Some of our readers aren’t fond of UPS’s MyChoice Premium, comparing it to a protection racket for items that you’ve already paid to have delivered to your house. We get that. Michael likes the concept and finds it useful. Or he would if UPS would actually apply it to his packages.

Here’s the problem: you can’t use the service on a package that isn’t addressed to your address. So if the shipper screws up your address badly enough, it isn’t covered, and you can’t redirect it. This makes no sense, which is Michael’s argument.

I was getting an important order from Kickstarter, and got my UPS tracking notification. When I went online, I noticed a “UPS My Choice Premium” being offered, and I checked it out.

I read it, and the benefits are great: redirect a package coming to you to a different address, give instructions on where it is to be delivered, release it to someone else or an apartment complex main building, or, what I was into, pay $5 to confirm a 2 hour window.

“Sweet,” I say, signing up for it. I note that the website says it might take 90 minutes for it to show up on the website and affect my packages.

So, as I had other things to do, I forgot about it for a day, and then come back to find that I can’t get any of these features to work on my package, DESPITE my profile showing a My Choice Premium account.

I click the chat button, and am connected to a [H], who informs me that, since the Address on the package doesn’t match exactly the address in my account, it won’t link to it.

What was the problem?

Shipper wrote the address as

Street Address My Name

instead of

My Name
Street Address

So, I asked how exact it would need to be, and found out that if they mis-spelled my name (which occurs fairly regularly), or they put the apartment number on the same line rather than a different one, or any other meriad of common address variations, it would not link, and I would not be able to use the Premium benefits.

I asked how I could request that UPS change this to make it such that I can sign in and “claim” a package for Premium services, as this is freaking silly, but got a non-response.

Really, I want to have UPS take my money on this, but feel that they’re going to have to give me a refund. How can I contact the UPS head honchos, who likely don’t even know that it isn’t working as intended, and get them to correct the process so that Premium is actually useful?

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