What can Brown do for me? Nothing! I’ve had it with them and their unkempt longhair drawing on an imaginary whiteboard. I have two ridiculous UPS stories to share.
Last week I ordered vacuum bags from Amazon. Normally packages from Amazon are left leaning against my apartment door, no signature required. But for some reason they required a signature on this valuable box of vacuum bags valued at $6.99 and attempted to deliver it three days in a row at 10:30am. Naturally, since I have one of those job thingys, I was not present. I was annoyed that they would require a signature for such an item, but the local UPS depot was not far from my home, so I just decided I’d pick it up on Saturday.
Or so I thought.
Apparently the UPS depot is only open on Monday to Friday from 8-6. Now, maybe it’s just me. But I would think that if someone was unable to receive a package that UPS tried to deliver during business hours, that they would also not be able to come retrieve it personally during business hours. So I was rather stuck. They wouldn’t deliver the package again, and I couldn’t go pick it up. The only available option? Having the package redirected to another address. For a tidy fee of $6.
So in the end I paid $12.99 for a $6.99 box of vacuum bags and got them a week late. Still, that’s not as ridiculous as this next story.
My friend Becky also ordered something from Amazon that was to be delivered by UPS. On the day the package was supposed to arrive, she received an email that said her shipping address was invalid and that they needed clarification of the address before they shipped her item. Becky knows her own address, and naturally she called to tell them so. UPS helpfully informed her that if she wished to have the package redelivered, she merely needed to provide the number on the postcard she would soon be getting in the mail. “So let me get this straight,” Becky said. “You can send me a postcard telling me that my package is undeliverable…but you can’t just deliver my package?”
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
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11 metawords:
Oh man. I hate how random they are too, like sometimes they'll just leave things on your doorstep, practically in the street, and sometimes they'll keep it from you like it's a national treasure.
DHL is the worst though, they randomly send things to other states for no reason.
I will never understand the logic in things like this. MOST people are out 9-5 approximately yet that's the hours UPS and FedEx are out delivering. I've had them decide, without my permission, to leave packages in a nearby STORE for me before. Not a UPS store oh no. A TOBACCO shop, where anyone could claim it. WTF?
Plus WHO thinks it's necessary to ask for signature on a pack of vacuum bags, that is RETARDED. Stupid Amazon.
They wouldn't even let you sign the back of the slip??
I know it's probably very wrong of me to admit this, but it actually gives me great comfort to know that courier companies are shitty the world over. I would've sent you this message by courier, but you might've had to pay $6 to have it redirected to an alternate address.
What can brown do for you? Make your life unnecessarily difficult, apparently.
I deal with FedEx and UPS on a daily basis for work and this stuff is so common. They also can't tell you how much a package shipment actually costs until Monday of each week. That is when they do their billing and I am expected to wait at the edge of my seat as we play the Russian Roulette game of "Is the Quote accurate?"
Oh God! I know! I once had to send something valuable to a friend in Hawaii for Christmas and I figured UPS could do it faster than the post office, so I went there. They gave me two price quotes which were both INSANELY high, but as it was Christmas I gave in. I paid the lesser charge of $40 and they took the box and gave me a tracking number so I could tell when the gift arrived.
Fine.
So a few days go by and I decide to check the tracking number. I go onto their website and it tells me that the delivery date would be at the END OF JANUARY which was over a MONTH away! I wanted it there by Christmas and I was given an estimate that it would be there by Christmas and that's what I paid for - but now it wasn't going to make it there for another FIVE OR SIX WEEKS?!
I angrily went back to UPS and demanded to know what the hell was going on. Get this, they told me it wasn't a real tracking number and they couldn't really tell me where the package was or anything because I had picked the cheapest shipping price and that meant that they, UPS, had shipped it through the REGULAR POST OFFICE with no tracking, no delivery confirmation and no way of knowing where it was or when it would get there. I paid them $40 to drop my box off at the damn post office and give me a fake tracking number!!
Yes, the post office got the box there on Christmas eve, thankfully. But I still grind my teeth everytime I see a UPS truck.
I've had many similar experiences with UPS. Really, no one does it better than the ol' USPS! USA represent!!!
A friend of mine caught his wife in flagrante with the UPS man right about the time they started using the "What can brown do for you slogan?" I've never been able to read or hear it without laughing out loud and thinking, "They will even service your wife!"
Asshats.
Gwen's comment trumps anything I could possibly say, except that I do think "brown" makes for some awkward associations.
I've had the same problem. They're a real pain in the ass when it comes to delivering wine club shipments. I got so fed up with them needing my signature and delivering at random times I changed my address to my husbands office. Now my wine doesn't have to sit in a 140 degree truck for a week. Bastards.
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