions, ya know running your CPU at excessive speed with a copper pot of dry ICE on the CPU and vasoline all over the mobo. During this time I was buying hardware, RMAing hardware, and selling hardware with only a few hours of use(to help fund the new hardware). I was shipping at least 3x a week, and I used UPS for a bulk of it, because of there insurance policy compared to USPS, the last thing you need is to be 1000 down because your quad core extreme got lost in the mail. I never had any issues with UPS, and preferred them over fed ex.
The thing I think is funny about this situation is that you describe the company as I imagined it in my mind, and you say in all these years you can only count incidents one one hand. My luck must be really awful to have to incidents with UPS in a six month period, and these also be the only time in the past year or so ive had something delivered to me UPS.
And then we will have Fed-UP to deal with.
There was a time when the US Postal Service was considered excellent and secure. There was a time when UPS was pretty good and respectful. There was a time when the customer could choose the delivery service they wanted. There was a time when the shipping and handling were at actual cost and not inflated to provide profits. And there was a time that the customer was considered always right. There was a time that I could save money by waiting for a slow delivery that might take weeks.
But it is a new world and these things are no longer.
The results are quite simple. I dread ordering for package delivery if I can at all avoid it. I buy local. I buy less. I shop more.
Modern logistics companies may actually demolish internet retail. At least in Taiwan, I can have deliveries directed C.O.D. to my nearest 7-11 which is open 24/7 and not put up with the 'catch me if you can' nonsense. This could work in the USA too... if the logistics companies actually were willing to manage franchises of delivery locations. They could even franchise to the US Post Offices.
These days.... If you don't have a doorman that can sit around all day to receive packages, you are just out of luck.
BTW, UPS was the last to try to establish in Taiwan and as a result, they are the worst. For each country, there is a different situation... so while UPS may be good in the USA, it just can't be the best in every country in the world. This will never happen.
Summer of 86' and 87' (Sophomore and Senior in high school) I was an unloader at the UPS sorting facility in Oklahoma City ... paid good but it was brutal, even if you were in shape, which at the time I was. .. This was before someone had the bright idea of painting the top of the trucks white, they are still ovens on wheels.
Anyway our team was a tight nit group and any errors were dealt with between YOU and the floor supervisor. The next level up was to be a sorter where you had pass a test to memorize all of the zip codes and manually place the package on the right conveyer... ( At one time I had all of the ZIPs memorized, they do break down into manageable Zones and state codes ) ... I'm sure things have changed since, but perhaps not. The number of packages flying by are many, and scanning it with a scanner would almost take longer than doing it by hand. As an unloader, we had to average moving about 14 hundred boxes per hour <-- that's not a typo ... 14 hundred. ...and that's just for one person.
For many years I envied the guys that had UPS jobs and they made good money, had good benefits, and stable employment. But I also learned how demands and as you put it 'brutal' the work could be... especially during the Christmas rush.
The situation is that we now have more of these companies in more countries trying to push a similar business model and it is even more brutal.
It is beginning to feel brutal to the customer. My last delivery from Parallax in Taiwan in 2012 started with a notice that UPS would deliver in the afternoon on a certain day. I was at home all day, including the morning. At about 2 pm I went out to the front door to see what was up and UPS had tagged a notice that they had arrived and attempted delivery at 10am.
I was home. They seemed to not have rung the door bell, they didn't call my cell. They just tagged the building and disappeared. And forced me to stay at home for another day.
So the second day, I stayed home all day and they never came. But the notice mentioned that after a 3rd delivery failure, they would return the package to the US.
I had to go to work the next day, so I asked that they schedule the 'final' delivery attempt for 3 days hence. I explained that no one would be home the following day. They said okay.
The next day --- as I am leaving for a regularly scheduled class without much time to spare -- the UPS truck arrives.
At least in Taiwan, they don't listen, they don't follow their own computers, they don't follow their own paper work.
And the UPS truck driver strongly suggested that I establish a business delivery address that would be open all day for them to shop up as they please.
~~~~~
But it isn't just UPS, as my Cubbieboard shipment from Hong Kong was equally bizarre an annoying. They said they were shipping Fed-EX and I would receive a tracking number. They switched to a cheaper alternative shipper, never issued a tracking number. I sudden am getting a mysterious series of cell phone calls in Chinese telling me someone is coming and I must stay at home for a while. I wait 3 hours and then go to dinner. Of course, after I arrive at the restaurant and have ordered, my cell phone rings (this is 6:45pm) and they ask me to open my front door.
I managed to tell the restaurant to hold dinner, rushed home (about 2 blocks at a run) and get the delivery.
So I am Fed-UP. I can't win. The delivery services are becoming brutal to the small customer.
As far as everyone telling me how brutal UPS is, and how its amazing they get as much right as they do, this makes me respect the company much less!! If your going to compete with the post office and charge a premium then higher enough workers and buy enough equipment to do it right the first time. Skimping on man power and tools is ratty non union practices. Might as well charge the same price as the post office, especially if your not doing anything different to compete with them.
