Or you could walk it there yourself! (UPS)

Member Name: Pingu

Product:	UPS
Date:	12/10/01 (705 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: I don't think so!

Disadvantages: Everything

I don't have too many experiences with UPS - THANKFULLY! The few that I have had are enough to put me off using them; unfortunately, when you order stuff you don't get to choose which couriers the firm uses, so I will probably find myself having further dealings with them, and I dread the day.

Every single time something I've ordered has been delivered by UPS it's been late. I mean, when you pay extortionate prices for next day delivery, you expect next day delivery, not sometime-next-week-delivery-but-there's-a-real ly-good-reason-honest-guv. It's never happened. And what I don't like is the dishonesty. When I phone to see where it is the first line of defence is always that the firm I've ordered from despatched it late - perhaps UPS believe I'm so thick that I wouldn't have checked that, or that I can't read the despatch note when it arrives.

But it was my latest dealing with them that really put me off. I ordered a soundcard, thinking that my wife would be in the next day to receive it. Unfortunately, the next-day thing turned into a week and a half, so that my wife wasn't in when it eventually arrived. So I got home to discover a note saying they had tried to deliver a package, and would be back the next day to try again. Despite their complete inefficiency I was thanking my lucky stars that they weren't one of those firms who will leave a package in your back garden in the middle of a thunderstorm.

Unfortunately my wife couldn't be in the next day either, so I phoned UPS and asked if I could change the delivery address to my mum's house, just down the road. No problem, they said, I've just done it on the computer as we speak sir. Great.

Of course the next day I arrived home to find a note saying UPS had tried to deliver a package for the second time, and that they would only make one more attempt. So I phoned them, a little annoyed; I mean, inefficiency is one th
ing, but the woman who claimed to have altered the address as we spoke was clearly just having a laugh.

They asked if I wanted to change the address this time, in a tone that suggested that I was at fault for not telling them I wouldn't be in; at which point I was tempted to scream that I had already tried to change the address. But I didn't. I kept my cool, and said yes, I would like to change the address. I gave my mum's address again, to which the operator said, "Oh no, that's the original address." So I thought, I've figured out what they did. They accidentally put my mum's address in the wrong box on the 'change-of-delivery-address' form, put mine in the 'new address' slot, and that's how they came to be trying to deliver it to me again.

So it was all sorted. The operator assured me, several times, that my mum's address was now down as the address they would attempt to deliver to tomorrow, and I was happy. Just as a precaution, my wife agreed to get home from Southampton by about noon, so that she would be in if, by any chance, they tried our address again. We thought this was safe, since both previous attempts at delivery were at 4pm.

You already know how the story ends. Next day, they tried my address again, but my wife's train was delayed. When nobody was in they phoned the depot, who phoned my wife's mobile - I'd had to give her number, because I'm not free to answer a phone at work - and asked what to do. She gave them mum's address once more, pointing out that it's just down the road, and we thought things were sorted. But mum didn't get the parcel. I did get a note, saying they'd now tried three times to deliver it, and would be returning it to the sender, worded to make it sound like I was at fault.

So I phoned as soon as I got home, this time not very happy at all. I got put through to the man at the depot whose job it is to k
kep track of which deliveries are out. But it turned out the man had an IQ of three, and I couldn't coax a coherent conversation out of him. At first he said he only came on for the afternoon, so he wouldn't know about that. When I suggested that maybe they should learn to track something across shifts, he said, "Oh yes, I know if something's gone out."

Without saying, "So what the hell have we just wasted 5minutes of my mobile bill for?" I politely asked if he wouldn't mind very much explaining why there had been another almighty cock up with my parcel. Much umming and ahhing later, he swore that my parcel hadn't been out at all today, and was sat in front of him on his desk ready to go tomorrow. So I asked what his men had tried to deliver to my house less than an hour ago, and he suddenly 'remembered' that yes the parcel was out. He said, "Hang on, there's a change of address on this. It's gone to.." and he quoted my address to me. I pointed out that that was the original address, not the changed one - but I'd lost him...far too advanced stuff. Then I asked why, when he phoned my wife, and got my mum's address, they couldn't go there. To which he said there was no number on the form. I suggested that he was quite clever to have phoned my wife without having her number.

What had happened was that he thought there was no contact number on the form, and so decided to phone Millenium Music, the senders, for further instructions. Grabbing the first number he could see on the form, he assumed it was theirs - even though it was in a box labelled 'contact number' - called them and got my mum's address from them. Which still left the question of why they hadn't tried my mum's.

Eventually I gave up trying to sort it out. I just got angry enough to make sure that he felt extremely apologetic, so that he would be sure to get things just right the next
day. But what a farce. It cost me about £4 in phone bills, as well as making my mum stay in twice, all because they can't use their own paperwork. If I had a choice about who my suppliers used I would steer well clear of UPS in future.

Summary: