Jonathan was waiting for UPS to deliver an important and expensive package to his house. He even took a day off work, in order to make sure that he didn’t miss the delivery. The UPS site said that the package would arrive by 7:00 PM, but that time came and went. Not only did the package not show up, the driver pretended that he had tried to deliver the package, and logged it in the system as such. Nice try: Jonathan was at home, with his door open at the time.

I have to write about the horrendous experience I am currently going through with UPS. I ordered a home theater system from an online retailer, who used UPS ground to deliver the package. I saw that the package was on the truck for delivery today, so I took off from work and stayed home to be sure to be here when the expensive package was delivered (as I know that UPS would otherwise just leave it outside my door, which fronts a very busy pedestrian street.)

Their website said the package would most likely be delivered by 7pm, but possibly later. 7pm rolls around and nothing. Then 730, then 8, the 830 and then 9, at which point I track the package online again, and find, to my great surprise, that the driver claims to have made a first attempt at delivery at 718PM, but the “customer was not available.” I was sitting in my living room, WITH THE DOOR OPEN at that time. There was no sticker left on the door or at my mailbox. I am positive that the driver decided he’d had enough of that tiresome work he’d been doing and would call it a day by claiming he’d tried to deliver my package to no avail.

Of course, since it’s Friday, UPS doesn’t deliver again until Monday because it’s a ground package. After a call to customer service and being on hold for 15 minutes, I’m informed that although my local office does make Saturday deliveries, they can’t upgraded my package to Saturday delivery because there is no one at the local office who has the wherewithal to take a box from one truck and move it to another so it can be delivered tomorrow, Saturday. The office is officially closed on Saturday, although the CS person said they do have Saturday staff on hand, but they don’t have the ability apparently to follow simple instructions and/or move physical objects.

I had an installer scheduled to wire the home theater system tomorrow, and he’s now charging me a late cancellation fee for canceling my appointment with him. So furious with them I can barely contain myself. What can Brown do for me? I would be thrilled if they’d be so kind as to deliver a package when they promise to do so, but apparently that’s a bit much to ask a global conglomerate to do.

We checked back in with Jonathan a few days later, and he sent this update:

Nobody called me on Monday, so I waited for the delivery to show up, which it did at about 8PM that night. I asked the driver if he was the one who had supposedly tried to deliver my package on Friday. He said that there was a lot of traffic and deliveries and so he didn’t get to mine and was sorry. I then asked him why it said he had made an attempted delivery and I wasn’t there if he was just telling me that he hadn’t even tried to deliver it. He first said that he must have passed off my package to one of the other drivers who had then claimed to have tried to deliver it. Then he gave me a sheepish grin and said again that he was sorry. So clearly he had lied about trying to deliver my package. Rather than risk having future packages end up in a dumpster somewhere, I just let it slide and haven’t done anything since. Still, an expensive and frustrating experience, particularly the sheer luncay of customer service saying that their staff that works on Saturdays essentially are incapable of basic human tasks!

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