I mean why couldnt these guys give Beau a partner or too, there charging a premium... whats the extra money over the PO going too?
Shipping costs have not only gone up, they have been driven up by these companies so that they had more profit and could expand globally.
I can no longer order books from the US via 'surface book rate' (which took six weeks by ship) as the US Postal service stopped that. So any book ordered from the US cost about 200% of its retail price and I have to order 3 or more from one vendor to get a good shipping rate (Amazon will split orders with different vendors, ouch).
The absurdity is that everything must go air frieght now and can easily arrive in 7-10 days which is quite adequate and even Parallax orders arrive in two to three days, but everyone is still pushing the 2 day express to squeeze more money out of me. Any yet, the arrival is consistently a rather obnoixous battle between me and the shipper. They show up when they want and are willing to have me wait several days, all day.
UPS has always been a demanding employer, but the benefits and pay were excellent. I don't know if they still are. After all, Jimmy Hoffa disappeared.
I just think the internet purchase and home delivery model of doing business has a weak link.... and this is it. It seems the big companies -- DHL, Fed-Ex, and UPS are in turf wars to get shippers to give one of them all their business and not offer the customer the best alternative for one's destination, time-line, budget, and lifestyle.
The post office still puts a note in my box and tells me to come in and pick up packages. That is the most reasonable for me, but retailers seem unwilling to provide this option.
And to make matters even worse, the big logistics companies now all have special relationships with Customs officials throughout the world.
The only way this will change is for companies that depend on these 'logistics companies' to push back and say they expect the customer at the end of the line to be pleased with the delivery experience, not traumatized. Otherwise, people will just buy from you if you have a decent shipper available for their location. Or they won't buy from you again.
It these 'logistics companies' only want business-to-business, they should be honest and declare that delivery to other locations may take longer or are simply unwanted.
It is more productive to have a single worker in each trailer, otherwise they get in each others way and productivity drops.
I think Beau's use of the work "brutal" was maybe a little over the top, I would say "physically demanding" would be a better term.
The 1200 to 1400 piece per hour unload pace isn't always easy, but it is doable with some effort. In most trailers you are just picking and placing to a nearby set of rollers or an extendable conveyor, sometimes near the front of the trailer you end up needing to walk a few feet between the packages and the rollers/conveyor. It all depends on the load of course, a load of packages from somewhere like Parallax that are typically very light is a lot easier than one from a company shipping nothing but 50 pound boxes of ball bearings.
It certainly isn't a cozy work environment, a trailer loaded early in the morning at a shippers site and then sitting in the sun all day gets very hot and the bottom section of the drop frame trailers gets really really cold from picking up salt and ice on the road in the winter.
I started there as an unloader 1987 and left from the Industrial Engineering department in 2000.
C.W.
The USPS priority mail we the best deal going awhile back (I haven't checked lately). It was 3 day service from CA to PA and we pretty cheap.
And if you have something small and heavy the USPS flat-rate boxes are a real value.
Bean
The compensation package is quite decent, yet turnover is 2-300% first year; every job is very demanding and the young kids these days are pretty averse to any real work.
True story, one dude from the hood wore a t-shirt that said "F#$k You, Pay Me". He was asked to change, of course.
Yes, they did get very hot in the summer, I mentioned that previously. I passed out twice in one day in mid-July, being young and full of #$%^ and vinegar at the time I tried to brush it off but they had me report to the nurses station and sit out the remainder of the shift.
I had a pair of really nice soft pig skin work boots with steel toes (steel toes are, or at least used to be required) that would get soaked with sweat and turn white from the salt when they dried.
Going out for a beer after work was very satisfying because you had really earned it.
C.W.
I don't feel its right when they do business with the mentality of, "Oh well they only have roughly 3 of us to chose from, so treat them how we see fit, and they deal with it or they don't online order"......
I wish there were someway to say, "Hey! I payed for 2 days shipping you took 3, you are in breach of contract ( no matter what the circumstances are, we removed mitigating circumstances from court a while ago it would seem...) and force them to have to refund you the full price of your shipping charges.
no company gives me leniency on when I pay, Oh sorry my bill was due today, Ill pay you tomorrow and I don't expect a late fee or any inconvenience for not honoring my end of the contract.... Yeah right...
However, for a summer I was working on field trials near Memphis where FedEx has their hub. Sometimes we would be collecting samples on dry ice until 8pm or so, get them to the airport FedEx receiving dock (basically the back end of a hangar) just before midnight and the samples would be delivered before 10 am the next morning in Delaware for processing.
I think logistics is amazing.
At least with the post office, I don't get beat up by the delivery question mark. They notify me and I just go to the post office. Sometimes I have to go to the main one rather than the one nearby.
But one should realize that this order is for one tiny Schmartboard and a tiny GA144 chip that could easily fit in an envelope and be sent to me registered mail for less than $5USD.
Thus is the tyranny of deliveries.
I order a lot of DVDs online, and one of the sellers accidentally sent me a season box of StarTrek TNG instead of 'Chitty Chitty Bang Bang'...
