Got any UPS, USPS, or Fedex horror stories?

[alkemyst]

right now dealing with UPS (so glad my company, a fortune 400, switched to DHL).

4 LCD's shipped West Palm to Mesa 3day. Each bubble wrapped and shipped as a panel only with the base and cables in a separate box. Each bubble wrapped panel was inside an inner box within an outer box with 6 inches of popcorn between them.

All 4 arrived phyically smashed. Insured for $600 total.

Called UPS, told to rebox them and reseal the container for pickup.

10 days later claimed denied:

Not new boxes used they were all new materials shipped actually by Office Depot.

Insufficient packaging. how much more inner padding is needed? 1 foot, a meter?

Boxes showed no sign of wear/damage if no wear or damage, why did they say the boxes were not new?

 

[Chriscross3234]

Ordered an iPod from the online Apple store, planned to be delivered, by FedEx ground five days later, and everything was cool at that point....

First off, seems to me FedEx's online tracking is totally crap compared to UPS or USPS, because they don't keep have real time tracking on their ground packages. Twelve whole days later my package didn't come in yet, and I decided to call FedEx's customer service and the lady tells me the same exact thing about how they can't track ground packages. The next day my package arrives, I open the box and my freaking iPod and iPod earbuds are completely missing from the box. The inner box was not sealed in any fashion, but everything else, charger, dock adapter, and software was there except the actual iPod/earbuds. Great, I have no clue whether Apple forgot to put an iPod in the box or if somehow the package got opened by someone from FedEx and they took my iPod. Bleh...

Good news is that Apple sent another overnight with my iPod and earbuds and they arrived the next day

 

[GagHalfrunt]

Never had any issues with Priority Mail and the worst I've had with FedEx is a package being delayed by a day due to bad weather or misrouting. But I've had enough bad experiences with UPS that I've quit using them altogether. I won't do business with any e-tailer or e-bayer that ships UPS.

I've got a case with the UPS going on now. RMA-ed some bad memory to Corsair and they shipped the replacement via UPS (dumbasses). I was home at the time and my dog alerted me to the fact that the UPS truck pulled up as she hates the truck as much as I hate the company. I went to get to the door as the driver was coming up the driveway and I looked out the window. The guy stopped about halfway up the drive, THREW the package at the door and started hustling back to the truck. I ran to the door to stop him to give him hell about treating a package like that and yelled for him to stop. He looked back over his shoulder, saw me yelling and ran the last few steps into the truck and peeled out to get away. I was pissed, but nowhere near as pissed as I was when I got to the porch. The "package" he left was about 10% original cardboard and 90% that tape UPS uses to seal up damaged packages with the "do not accept delivery without checking contents" message on it. That explained why he ran away, he didn't want to get hung up with me checking the package and refusing delivery, so he threw the package at my door andbolted instead. Needless to say the memory was trashed. The rigid plastic blister-pack casing was creased in several places and the PCB had a enough of a bend to it that the DIMM socket could have been the shape of a "C" and it would have slipped right in. I'm still waiting for a resolution to it. I went back to check the tracking number and it had been misrouted twice. Corsair had shipped via 3-day and it took 6 to get to me. It had arrived at my local depot on time, went to another depot in Massachusetts, came back to Connecticut, left again and went to Jersey and finally came back to my local depot for the third time.

I repeat, I will never again knowingly do business with anyone that ships UPS only. I'll take my business elsewhere and I'll let them know why they lost the sale.

 

[waggy]

I have every one of them screw up at least once. after years of using them all a LOT i can't say one is really better then any other. they all suck.

NONE of them fallow the rules. they put the package on the door and run back to the truck. NO delivery confirmation (which i have on all my packages) no nothing. just drop and run. They all have destroyed packages and all have missed delivery.

 

[Rubycon]

Originally posted by: Rumpltzer

I can describe how we wrap our satellites, load them onto a flatbed, and then move them at 3am with a police and power company escort (to take down low-hanging power lines along the way), but it's about as relevant to UPS, FedEx, or the USPS as Melles Griot shipping your lasers.

