TK: Where is my pickup?
Raquel M.: Hi, this is Raquel M.. I'll be happy to assist you.
TK: It has been five hours since I requested a pickup. How do I find out when the driver will get here?
Raquel M.: I currently do not show a pick up has been scheduled.
TK: ???
Raquel M.: Are you referring to Boberg Arms Corporation?
TK: Yes. From Indy to Minneapolis.
Raquel M.: Did you receive a pickup request number?
TK: I'm trying to paste it in here...
TK: #tracking_number
Raquel M.: It states that request number is incorrect.
Raquel M.: To schedule a pickup on-line, please visit: Http://wesuck@cust.serv
TK: I did that. That's where I got that number. It told me my card has been billed for $9.19 and gave me the code #tracking_number
Raquel M.: Okay that number worked fine. It states your pick up will occur today by 5:00 pm
TK: It is currently 6:01.
Raquel M.: I need to forward your information to the local package center for resolution. Please provide me with the following information:
* Your last name
* The best telephone number to reach you
TK: K.
TK: ten.digit.number
TK: Add that I am absolutely underwhelmed.
Raquel M.: No problem, Thanks. It will take me just a few minutes to put this through. I will be right with you.
Raquel M.: Thanks for your patience. I have forwarded your information to the appropriate package center for further assistance. You can expect a call today within an hour. Do you have any other questions?
Raquel M.: I haven't heard from you in a while. Unless you have more questions I'll go ahead and end the chat.
TK: Hello?
Raquel M.: Yes i'm here.
TK: When is my pickup?
TK: I requested between 1220 and 1700 EST.
Raquel M.: Once the center gives you a call they will let you know.
TK: And when will they call me?
Raquel M.: You can expect a call today within an hour
TK: *sigh* Thank you.
Raquel M.: You're welcome. Have a great day.
Raquel M.: has disconnected.
POSTSCRIPT: It is 1850. First, they called me and said that their guy had already been by. I pointed out that I'd been sitting on the front porch since noon thirty and no dude had been anywhere near me. They tried to reschedule for tomorrow. I sulked. Dude JUST showed up.
38 comments:
And to think - you almost had to keep the gun.
UPS drivers don't give a rat's ass. They're unionized.
Doesn't their union own a big chunk of the company??
I hate UPS.
I hate this new comment display format.
I know how frustrating it is to wait for a delivery, I once took a day off to receive a firearm at my house. Dude usually shows up around my house 12-1, but I took the whole day. He showed up at 7pm :\
All in all, UPS, FedEx and USPS are amazing services, having the inconvenience to wait 7 hours on a guy to come pick up a package that will be transported across the country overnight is very much a First World Problem.
It's variable. My UPS guy (Hi Mark!) is great and works his ass off. The last time I had a FedEx delivery the guy appeared to be drunk.
w/v: pturth elCRom - el Crom! The Mexican Perehistoric Diety...
Lewis,
"I hate this new comment display format"
Not fond of it myself. I'd send it back if I could.
I've had several UPS drivers on my route that were brazen liars.
I had horrid drivers and indifferent drivers at my old apartment in the city. Here at the house I've had indifferent and decent. Different sorting facility apparently makes a difference.
The one really bad driver at the apartment put the box (little box mind) with the other boxes on the porch....which sounds like a good idea till you realize the other boxes on the porch had TRASH/RECYCLE written on them in big letters. No, I didn't get the box. Idiot then tried to blame it on me ("well I delivered it so you must be lying"), except he made the mistake of telling me he'd put it with the OTHER boxes, of which there had only been one set on the porch the last 3 weeks....the supervisor and I had a long conversation that day......
A guy I know used to drive for UPS. He said the guys at his distribution center had little doggie stickers that they were putting on the sides of their trucks for each one they ran over, like the Rising Sun stickers that American pilots used to put on the sides of their P-51's in the Pacific. The PC Police (their manager) got wind of it and made them stop. I can't imagine why.
...Raquel M.: Okay that number worked fine. It states your pick up will occur today by 5:00 pm
TK: It is currently 6:01.
Raquel M.: I need to forward your information to the local package center for resolution...
Idiocracy was not a fun movie. It was a stern warning of things to come.
-Alec
I won some pretty cool gun things last week, and the FedEx guy stopped by Saturday to drop off the package (while we were 4 hours north skiing...) The package requires a signature, and apparently FedEx Home does not consider "Monday" a "Business Day." And the package is somehow not eligible to be held at the "local" FedEx office.
I hate FedEx.
I am lucky. The "same dude" that runs by work twice a day shows up at my house after work. If he sees a next day package for me he will try to give it to me at work if he sees me there.
Other than that, visiting the customer service center sucks out loud and off key!
It seems that if anything deviates from the script they are truly lost.
Oh, I am only becoming more verbose in comments to make it seem profitable after typing in the new horrid word verification stuff!
Whew... I thought I was the only one who ever got service like this. Previous employer used UPS.
On Thursday night I printed my labels and scheduled a UPS pickup for Friday morning between 8 and noon. Left $20,000 worth of equipment in a hotel storage room in Houston.
Friday morning I got on my flight and returned home. At approximately 15:30 (home is also central time), I checked tracking numbers. UPS hadn't picked up anything.
I got much the same run around you did. Got some lame butt excuse from the local counter monkey that it was a new driver who didn't know where that hotel was.
UPS, FedEx, USPS - They all suck the sweat off a dead monkey's armpit hairs which they use to floss. And if it weren't for that floss, they'd have no dental hygiene at all...
My last exchange w a customer 'service' rep ...
I was live-chatting online w an AT&T rep. Here's part of the conversation …
brian: I just need to know whether U-Verse is available at my home address or not
Daniel: Could you be more specific with your last response?
brian: Daniel's a bot
Daniel: I am a live person. My name is a Daniel.
Yeah … I always say that I'm a "live person"
Not surprised... At least they got there the SAME day... UPS caused me to miss a flight, spend an extra night in a hotel etc. because they didn't show up. Total costs almost $1000. We sent the bill to UPS, STILL waiting for them to pay it... sigh
UPS i refure to as Usless Parcel Service they lost a Pallet of stuff between the Airport and our shop we were the first stop! Thats five miles from the Airport to the shop!
I had a call from a Direct TV "customer service" person at 8:55 pm yesterday.He sounded high or drunk and it sounded as if he was calling from a bar.
(My bill was overdue -- totally my fault.)
He would NOT believe I was me. He would NOT say why he was calling. He tended to drift off in the middle of his own sentences. He finally hung up -- in mid-word (his).
So see, it could be worse.
Never knew which shipper lost this:
'bout 20 years ago, lady calls in about a box on the freeway that she stuffed under her bumper and had to stop and drag it out. Box would have been about 4'x 1.5' x 1', and contained an articulated arm for a CO2 surgical laser. It was en route to a hospital. I'm guessing they didn't latch the rear rollup door, or just left it open.
Few years later, as I'm arriving at work at a new company, I see a pile of boxes sitting in the gutter on the side street. UPS shipment to a company at the other end of the street. Some sort of security business, (Honeywell?) Seems the driver stopped to sort out his deliveries for the neighborhood/street, and forgot to close the door. I gave them to our shipping guy, and let him handle it.
I'm thinking they need some sort of interlock switch on that door, so it wont start/run if it's not latched closed. Or a loud buzzer if he turns on the ignition.
What do you expect from UPS? They don't have a single singing frog on their commercials.
Gerry
Gerry,
See?
Has anyone else noticed this?
I've been getting a lot more shipments from Amazon and other sources that arrive in "unmarked cars".
Seriously, not UPS or Fedex or DHL or whomever. Some minivan pulls up and some random guy jumps out with a brown box drops it on the porch and rings the bell and is gone...
