UPS delivery rant

cardiff_gareth

cardiff_gareth

Suspended / Banned
Messages
2,734
Name
Gareth
Edit My Images
Yes
Not sure if this is in the right place, please move if not.

So Sigma repaired my 70-200mm lens and shipped it back to me, via UPS. The lens was dispatched last Thursday for Friday delivery. As I am home right now mending my broken foot I thought great. Checked several times during the day via online tracking and it said it was 'in transit.' Then, as time got on around 6pm I checked again to see it said it had been delivered and it was delivered to the dock and signed my a Mr Forrest. WHO! So I calls them up, give them the tracking ref and they say 'Oh yes, we just delivered your parcel to you.' Um, no you haven't! So they promise to call back within the hour to tell me where my parcel is. 40 minutes later a lady calls 'Ah Mr Williams, we had a bulk delivery before you and we've accidental delivered your lens to an address in a different town. They don't work weekends so we can only get it on Monday!'

So, I'm supposed to get my parcel Friday, they balls up, deliver it to another address and then say they can't get it till Monday!

So when the lady was telling me all this I told her I wasn't home until Midday Monday as I had the hospital to check on my foot progress. Don't worry I was told, I'll personally oversee this for you, we'll call you to make sure you're in. We won't try to deliver it in the morning....... Guess what, I go to hospital, come home and there's a 'Sorry we missed you note!!'

You couldn't make this up. I call them up again, explains the whole situation, cross as this lady has done zilch of what she said she would and this time I'm promised that a team leader lives near me and they'll bring it home with them and drop it off on the way. Did they, no. Instead today, the following day, I get a bang at the door, a man gruffly demands my name, shoves the package at me and scurrys away.

Mildly beat up package 4 days late and been all over the shop.

To say I'm unimpressed is an understatement. I think Sigma should save some pennies and use a different courier, one that can read address labels and follow through on what they say they will do.

Rant over.
 
Funny enough, I had a similar UPS experience with a sigma lens a couple of years ago. I now prepare myself for the worst when I see ups are down to deliver anything
 
I sympathise. I and my staff spend a lot of time every day sorting out delivery mishaps.

But in context: UPS deliver about 18 million parcels every day. Let's suppose they get 99% of them right. Then that 1% failure rate is 180,000 per day, or the equivalent of the entire population of a medium size town ranting on about how useless they are, every single day. Today, every single person in Milton Keynes is complaining about UPS. Yesterday it was Sunderland. Tomorrow it might be Northampton or Swindon. Imagine. All those people complaining about UPS. They must be really rubbish, surely? Well, only if you consider a 99% success rate to be rubbish.
 
Last edited:
StewartR said:
Let's suppose they get 99% of them right.
Click to expand...
That's an interesting supposition.

UPS are without doubt the worst courier I've dealt with in twenty years for:
  • In-transit damage to corporate retail customers, I've seen TV boxes with holes punched by forklift tines from one side of the box clean through to the other. Fragile goods boxes with footprint indentations across the top where someone has walked across the load.
  • In-transit pilferage to corporate retail customers, outer packing was routinely broken by their hubs to "redistribute" single destination shrink-wrapped loads already sized for a one-man carry. Quantities of small high-value items received didn't match the numbers listed on dispatch/delivery notes. The solution in that case was initially to not sign for the delivery and delay the driver until every item in the delivery was accounted for (or not) before signing, and finally to refuse all orders on days UPS had the delivery contract (interesting retail client - their wholesaler used two different couriers for two different delivery days each week and maintained the UPS contract even after several other receiving stores refused UPS deliveries).
  • Misdelivering to private addresses, i.e. if you live on King John Avenue and there's a King Henry Avenue three streets over, guess which no. 23 is most likely to be getting your expensive parcel?
  • Failing to attempt delivery to private address by falsely claiming no one was available to sign for a parcel. Because their system time stamps (but doesn't GPS verify) the attempt it can be remarkably easy to prove this falsehood.
 
StewartR said:
They must be really rubbish, surely? Well, only if you consider a 99% success rate to be rubbish.
Click to expand...

But as you've illustrated a 1% failure rate soon add up to thousands of complaints. If they can't cope with the volume and aren't prepared to expand resources to cope maybe they shouldn't bid for / accept the work?

There was a time a 1% failure rate would have got me sacked.
 
Cheers guys.

The thing is yes potentially there is a 1% failure rate but that should be for the delivery only and not also their customer service.They lied and tried to please me with false and empty promises, all listed above, none that were actually followed through. In between all this I told them the parcel was a lens, I need that lens, I have a photo shoot I need it for, I can't wait till Monday, what about my lost revenue and all they said in so many words was tuff luck! So they right royally screwed me over, I can't even claim back the delivery charge as it was Sigma that posted it not me.

Going to the delivery address, I have a welsh address and it's very unique, no way that you can mix it up with another similar address as there isn't one. The had a bulk delivery and included my parcel in it. From what you say above Alastair I wonder if they delivered my lens there on purpose also? You have to wonder if the driver thought "Hmm, job list, I'm down for one more drop off, can't be bothered, it's nearly clocking off time, stuff it, leave it here" as no driver turned up at my address, no van came to my street, no one knocked my door. Surely they would have come here, opened the van up and then thought "parcel, where's the parcel" outside the house??

The more I think about it, the more I can't see it being an accident.

Anyway, all's well that ends well so to speak, the lens was ok in the packaging, bit beat up but unopened and it's eventually back in my possession.
 
StewartR said:
Let's suppose they get 99% of them right.
Click to expand...
Alastair said:
That's an interesting supposition.
Click to expand...
I think you missed my point, which was this. Even if they achieve 99% accuracy, that's still a very large number of dissatisfied customers every single day. So one anecdote describing a service failure does not constitute evidence that the overall service level is low.