UPS often tosses my packages onto my second floor balcony and then leaves a note on the door to let me know it's on the "porch". There's a big plastic box with an open pad lock hanging on it eight feet from my door. There's also a sign that says, "Please leave packages in the plastic bin and lock it."[/quote]

No the point is if something is packaged according to the sensitivity of the contents, it should survive the journey intact. If not, then do the "American" thing and sue!

 

[Jeff7]

Just had to post, this is the first mention of Giant Eagle I've seen online. I'm at college in Erie, and I'd never shopped at a Giant Eagle store before. Pretty nice little place.


Shipping:
My usual policy with it, "Pack it so that it can be dropped, kicked, and drop-kicked, because it probably will be."

Warehouse workers are paid for speed. If they can do it without destroying things, that's fine too, but the bosses want a certain number of packages per hour per person, and if you don't do it, they'll find someone else who will perform at that kind of speed. If you as a low-paid grunt crush one or two boxes, well, the company's got insurance that can make up for it, and it'll never come back to you anyway.
Just the way it is. The other option is to raise prices. Price = Speed vs Quality. If either speed or quality increases, without affecting the other, the price will increase. And no one here wants to pay for quality - why else are $6.54 toasters so popular at Walmart? Cheap crap sells well here. Something need not work well, it needs only to work "well enough". And sometimes that leads to problems like the OP experienced.

 

[bob4432]

when i was younger i worked at a machine shop that did mail order. of the 3yrs i worked there only had 1 issue - a big block chevy steel crank - it looked like somebody took a hacksaw to it. i was amazed how badly it was damaged. we shipped out probably a couple hundred in those years with only 1 issue along with thousands of parts, mostly ups.

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: Jeff7
Just had to post, this is the first mention of Giant Eagle I've seen online. I'm at college in Erie, and I'd never shopped at a Giant Eagle store before. Pretty nice little place.


Shipping:
My usual policy with it, "Pack it so that it can be dropped, kicked, and drop-kicked, because it probably will be."

Warehouse workers are paid for speed. If they can do it without destroying things, that's fine too, but the bosses want a certain number of packages per hour per person, and if you don't do it, they'll find someone else who will perform at that kind of speed. If you as a low-paid grunt crush one or two boxes, well, the company's got insurance that can make up for it, and it'll never come back to you anyway.
Just the way it is. The other option is to raise prices. Price = Speed vs Quality. If either speed or quality increases, without affecting the other, the price will increase. And no one here wants to pay for quality - why else are $6.54 toasters so popular at Walmart? Cheap crap sells well here. Something need not work well, it needs only to work "well enough". And sometimes that leads to problems like the OP experienced.

don't forget about automation...

 

[crab]

I should soon be working for FedEx...is that scary enough?

 

[xtknight]

Has anyone had luck with getting compensation after the package was damaged but insured? Did they always try to screw you out of it in every possible way (like rebates) or were they honest?

Personally I don't think any of my packages have been damaged. Pretty amazing. Maybe it's 'cause we know the UPS girl too well.

I've ordered three LCDs from Newegg via Fedex and UPS and none have had dead pixels on arrival, and there have been no signs of any physical damage to the product. The box my ViewSonic LCD came in was torn in a couple places but everything inside was pristine so I could care less.

 

[wazzledoozle]

I ordered an LCD through newegg, shipped by UPS "3 day". First, the package didnt leave the origin for 4 days, then the tracking number went off the system for about a week, then it showed up on my front porch, looking like it had been sitting outside for that week it dissapeared from the system. Sure enough, the box had been opened (retail box, newegg doesnt put LCD's in shipping boxes). I got my LCD out, it looked fine, still had protective sheet across the screen but the rest of the package looked as if it had been gone through, maybe some UPS office "borrowed" it for a few days...

 

[PG]

UPS just lost my passport. It was getting shipped from Chicago to a suburb which should take one day. It was last scanned at a hub about 8 miles from our office, but that was last Thursday.
It's the second passport they lost for someone at our company. just an accident? I doubt it.