I too ordered the iPhone for the $50 off, but I was pleasantly pleased by my shipping experience. I ordered the phone late Friday (12/26), and I was planning to leave town on Tuesday (12/30). I did not think I would see the phone before I left, but I was happy to see it arrive on Monday (12/29)! No signature was required as I found the package hidden on my porch. After a quick call to AT&T my number was ported and I was able to enjoy my iPhone while on vacation.

I can't really complain about any UPS experiences I've had. Don't get me started on FedEx though...

OH man this reminds me of this christmas. I ordered a radio from crutchfield overnight on the 19th. One day shipping, should arrive on the 23rd by 10:30AM says UPS (yea I know cuttin it close). I always ship to my work address. So on the 23rd tracking shows it in a town 20 minutes away (the main local hub I think) and it says rescheduled delivery for the 24th. I'm like what the hell so I call crutchfield and ask the guy if I can just go get it on my way home for the holidays as I go right through this town. He says it's probably best just to redirect the delivery, I'm like aight so he has the delivery redirected to the place I'm going for the holidays. This is verified via tracking. I'm like fine, get it the 24th back home where it was going anyway. I'm heading out the door at 5 and the UPS guy is just pulling in and I don't really give him a second thought. Few seconds later my phone rings and the front office is like did you leave yet, UPS just delivered a package. I'm like what. Sure enough there was my package. That they said in the morning they couldn't deliver on the 23rd, then I had it redirected for the 24th, then proceeded to deliver it to the original address. I'm like what is wrong with you people.

Actually I think their rerouting in mid-transit service is reserved for Nigerian Ebay scammers. This is the only group that I have seen able to take advantage of this service.

I once had UPS lose an affidavit that had been subpoenaed from me. I found out the morning of the trial that they had lost it, even though they had marked it as delivered. I had to immediately jump in my vehicle, and drive 300 miles in order to avoid being sued or arrested or both.

There's just no comparison to showing up in court alongside your employer in a pair of jeans, and a T-shirt.

Thanks UPS!

I had a similar issue with FedEx... they didn't leave a note, and they couldn't reach me via phone... so they sent a printer back. Now I am stuck trying to get the thing redelivered.... what a load. There should be some repercussion for this sort of stuff...

I've had UPS send an insured COD shipment of $1300 of electronics to the wrong person and not collect anything. UPS cut me a cheque for about $8 (I don't remember why they felt the amount was fair, I thought they were crazy). After 3 months of arguing, them admitting their mistake on the phone, not refunding the money, and then refusing to charge their employee with theft (although they accused him of it... I love transcripting phone calls), all the way to supposed executives, I sued. Just in time for them to receive the papers for Xmas holidays (oh how I loved letting the "executive" there know they'd be receiving a lovely gift of being sued for Xmas)!

The moment the Xmas holidays were up, UPSes lawyer paid not just the replacement value of the merchandise, but the COD value plus court fees. We didn't even have to go to court. The lawyer knew he'd lose that badly that there was no point. Perhaps it was the $5,000 in punitive damages I tacked onto the case...

Screw UPS. After being burned by their brokerage fees (God help you!), I barely trust them to deliver a package, and wouldn't send dog turds via their service.

Good luck getting UPS to do anything about this one. I had a problem with them a few years ago, in which they destroyed a fragile package and its contents, proceeded to try to hide it (by telling me it was being held at a facility), then someone eventually dropped off the demolished package with the sender's office and tried to run out before anyone could say anything!

I complained loudly, but got nowhere. Check their BBB record. It's abysmal, and they clearly don't care about customer complaints. When I saw that, I knew I was wasting my time and that the only way I could make any impact was to just not use them.

As I always say, their color is brown for a reason.

Gotta love UPS. I had a package that they wouldn't leave at my apartment, so I opted to have it held at the terminal, only to be told (twice!) that they didn't get the note to pull it off the truck until the truck had already been loaded and that would've been too much work.

They were kind enough to tell me what part of town the truck was, and if I could locate the truck, I could flag them down and get my parcel. Sure.