Of course they may well be the worst in the business. But one anecdote (or even ten) doesn't constitute evidence of that either.
 
woof woof said:
But as you've illustrated a 1% failure rate soon add up to thousands of complaints. If they can't cope with the volume and aren't prepared to expand resources to cope maybe they shouldn't bid for / accept the work?
Click to expand...
UPS made $5 billion profit last year in a viciously competitive marketplace. I'd suggest that indicates that they've got the whole price / cost / quality trade-off about right.
 
An enormous profit isn't exactly a great indication of a good service, the banks proved that not long ago. Being less s*** than the rest of largely poor parcel carriers is hardly a ringing endorsement of the whole market.
 
The courier I am most impressed with is these days is DPD, but that's not always been the case. A few years ago I would dread getting parcels from them, as they would often be late, put cards through the door without even ringing the doorbell / knocking, and just general bad service.

However they have massively upped their game and I now cross my fingers hoping for a DPD option on delivery! They have IMO the best communication process to let customers know when to expect the order - fantastic text updates, letting you know the parcels are at the depot, out for delivery etc. I just received an text from them advising a very specific period of time today when my Amazon delivery will be here, and even the drivers name. I think you can even log onto their site with the tracking number and see the approx location of the vehicle on a map via GPS. Fantastic - no more "card through the door the 2 minutes I happen to have gone to the toilet" scenarios like I used to get with UPS etc.
 
steveo_mcg said:
An enormous profit isn't exactly a great indication of a good service, the banks proved that not long ago. Being less s*** than the rest of largely poor parcel carriers is hardly a ringing endorsement of the whole market.
Click to expand...
Define "good". I think in most businesses, "good" means "profitable".

The reality is that we consumers want low costs more than we want high quality. It's not just deliveries. We want our banking to be free. We want our food to be cheap. And we want our deliveries to be cheap, or preferably free. But we don't stop to think through the implications of these wishes, and when confronted head-on with the implications our tendency is to complain.

That cottage pie you bought for 58p wasn't very good? Really? What did you expect for 58p?

That delivery service wasn't very good? Really? What did you expect when delivery prices across the industry have been on a downward spiral for years? You might want your parcel to be handled carefully and delivered punctually, but the reality is massive automated sorting hubs, huge pressure on time, low drivers' wages, high staff turnover, and massive seasonal challenges that mean a lot of staff - especially at this time of year, from now until Christmas - are inexperienced and under-trained. What did you expect?
 
StewartR said:
Define "good". I think in most businesses, "good" means "profitable".
Click to expand...

The service that DPD provides is good.

Profitable doesn't mean good it means profitable. It may indicate you are doing something better than the competition but more often it doesn't especially with parcel carriers. As a consumer i don't care if a company is making a profit, I assume it is but I'm really not interested, if they're providing a better service or a similar service at a better price its between the company, shareholders and the market; if its is profitable I assume they might think its good but I don't care.

A 58p cottage pie is profitable not good.(Actually its probably not but as a loss leader its an excellent marketing tool)

Apart from that I agree the race to the bottom doesn't benefit anyone in the long run.
 
I've not had all that much delivered by UPS although what I have had has always arrived in perfect condition including in that a large print I ordered from a photographer friend who's fulfilment was handled by a lab in San Francisco, this lab dispatched the large panorama between two large sheets of cardboard rather than a tube like I would have expected, this arrived a week or more before I expected as I didn't pay for express service, and arrived completely unmolested despite the labs questionable packaging choices

StewartR said:
Absolutely. We use DPD and they are definitely the best.
Click to expand...

I can certainly agree on that they are fantastic
 
StewartR said:
You might want your parcel to be handled carefully and delivered punctually, but the reality is massive automated sorting hubs, huge pressure on time, low drivers' wages, high staff turnover, and massive seasonal challenges that mean a lot of staff - especially at this time of year, from now until Christmas - are inexperienced and under-trained.
Click to expand...
This is the reality. Just like cameras or lenses anyone can have a bad experience and write a brand off on that basis, when the majority of customers have a good experience.Losses and damage are usually the result of individuals being in a bad mood or thieving gits rather than the company being crap. In my 25 years experience of sending and receiving parcels on a fairly frequent basis I've come to the conclusion that most of the well known firms are about as good, or as bad, as each other.
 
i use UPS at work and they are useless!! well and truly!! and they do work weekends there lying as i can get stuff delivered on a Saturday by them ,, i want to change couriers but the company wont have any of it..

give you an idea: they think it was acceptable to leave a £1200 34 inch 4k curved screen gaming monitor along with about £1200 2 x GTX1080 graphics cards. by the front door in the p***ing down rain! everything was insured and they tried to get out of paying for the items as they was damaged by saying it was down to the driver to think if a signature is needed or not and leave in a safe spot, rain damaged them they could of also either been stolen being left out the front!

Useless parcel service as we have nicknamed them!
 
I'd like to throw the name of Yodel into the mix of the worst parcel delivery company of all time! Leaving parcels in bins on bin day when they are next to the road if my personal favorite experience with them.
 
keef32 said:
I'd like to throw the name of Yodel into the mix of the worst parcel delivery company of all time! Leaving parcels in bins on bin day when they are next to the road if my personal favorite experience with them.
Click to expand...

Yep! Yodel are without a shadow of doubt, the worst courier service I have ever dealt with. Expensive and delicate graphics card? No problem - why not just fling it over my 7 ft fence in the back garden, when it's chucking it down. Especially when my delivery instructions were 'leave in front porch'. Bravo.
 
keef32 said:
I'd like to throw the name of Yodel into the mix of the worst parcel delivery company of all time! