A Sacramento woman ordered a beautiful new front door for her house: shiny white with brass fittings and a window up top. It was a very nice-looking door, and that’s what was on the estimate she received. It wasn’t the door the installers actually brought to her house and installed in the front of her house, though. That part’s no problem: they just need to come by and replace it with the correct door, right? None of this would be a big deal at all if they didn’t want her to pay for the second installation herself. [More]
deliveries
FedEx Driver Can’t Read Street Signs, Shrugs
By 1.7.13
You’d think that before getting hired as a FedEx driver, someone would check to see whether you have certain skills. Such as the ability to read street signs. The driver serving Charlie’s neighborhood lacks this key skill. That, or he confuses street names very, very frequently. [More]
1-800-Flowers Promises Flowers, Refund, Coupons: Delivers None Of The Above
By 1.4.13
Kyle had a LivingSocial voucher for 1-800-Flowers, and thought that he would put it to good use sending a lovely arrangement to his parents to show that he was thinking of them at Christmas. 1-800-Flowers didn’t really want to cooperate, though. They e-mailed him twice to let him know that the arrangement had been delivered…but it actually hadn’t. Silly Kyle, assuming that one of the messages had to reflect reality. They’ve since promised him a refund and a $20 coupon that have never come. [More]
My Son’s Power Rangers Took A Weeklong UPS Warehouse Vacation
By 12.5.12
Where were the robots? Jemande ordered Power Rangers robots for his son’s birthday, so he had a deadline. The merchant used UPS, and the package progressed smoothly to his local depot and onto a truck. UPS attempted to deliver and claims that no one was around. Jemande disputes this, but the really important part is what happened next. UPS took the package back to the depot, where it hung out from November 28th to December 4th (Wednesday to Tuesday) for no clear reason. [More]
Is Every UPS Driver In My State Afraid Of Me?
By 11.28.12
George’s problem isn’t with UPS as a whole, really. As far as he knows, they’re getting his packages to his nearest distribution center quickly and safely. The problem is with the next step in the process: the part where the driver brings the package to his home. Maybe all of his local drivers are in competition with colleagues to see who can deliver the fewest packages in the course of a day. Perhaps they all suffer from a terrible social phobia, and therefore don’t want to ring doorbells. Whatever the actual situation is, when George stays home from work to stake out his own home, he has caught the driver just leaving a note without even ringing the doorbell. “Sorry we missed you,” indeed. Yesterday was different, though. Yesterday, no one showed up at all, even though he staked out the door all day. [More]
FedEx Knows I Need To Send 9 Boxes To My New House, Suspends My Account
By 11.2.12
Ann and her family are going through a series of moves–first an international one, from England to the United States, and then a domestic one, from Florida to Vermont. Though precisely why she needs FedEx to come pick up a bunch of large boxes from her house is almost irrelevant. The problem is that they won’t. She sent this plea for help to a few executive addresses, but has heard nothing back yet. [More]
Shari's Berries Replaces Order Even Though I Screwed Up
By 9.10.12
A friend of his mother was very kind to Paul’s mom, and he wanted to do something nice for her. He ordered a beautiful and delicious strawberry “rose” bouquet after getting the friend’s address from his mom. She gave him the wrong address, though, and someone four doors down decided to keep some free berries. When he learned about this, Paul went to place a new order. This was his mistake after all. Instead, when he contacted Shari’s berries to ask who signed for the mis-delivered package, they sent out a replacement order to the correct address. For free. [More]
Good Morning! It’s OnTrac With Your Amazon Package Wakeup Call
By 8.22.12 — Updated: 5.7.14
It’s 8 A.M. Consumerist Standard Time. Time to get up! Don’t worry if you’re still feeling groggy, though. If you live in an area where OnTrac delivers Amazon packages, put some pants on. It’s entirely possible that your local delivery person could be at your door any minute now. At least that’s what happened to Richard. Today, that’s not much of a problem: you might even be on your way to work by then. The problem is that OnTrac stopped by and pounded on his doorbell on Saturday morning, rousing him and his neighbors. [More]