Of course, DHL misdelivered $120,000 worth of HD cameras to someone's house instead of my employer - when they realized their mistake, the cameras had vanished, they were out $120k, and Panasonic had to send us more cameras from Japan.

I'll stick to good ol' USPS.

The OP didn't say what day he ordered the phone. He only said it was before the 31st and UPS would hold it up to five days. They might of held it for five days, but didn't put the note in the system until 01/02.

@macdude22: and like, and like, and like, like, like, omg like...

I've typically had good experiences with UPS, it's DHL that does the terrible job for me.

UPS is not at fault. Rerouting a package is above and beyond the normal services and as such is deemed an at risk service... meaning their is a risk of service not being properly performed.

@jhurley03: A note entering the system on 1/2 shouldn't be contradicted twice later the same day. 5 days != 2 hours.

UPS is at fault for not following the directions they had been given to HOLD the freakin' package until the receiver picks it up. How hard is that?

Apparently beyond the skill of someone at UPS.

@macdude22:

Good old UPS. About 8 years ago my husband didn't feel like building a new PC so he ordered one custom built. We did not live in the best of neighborhoods at the time and wouldn't be home for delivery, so he had the company ship the computer to his fathers shop on the other side of town. We get home from work a few days after shipping and find the PC on OUR uncovered front deck, in the pouring rain, with nothing but a plastic garbage back sorta draped across the box being held down by our front door mat. We get the box inside and check it out. Fortunately the PC was also encased in plastic in the box so it was dry. The fun part was the shipping label did NOT have our address, it had my father-in-laws address. But somehow, some way, they ended up delivering it to OUR house which was the billing address for the sale. Also the labels requested signature on delivery, but of course none was given since the box was just dropped off.

Also my mother finally shipped her beloved Martin Acoustic guitar back to have it worked on as it had a slightly warped bridge due to old age. D.S. Martin did the work and shipped the guitar back. UPS managed to drop a pallet on it with a forklift and turned it and the hard side case into toothpicks. This was her baby, she had owned this guitar since she was a teenager. Needless to say UPS is NOT my favorite company.

Per the tracking history in the story, the change request was made on 1/02 at 12:52PM with a delivery attempt 1 hr 20 min later. The package was already out for delivery, therefore the first attempt makes sense. (Also I'm a little unclear on how/why they let him attempt to reroute the package prior to the first attempt. In my line of business we send quite a few packages through UPS and they have always told us that in order to reroute the package prior to the first delivery attempt, there is a $10 service fee billed to the shipper's account, which must be authorized by the shipper. After one attempt, however, it can be done for free by the recipient.)

The claimed refusal, however, I am at a loss. My purely semi-educated guess based on my personal experience with the pickup system is that once the package physically made it back to the UPS center, and they were scanning it to hold it for the five days (which they do; it triggers a "Package is available for pickup" line item on the tracking history) they accidentally keyed it as refused instead of held.

My guess, anyway. Who knows, and who knows where the package actually is--if it was simply miskeyed, it may very well still be at the local center, since in that scenario the attendant believed they were holding it and may have set it aside.

Good luck!

@Matthew Sadler: The US Postal Service is pretty awesome. There are some things they can't do, but for almost anything I'd rather use Priority Mail/Express Mail than UPS or FedEx.

Here's what brown did to me:

A few weeks ago I had some stuff sent UPS overnight with Saturday delivery, no signature required.

On Saturday, with someone home, the driver leaves a sticker that says no one is home to accept the package. On Monday, with no one home, the driver leaves the package.

So much for that extra Saturday delivery cost.

@macdude22: I've worked for UPS for a couple years now, and I can say that DCR's (Delivery change requests) take 24 hours to fully process. By the time you put your request on the package, it was already out for delivery. Once packages are on-road, there are very limited steps that can be taken to alter delivery attempts to the original address. If your driver was especially eager, multiple attempts would have been made on the same day (ESPECIALLY at that time of year, in an effort to get all christmas gifts delivered if at all possible).

@geoffhazel: Yes, UPS should have held the package at the end of the day. However, the delivery attempt could not have been avoided; The package was already out for delivery.

UPS kinda did the same thing to me on an RMA. They said the company refused it when 1)they did no such thing and 2)one of the refusals was 2 hours after they closed. Package was sent December 1st and still has not been delivered. Want some real stupidity? Check out the back and forth across the country.

ALTAMONTE SPRINGS,
FL, US 12/01/2008 10:45 P.M. DEPARTURE SCAN

JACKSONVILLE,
FL, US 12/02/2008 10:25 A.M. DEPARTURE SCAN
12/02/2008 2:56 A.M. ARRIVAL SCAN

VERNON,
CA, US 12/07/2008 5:35 P.M. DEPARTURE SCAN
12/07/2008 9:28 A.M. ARRIVAL SCAN

ANAHEIM,
CA, US 12/08/2008 7:12 P.M. THE RECEIVER DID NOT WANT THE ORDER AND REFUSED THIS DELIVERY / RETURNED TO SHIPPER
12/08/2008 12:04 P.M. THE RECEIVER DID NOT WANT THE ORDER AND REFUSED THIS DELIVERY
12/08/2008 4:13 A.M. OUT FOR DELIVERY
12/08/2008 2:38 A.M. DESTINATION SCAN
12/08/2008 1:33 A.M. ARRIVAL SCAN

LOS ANGELES,
CA, US 12/09/2008 4:13 A.M. DEPARTURE SCAN

JACKSONVILLE,
FL, US 12/14/2008 10:35 A.M. ARRIVAL SCAN

JACKSONVILLE,
FL, US 12/16/2008 9:39 A.M. DEPARTURE SCAN

VERNON,
CA, US 12/21/2008 12:05 P.M. ARRIVAL SCAN

JACKSONVILLE,
FL, US 12/30/2008 7:18 A.M. DEPARTURE SCAN

Yes you saw correctly. It went from florida to california to florida to california to florida and is now on its way back to california. over 15,000 miles and 36 days and counting.

I'm on the other end of this. I ship to customers via UPS. Leading up to the holidays was hell. Several Days in a row, UPS didn't bother to show up or would show up early for pickup. So, it would result in me carrying more than a hundred boxes to the UPS store, or calling for another pickup.

Then, they proceeded to SOMEHOW route three packages to the wrong sides of the country, but somehow got them all to people with the right last name. MEaning the box for Mr. Smith in Alabama went to Miss. Smith in New York, Jane Doe from California couldn't find her package, but Linda Doe in north carolina did.

Highly annoying since in my efforts not to ruin Christmas this year, I had to pull inventory I could have sold out of rotation, send it out a second time to the customers, put tracers on the original packages and have them sent back. I'm still waiting for at least one of those items.

One woman's package arrived in her city very quickly for her to be on the opposite side of the country from us, but was sent out for delivery -FOUR- times. It never showed as being scanned back in at the warehouse, merely scanned out again and again over a 2 day perio. Then it was finally listed as "LOST During Emergency Conditions Beyond UPS Control". From UPS's capitalization of LOST, I can only assume the package is on an island somewhere in the south pacific.

I finally got most everyone taken care of before christmas, but I swear that UPS was actively trying to make it difficult for me.

I had the same problem with UPS and it all boils down to the fact that they're system doesn't have a good way of handling package re-directs. In my case, UPS tried to deliver a package to my home while I was at work. I called them and scheduled a re-delivery to my place of work and got a confirmation that it was good to go. UPS failed to tell me, though, that the package needed a signature for delivery, which automatically means they can't deliver to a different address, hold it for you to pick up, etc. And, to make things worse, they protocol is to call the package refused and ship it back.

The OP seems to misunderstand how UPS deliveries work. If a hold is requested while a package is already out for delivery, a delivery attempt will still be made.

"I called and they said no problem. I got a call back from the local facility confirming that they would hold the package until Monday morning. Great, I thought."

This would be likely unlikely for UPS to do. Not impossible, but no likely. There is no need for the local depot to call and confirm a package hold. The 800 ops can do this and/or it can be done online.

