Today we have to ask ourselves the important questions like, “is there such a thing as being too prepared?” If you happen to be the United Parcel Service and we’re talking about the 2014 holiday shipping season then you’d probably say yes. [More]
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Would You Be Willing To Pay More To Choose Who Delivers Your Amazon Orders?
By 1.21.15
If you’ve ever been expecting a package only to find that the delivery person reports leaving a notice (which may or may not have happened) or “attempted delivery” (again, sometimes without actually doing so), you’re not alone. We’ve heard from many readers over the years and experienced it ourselves. So why can’t Amazon Prime members choose their preferred delivery service? [More]
Report: Shipping Carriers Got 98% Of Express Packages Under Christmas Trees On Time
By 12.29.14
Shipping carriers and retailers alike worked very hard to make sure that this Christmas wasn’t a repeat of the shipping-delay disaster that was Christmas 2013. While the lack of blizzards was helpful, their investments paid off: early reports show that most packages reached their destinations on time. [More]
UPS Will Conquer Its Biggest Shipping Day With Temps And Automation
By 12.22.14
While the second-to-last Monday before Christmas is usually the busiest shipping day of the year for the U.S. Postal Service and FedEx, for UPS the biggest day is today, the last Monday before the holiday. The company has invested a lot of money and technology in making sure that there isn’t a repeat of last year’s massive delay caused by bad weather and a flurry of last-minute shopping. [More]
UPS Drives Forklift Into Valuable Sculpture, Shrugs
By 12.19.14
Current ad campaigns for UPS brag about the carrier’s abilities at logistics: getting a thing from one place to another is their specialty. Unless you’re one family in Michigan who used UPS Freight to ship a valuable sculpture across the country, which the carrier drove a forklift into. The company wouldn’t pay out an insurance claim on the artwork because the customer failed to fill in the statue’s declared value on the bill of lading that went with the shipment. [More]
Today Is The Biggest Shipping Day Of The Year
By 12.15.14
Today is it: traditionally, December 15 is the highest-volume shipping and mailing day of the entire year. The U.S. Postal Service will process 640 million cards, letters, postcards, periodicals, catalogs, and packages today alone. FedEx is doing its part, processing 22.6 million packages today. UPS says that its busiest day will be next Monday, as people try to get last-minute Christmas gifts to their destinations. [More]
UPS Workers Credited With Saving Man’s Life In A Church On Their Route
By 12.9.14
Sometimes, a delivery person ends up bringing more than just a package or a pizza. And for a man who’d suffered a heart attack in a church, two UPS workers who were on the job happened gave him something much better, when they saved his life during their rounds. [More]
New Entrants For Santa’s “Naughty” List Emerge After Neighbor Catches Teens Stealing UPS Packages
By 12.8.14
Tis the season: While American shoppers have been buying presents for loved ones in a quest to secure a spot on Santa Claus’ “Nice” list, there’s also the “Naughty” side of the population, set on snatching those gifts like the patron saint of holiday swiping, the Grinch himself. [More]
UPS Works To Avoid Another Holiday Backlog, Will Charge Retailers Extra If It Happens
By 11.18.14
Dear retailers: UPS has its eye you. In an interview with the wire service Reuters, the company’s CEO explained its efforts to avoid another disaster like the Christmas 2013 shipping delay that left many Americans sad and giftless. Namely, if retailers try any last-minute sale shenanigans while promising delivery by Christmas, it’s going to cost them. Money. [More]
Group Representing U.S. Airlines Sues To Block Planned Seattle Airport Workers’ Wage Increases
By 11.12.14
An airline group, representing six major airlines and parcel services, filed a lawsuit aiming to block the Port of Seattle from implementing a pay increase that would make Seattle-Tacoma airport workers some of the highest paid in the country. [More]
UPS Loses Wedding Rings, Pretends They Were Held By Customs For 6 Weeks
By 10.31.14
A few weeks ago, reader Melissa got married. Congratulations, Melissa! Only she and her now-husband had to celebrate their marriage without the nerdy custom wedding rings that they had ordered from a jeweler in Canada. At first, UPS told the couple that their package was being held at customs and would be on its way soon. Then they lost it. Or it had been lost all along. [More]
UPS Driver Kicks Fragile Package, Is Caught On Camera
By 10.31.14
We at Consumerist have wondered for years now why courier service drivers haven’t yet figured out that business and residential customers alike have security cameras. Like the office on Long Island that caught a UPS driver kicking and shoving a delicate box back to the truck when they had to refuse the delivery. [More]
First Female UPS Driver Reaches 40 Accident-Free Years
By 10.23.14
UPS drivers who have been on the road for 25 years or more with zero accidents get a special arm patch and are named to the company’s “Circle of Honor.” One of the company’s minority of female drivers reached an even more impressive milestone, and was recently honored for driving more than four million miles over her forty years with the company. For most of that time, she has been a tractor-trailer driver. [WFTV] [More]
UPS Launching Service Where You Can Pickup Packages At The Dry Cleaners
By 10.8.14
One day in the not-so-distant future, you may come home expecting a package on the doorstep only to find that you have to make a special trip to the dry cleaners to actually retrieve your goods. That’s the idea behind the United Parcel Service’s latest attempt to cut down on delivery stops and apparently protect your packages from those with sticky fingers. [More]
UPS Asks Retailers To Hold Holiday Sales Earlier, Avoid Ruining Christmas Again
By 10.3.14
Between bad weather and a surge in last-minute deliveries, the 2013 holiday season was a bit of a disaster for UPS. Some folks were left handing out apologies and rain checks at Christmas because the gifts they’d intended to give were still en route. This year, the shipper is asking retailers to help everyone avoid a repeat underwhelming performance. [More]
UPS Says My New iPhone Is Almost Here — Oh Wait, They Left It Back In Korea
By 10.1.14
Like lots of people who ordered their new iPhone from the Apple store, Consumerist reader Clint has been tracking the impending delivery of his new device. Over the course of the last week, it’s gone from China to South Korea to Alaska to Kentucky and was set to be delivered to Clint in Seattle today. Except UPS has bad news. The tracking info was slightly off. [More]
UPS Plans To Hire 95,000 Workers To Help Keep Holiday Deliveries On Time This Year
By 9.16.14
It’s hard to believe that the 2014 holiday season is less than 100 days away. That might seem like plenty of time before you need to start purchasing gifts and sending them to your loved ones, but for the United Parcel Service, nothing seems too early when you’re trying to save face after a disastrous 2013 shipping season. [More]
UPS: Hackers Hit Computer Systems At 51 Retail Stores, Possibly Exposing Customer Info
By 8.21.14
Did I bump my head and wake up in late 2013? Because it sure feels like deja vu with a slew of recent data breaches: Joining P.F. Chang’s, a group of supermarket chains and Community Health Systems in this month’s data breach roll call is United Parcel Service, which says 51 of its retail store locations had their computer systems hacked. [More]