At Least No One At UPS Wants To Steal Verb Conjugation Posters
By 6.28.12
Should Lindsey feel violated that her UPS package was clearly opened and rifled through, or grateful that she was only ordering teaching supplies that the rifler apparently found unworthy of stealing? Or maybe the box was secured with particularly un-sticky tape. Whatever the case, this is what she received on her doorstep. [More]
UPS And My Dog Turn Cupcake Boxes Into Expensive Chew Toy
By 3.29.12 — Updated: 5.30.17
Crystal’s delivery from a third-party Amazon vendor was already more than a week late, and she lives in Hawaii. When UPS finally showed up with the box, the driver simply pitched it over the five-foot fence and into her yard. The good news is that there was nothing breakable in the box, so the act of hurling the package didn’t damage her purchase. The bad news is that her dog was chilling in the yard at the time, and thought that the box of boxes was for him. To chew. [More]
UPS Knows Where Misrouted Package Is, Shrugs
By 10.28.11
Claire, the manager of an apartment building, went above and beyond the scope of her job duties to attempt to re-route a package destined for a former tenant. UPS didn’t really do anything wrong in this case: the wrong address was the shipper’s fault, or maybe the former tenant’s. But since too many days have passed since the box showed up on the wrong person’s doorstep, it’s no longer UPS’s problem. The package, we assume, will just be written off as “lost.” [More]
This UPS Driver Needs A Review Of The ABCs
By 10.5.11
It’s not that the UPS delivery driver who brought George’s wife’s Avon order to their apartment is stupid. He just has a very poor understanding of how the alphabet works. That’s the only explanation for why he brought the package to vacant apartment A instead of George’s apartment C, and how the package later ended up re-routed to another woman in a different town. Clearly letters are just symbols without meaning. [More]
UPS Drives To Your House Specifically To Not Deliver Packages
By 8.3.11
The UPS driver servicing Valerie’s neighborhood has a very shaky understanding of what his or her job actually entails. Every time that a package is Valerie-bound, on the very first delivery attempt the driver slaps a final notice on the door and returns the packages to the sender. (She didn’t mention whether they even bother to ring the doorbell.) Local management doesn’t seem to care, UPS corporate doesn’t seem to care, and Valerie can’t even avoid ordering things through UPS, since her baby registry is with a company that only uses them to ship. [More]
UPS Sends Yet Another Package Back To 2009
By 4.26.11
For me, half of the fun in ordering things online is watching the package find its way to me through the shipping service’s online tracking system. The UPS package that Dean is waiting for won’t provide him with that pleasure, though, because it has apparently been sent back to 2009 for delivery. Well, that, or UPS continues to recycle its tracking numbers. [More]
The Home Theater System, The Day Off Work, And The Lying UPS Guy
By 3.1.11
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. [More]
Fedex Carrier: Neither Wind, Nor Rain, Nor Sleet, Nor …Ah, Screw It
By 12.16.10
Fedex’s choice of a spot to leave Jason’s package has its advantages and disadvantages. In the plus column, if anyone steals it, they will leave important forensic evidence in the form of footprints in the snow. In the minus column, it’s an incredibly stupid place to leave a package, even if the front sidewalk isn’t shoveled. [More]
Who Screwed Up And Sent Me Some Other Guy's Deodorant?
By 12.16.10
Last week, Jon kept receiving packages from drugstore.com that he didn’t order. He was confused, until some detective work solved the problem: a man with the same (relatively common) first and last names as Jon was staying at a nearby hotel, ordered the items, and an overzealous address correction system at UPS assumed that the package really belonged to Jon. What he wants to know is: who screwed up here? [More]
Amazon Prime Customers Don't Like Ensenda, Either
By 11.18.10
We’ve previously shared letters from readers who aren’t thrilled with OnTrac, a regional shipping company that Amazon uses for some shipments for Amazon Prime, their all-you-can-buy unlimited free delivery option. Now we’re hearing rumblings of problems with another smaller delivery company, Ensenda. [More]