I think the OP is leaving out some details to this story.

Tracking numbers mean nothing as far as doing things correctly. I talked to a kid a while back who scanned boxes as they went into the truck. I was amazed that the computer didn't beep or anything that hey, this box is getting on the wrong truck. Instead, this kid had to look at every single box and see if any of them had been misrouted by the guy before him.

Workers are penalized even if the 'wrong' truck is going to essentially the same place (i.e. no delay in delivery if it happens). That means they have to stop and scrutinize every package. It seems like quicker looks and catching all mistakes would be preferable, but I guess not.

It seems like they could even upsell the service... 'Sir, I can put a priority reroute on that for a dollar service charge', or 'I see you have a complimentary alert coupon for passing a thousand boxes shipped this month, would you like to use it now', or 'Yes we save costs because knucklehead drivers don't get those things sent all the way back to Brazil and then back again at our expense!'

Depending on where I've lived in my city over the years, I've either been incredibly happy with UPS's service, or so repeatedly pissed off that I wanted to kill the whole bunch of them. Fortunately, I'm living along the route of a guy who does a great job with deliveries, and often leaves my packages very well hidden behind some porch plants we have when I'm not home.

A few years back, I missed a package on the first attempt, so I called and asked if they'd hold it for me to pick up the next day. "No problem," I was told. So, the next morning, I arrived at 9am (locally, they're open daily from 9-10am and 5-6pm only), and was told--oops, sorry--the package was still on the truck. Damn! Woke up early for nothing!

I drove home, pissed off, only to find they'd made a 2nd attempt to deliver while I was out. It's one of those times when you think they're doing it on purpose just to f*** with you. I called the 800 number, since there's no local number available, and they told me sorry, and that they'd definitely hold it for me the next day. The next day, 9am, cold outside the door waiting for them to open, I go inside, only to discover they once again left it on the truck. I sped home, just waiting to see if they'd made the 3rd delivery attempt while I was out again. Of course, they had.

I had to wait until Monday morning to go pick it up, again waiting in the freezing cold for them to open (with them being open for only an hour at a time, if you don't get there before everyone else, it's an even longer wait). I'm pretty sure it was a computer part that I desperately needed, so going all those days without it really sucked.

@loueloui: Lovely. Go UPS. They probably left it on your door didn't ring the doorbell and marked it as delivered. That's ALL they do here. Even for signed packages.

The OP got more than we ever did from UPS.

We left on our honeymoon, and we were still receiving gifts. My wife called and asked if the packages could be held for the 10 days until we returned, and was rudely told "We are not a holding facility". That's Philadelphia for you.

So I called and asked if they could be sent to my grandfather's house (one town away). The person the other end said that would not be a problem. When we returned home 10 days later, we had 4 big boxes piled up outside our front door - some of which were soaked for sitting there in the rain for a few days. That's UPS for you.

I agreee that these shipping companies are not holding facilities, but they really have a problem with these missed shipments. Most people work during the week so home delivery requiring a signature is a real issue. Since people are buying more and more off the internet, they need to allow for diverted shipments to a UPS like storefront or make it so that you can specify at the time of purchase that you'll pickup at the sorting facility . It would also be nice to specify either of these options via their web site while the item is intransit to the sort facility.

UPS seems to have a lot of drivers that just don't care & UPS doesn't seem to mind that.
Last year I ordered a monitor through Amazon & I was amazed when it was delivered the next day, before I even got an email giving me the tracking number so I could follow the delivery.
The only problem was that the driver, who did ring my bell, was in the process of leaving a 22" monitor between the front door & the screen door, which had to be wide open because of the size of the monitor, because I took longer than 30 seconds to get to the door.
He was signing for the package himself.
So when I ordered a new printer from Amazon, I had to order it at a certain time so I knew I would be home, as I had appoints that week.
And if anyone yells at me for ordering from Amazon, it's because I had gift certificates, plus no shipping charges & no goddamn 10.25% Cook County sales tax!

