For regular readers of the blog you can skip out on this one. I’m just sitting here too angry to write anything I wanted to write today so thought I’d make a public post about why I think UPS sucks.
Backstory: Last week my pup had fresh red blood on her eye. I took her into the main vet and then a specialist vet. Fortunately, it’s not the disease that will blind her if untreated, but it’s still something that is impacting her eyes. The vet prescribed a medicine that has to be custom manufactured out of state. That prescription should’ve gone through last Friday which would’ve put it here Monday, but the vet messed up and didn’t put it through until I called to follow-up on Monday. So I was already cranky before UPS got involved.
Company that was shipping the medicine charged me $10 for the shipping and sent it 2nd Day Air, which meant it was out for delivery yesterday. Because of how they shipped it I was emailed a little link that let me follow my package. This link basically lets you watch where the delivery truck is throughout the day and tells you when they’re getting close.
Weather was fine yesterday until about 2 PM when it started to snow. I had a package delivered by UPS at the normal time they deliver to my house around 10 AM. It was a package of books that had been sent via normal delivery so had taken four or five days to get here.
But that air, priority package? The one I really cared about? Did it come on the regular delivery truck? No, it did not. You’d think if you knew bad weather was coming in that might impact deliveries that you’d prioritize the priority packages. Not if you’re UPS, though.
Yesterday I checked in throughout the day and watched as that delivery truck came within one block of my house but then never delivered to my house. It was out doing its work until 6 PM (a full work day, no weather stoppage there) when I finally got an email that they had failed to make the delivery due to weather.
Yeah, no. You failed to make the delivery because you failed to prioritize packages that you were paid to prioritize. You had plenty of time to deliver a priority package before the weather turned and even after it had.
But it gets worse. Because today I got another little tracking link.
Now you would think that if a customer had paid for priority delivery of a package and you had failed to deliver it on the day it was supposed to be delivered that you would then make it a priority the next day to deliver that package, right? Wouldn’t that be good customer service? To come somewhat remotely close to doing what you’d been paid to do?
Not if you’re UPS.
It’s almost the end of the business day here. I have watched that stupid little truck come within five blocks of my house to the north, to the east, and to the south and then go twenty blocks away and start working its way through the neighborhood it worked its way through yesterday before not delivering to me.
I assume that maybe at some point today they’ll actually show up here. But, seriously, how do you run a business that way? How are you so tone deaf to what you’ve promised customers and then delivered them? How do you deliver a non-priority package and yet fail to deliver the priority one?
(Let’s not even get into the wastefulness of sending two trucks to the same address on the same day…Oh wait. They didn’t really, did they?)
Ugh. So annoyed.
(comments disabled because I just wanted to rant not have any sort of conversation about my rant, especially not with UPS who make it impossible to submit a complaint on their website which is why I ended up making this post because I couldn’t email them instead)
M.L. Humphrey 