(Those season boxes are 'fancy' and contains a lot of plastic)
Returning it as a parcel from Norway to England would have cost 270NOK(about $50?) but I checked the regs for envelopes, and an envelope no more than 7cm thick wih weight less than 1Kg went for 90NOK. That was 'Priority' mail, though. I could have sent it as 'Priority B' for 81NOK (4 to 10 days instead of 2 - 6).
From what I understand, it arrived in 4 days or so, as that was the time it took before the seller reimbursed me. :-)
UPS...
I once got home and found a box of expensive electronics(1500NOK) stuffed halfway into my mailbox, so that only half of it was soaking wet...
I've also found packages laying on my doorstep, which I didn't hesitate to complain about, either.
(I lived in town back then. Anyone could walk by and snatch it)
DHL...
Can't really understand that it may be a good idea to CALL the cellphone number written on the package before attempting delivery, even when it says to do so in both Englsih and Norwegian. (Sucks to be them then, as that's a 30Km detour... one way... and I'm NEVER home during the day, and work in the center of town, where most of their deliveries are.)
One local company was to deliver a secondhand engine from a breakers yard...
For one reason or another, they tried to call a cell-phone number they 'had on file' somewhere instead of the one on the papers.
(That was a friday, they don't work on saturdays, and I needed the car running monday morning)
The phone conversations got 'pretty heated'... And they had to pay a driver overtime to deliver it to me on saturday morning...
Maybe the sorting center can only handle boxes or 'dumbo' finds it harder to loose a box. But we build vast sorting centers for conventional mail that are available.
These logistic companies have been a rather huge retail inflationary cost in the scheme of things. In the meanwhile, the postal infrastructure is suffering to survive due to the drop in junk mail and monthly billing mail that has been diverted over to the internet.
I just can't see how so-called 'free market competition' is either good for the environment or the economy. In general, people are far more intelligent that the needs of their employers -- but people need to be employed to take care of themselves.
Sure, everyone could become self-employed and many are forced to do so, but many merely turn to dubious or criminal activities. We have gone to far with a business model that favors economies of scale and the lowest possible cost with larger and larger corporations being allowed to privatize.
Of course, I can added to my Schmartboard order and the shipping will be the same cost. But even doubling the order, it would still fit nicely and safely in a bubble wrap padded envelope. More packages would fit on an airplane and less of a carbon footprint.
I just can't see any rational justification for the 'must use' the priority mail box. It is a subsidy for the airplane industry.
BTW, I do see that UPS has two choices --- UPS residential and UPS commercial in the US. Why can't they do the same world-wide and allow residential to opt for a will call center or door-to-door? Too busy making money may have been a past excuse, but I wonder.
This thread has been very interesting. Especially since everything I've ordered and had delivered via both shippers has gotten here. The only two mistakes happened when FedEx delivered a package to my building's basement, its a GoodWill workshop with the apartments, on top, to them. Happened twice, I kid you all not. Suffice to say the first time I lodged a complaint. I elected to not do so the second because that idiotic problem of holiday shopping.
But with Amazon, they only give the option of locker deliver for FBA options. And that's been only three, perhaps four such since. And in case anyone is curious all of them have been at the two 7-11s who have the thing.
I am fortunate to work for a small company with a receiving department and informal enough operations that I can have stuff sent there. Even that isn't perfect; I once ordered a DVD which Barnes & Noble shipped in a padded mailer, which got crushed between two heavy packages on the shelves of the truck. I returned it to the local B&N and ordered it again from Amazon, who shipped it in a proper box and it survived.
One dodge which is available if you're residential is one we use at work when we don't want to wait for the delivery van; ask them to ship it "hold for pickup." That means they won't even put it on the truck, but once you see from the online tracking that it's at the local terminal you go there yourself and pick it up. That keeps the package out of the rain, off your doorstep, and lets you go to work instead of waiting for the van to show up.
I'm pretty unlikely to place an order if USPS shipping isn't available. Online tracking is nifty, but rarely worth the expense. USPS has been uber reliable, here, and incredibly quick. Also, like someone already mentioned, the China Post/USPS hand-off is flawless. After hundreds of orders, I've never lost a single thing.
OTOH, I can understand how satisfying tracking would be for a seller. I'm sure it's a comfort to know that he/she will never get hit-up for lost or stolen merchandise. It's always an act of faith to slap a few stamps on something and stick it in the mail.
I do understand that some commerical customers need the real-time tracking for 'just-in-time' manufacturing or at least they think they do (if its late, what good did the tracking do?)
What is rather universally disliked is when the logistics service, the cable TV guy, or whomever is going to visit you home -- will not commit to a given day and at least a morning or afternoon slot. It gets worse when the appointment is repeatedly missed.
Why do these companies think that they can make us accept their behaviour? Nobody wants to wait around for days on end when they have a life to live and bills to pay. More features, such as 2 day delivery and real-time tracking are just their to justify higher fees for reliable service.
Whatever happened to the USPS Special Delivery service?