Hopefully you didn't ask them to hold the package when it was already out for delivery, as the timetable says. The drivers will make the attempt anyway. It doesn't really matter what UPS promises or claims to be able to do, that's just too late to be making changes to the plan.

Still, two delivery attempts in one day, while impressive, should not be grounds for return. Why the hell don't they have an automatic hold time for undelivered packages at the nearest depot? I could have sworn they used to do this: a few days to come pick it up before it is marked rejected and sent back (or claimed by UPS employees).

heh heh...I used to work with the "man with the mullet". He was an art director at the ad agency I worked at in SF.

@David Rodriguez: You stumbled upon your $200+ easily set up by another party phone hanging out on your porch and that was a plesant experience??

Unless you trust your neighbors, your UPS driver and the weather to an insane degree and chose to opt out of sig confirmation this sounds like much less than a great ending.

@Sharwnthla: My guess with the first is that regardless of what the label said, the scan code had used the billing address for delivery, so the error was probably with the shipper rather than with UPS.

@jhurley03: But if it was delivered 2 hours after he put in the request, the item was probably already on the truck, which would at least explain the first delivery. Couldn't he have submitted the request earlier?

I had the pleasure of dealing with these yahoos also. I had packages go 'off tracking' for days and then magically appear on truck or at the receptionist's desk.

Where I work we closed at 2pm Christmas eve. They delivered the first set of packages and I told them we were leaving at 2:30pm so please give us all the packages. Wait for it... At 1:08pm there is a note on the tracking: Customer not available due to holiday package rescheduled by request. What was cool is Friday no package shows up. I called and asked if I could pick it up as the project couldnt be completed without that one part. They said fine.

1 hour later the facility called and said that they were closed! I couldn't get the package in any way not by truck or by pickup. I had to wait until monday because a driver didn't deliver the package by 2pm. Why didnt he deliver them all at once? Why were they closed the friday after Christmas? Its not a federal holiday or a listed holiday. I was told in all honesty that they were only delivering 'air packages' the week of Christmas. Her exact words. It doesnt matter that 5 of the 6 packages were sitting right here delivered that morning.

There is a reason I have packages delivered to work when its UPS... I cant even speak of home delivery without drinking heavily.

I have never had UPS successfully deliver a package of any kind to me. The last time I dealt with UPS, they delivered a package of sterling silver sheet metal to an address that was not mine, allowed it to be signed for by someone who was not me, then had the nerve to tell me that since it was delivered it was no longer their responsibility and it was up to me to find the person who had my metal and get it back!

One call to my supply company later, UPS phones me to apologise and my order was redelivered properly that same day. I don't know what they said to UPS but it worked. Now the company sends my metals FedEx, with whom I've never had a problem. Of course, it probably doesn't hurt that I bake cookies for the lady who delivers my packages. She alone is more competent than the whole of UPS!

@TinkishDelight: I've never had a happy ending with UPS.

Our recent ordeal: a $24 USD vent cover was ordered from Atlanta Supply Co. It was shipped UPS to the wrong address (although I'm not sure who's fault that was). UPS tried to extort a ~$20 brokerage fee.

I laughed at the woman on the phone and asked her how she could say that with a straight face. $1.xx in taxes and $19.xx in brokerage fees.

I dislike UPS to an almost exaggerated measure, but if your package delivery company's abbreviated name is pronounced "Oops" well... caveat something or other.

A few months ago I had pretty frustrating experience with UPS. I was waiting on a package (which happened to be a rifle, being returned to me after repairs had been made), and in my neighborhood UPS usually passes through at about 2 or 3 pm every day. I knew I wouldn't be home at that time, so I called UPS to have them hold it at the distribution center, only 2 miles from my house. Well, they refused, stating that they needed to attempt delivery first. So I did what anyone would do... called back 5 minutes later and asked again, got the same answer though. Long story short, for obvious reasons I wanted to keep the handling of the package to a minimum, so I had to take a half day off of work, and sit around at home waiting for UPS to show up. When UPS did show up, the driver didn't even knock, I watched him walk from the truck with the missed delivery notice and stick it to the door! I had to shout out the front door to get his attention!