Wierd. I guess some of the local shipping points are using independent contractors.
You must have a warehouse facility in your town.
The unmarked cars are from a regional shipping group. On the west coast we have one that does work only in California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada and I think Arizona. It is a new shipping method Amazon is trying to cut down on costs.
-SouthPawByNW
I guess I have the only competent UPS driver in the Midwest, and you can't have him. My guy will actually drop off some packages at the front door, but swing BACK at the end of his shift when he knows I'm home to drop off the stuff that looks important or is obviously ammo or gear. We stick gift certificates in his card at Christmas - seems to help. :)
In the way back i.e. the 80's I had an FFL. A shipment to me dissapeared at the UPS KC hub. I got the hub manager involved and he announced a shut down of the facility until the package was found. A couple hours later it was found on top of a trash can. After that I called him when i had a shipment coming in and he would personally track the package and hold it for me to pick up at the hub.
As a friend who flies A300's for them is fond of commenting, you can't spell stupid without UPS.
WV: ubtam. It knows you!
And yet so many people want to privatize the post office.
But my little rural post office is only two miles away. The nearest FedEx drop-off is 40 miles away. Nearest UPS, 15 miles.
If I have to deal with a bureaucracy, let it be close by where I see either Debbie or Amanda and can take care of some vol. fire department business too, since Amanda is married to the asst. chief.
Chas, I have news for you. The USPS is in the middle of chaotic self-destruction as we speak. They will be laying off tens of thousands of employees in the next weeks/months. Closing hundreds of sorting facilities.
The USPS you think you know ... it already died.
I also have a good UPS guy; two, in fact. The one for my residence will go around back and put packages inside my screened-in porch rather than outside my front door (street with a lot of both foot and car traffic). The one for the office I work at is also good in terms of checking to see if there are unexpected late pickups needed. But, like any other group of people, their skills at doing their job will form a bell curve.
dave said...
As a friend who flies A300's for them...
I think I see the problem...
Anyway. FedUps are amazing, really, for what they do well. And we use them more and more every day, for business and for personal stuff. Not surprising that there are more screwups (heh) every day.
Chas: More of the folks I know who object to the idea of privatizing postal service are big government liberals. Doing so would obviously not entail simply making the USPS go away; it would probably pick up some sort of enhanced regulatory function. You would get a drop box or two in whatever town the post office is in, and maybe a My UPS Store sort of operation, which would handle all parcel delivery services.
Maybe I shouldn't say "obviously" and use definite particles when speaking of government activity, though. *sigh*
WV: entina kshorg. Runs a little bar at the Mountains of Madness.
Well, I think I now understand the desire to live in a magical world of singing frogs and other delightful woodland critters.
Mike James
@Robin, yeah, I saw that. Luckily my p.o. is not on the close list.
But what would you rather have, a fusty bureaucracy that does a few things well enough, or a corporation with "Daniel-bots" that promises great things and whizz-bang services but cannot always perform as advertised?
There are some private companies that I will not use, e.g, Purolator, which could not seem to handle any delivery address more than a mile from an interstate highway.
I do a fair amount of eBay and Amazon.com selling, and the USPS has done pretty well for me. And as I said, they are relatively close by.
(written by an aspiring curmudgeon)
Chas,
"And yet so many people want to privatize the post office."
It's a sad statement that it might be necessary, if we want to get the USPS up to the level of usefulness and efficiency demonstrated here. ;)
"What do you expect from UPS? They don't have a single singing frog on their commercials.
Gerry"
Neither does FedEx...anymore.
-Alec
Many years ago, I worked the evening sort in the Lenexa UPS hub. We called it 'whoops'.
Mark
Had a buddy back in the '90's working in the local UPS shipping warehouse during the Christmas season. They had a large carton break open on the line, and it turned out to be filled with FedEx priority envelopes. He said his co-workers got a good laugh about it.
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