UPS marked that they delivered my DSL modem/router to my apartment complex leasing office, even though the complex couldn't find it anywhere. Apparently the driver can mark it as delivered and sign it if they already have a relationship with the place, so they claimed it was signed, and so I ended up out $100 to order another one since Verizon would only believe the routing info.

@Matthew Sadler: DHL is just horrible. Just recently I had ordered 4 gigs of ram and they delivered it to the wrong address. Called them up and they apologized and said they would send person out to retrieve the package but of course it was gone and nothing they can do. I was so angry because that was for my wife and I got it thru slickdeals and the deal is over now. USPS never let me down yet.

UPS is the epitome of the gigantic corporation that is big enough to shrug off the regular customer, and regularly does. The only customers UPS gives any amount of consideration to is customers of major shippers that have VIP relationships with UPS.

Based on my experience working for such a company, if you have any problems with UPS service, probably your only hope is to call your shipper and get them to harangue UPS on your behalf. Don't even bother calling UPS directly for anything but basic information.

What I hate is when you order online and there is no way to tell how the thing will be shipped until AFTER your order is complete. So like with, say, Amazon, if I leave the billing and shipping the same, it will go to my house, but if it's UPS, there's a chance I won't get it. Unless I leave a note on my door, which any yahoo can see and swipe my package. So far with the mail, at least it gets there with no "No one home" issues. I've been lucky that no one has swiped anything.

What I do now is make the shipping address my work address. If I have to wait through the weekend to get it, then I just have to. It's better than losing it. If the website won't let me put in a different address for shipping, I wont' buy from it.

My experience w/UPS is pretty good EXCEPT during the holidays, when they hire seasonal help. Then it's a crap shoot (emphasis on crap). I had shipped gifts that were supposed to be delivered in mid-December only to be notified on Christmas Eve that a delivery to the Post Office in Sears Tower could not be made because they couldn't find the location and again on New Years Eve to a location that we send packages via UPS every week.

@Corporate-Shill: You missed the part where the recipiant was not at home and had NO WAY of refusing the package.

My girlfriend ordered a pair of custom fit boots when we were in Argentina. My mom hand carried them to my sisters house when they were done. My sister sent them to my GF from Atlanta to Dallas via UPS. UPS tracking info said they were delivered to my GF's house. They weren't there. A week goes by and I'm looking on Craigslist for these boots thinking they were stolen. Saturday comes and a woman knocks on my GF's door with the boots. They were delivered to this woman's house by accident. UPS didn't care.

My own problem has been they deliver packages in ways that I cannot fathom. I've had a great number of packages recently, and they do one of two things (signature required, apartment with a main office that is 20 feet from us).

1) Drop the package off at the door, not even bothering to knock or ring the bell. We discover it usually when we are taking the dog out.

2) Deliver the package and ask random people for signatures, usually our neighbors. However, the last big old package (32" LCD) we walked up while the UPS guy was getting the signature of some random person walking by for our package.

Wow - all these comments are not making me feel well at all. I just now checked up on a package that was supposed to have arrived on Friday, when my office was closed. I expected them to make an attempt, which would be tracked, and then successfully deliver it today, when the office was open. However, the tracking info shows that it was delivered on Friday, and signed for by a name that does not exist in our office. So, either they delivered it to the wrong place, or the driver signed for it and left it at the door, after which time it was stolen. Nice job, UPS. I'm about to call them and see if I can get anywhere, but from what I've read above, I expect UPS to shrug off responsibility and tell me to go find the package that they delivered incorrectly.

This surprises anyone how? UPS is only in business due to corporate contracts. If it was regular service, they'd be out of business.

My favorite story is how I took a half day off waiting for a package - the tracking said 'Attempted delivery no answer'.

I was home. No truck drove up. Magically the truck ended up at the depot 12 minutes later, yet the depot was 43 minutes across town ... during rush hour.

Riiiiiight.

@twophrasebark:

I think you misunderstood the post.

Note the refusal. He wasn't there to refuse it. It wasn't refused.

You're just too incompetent to read.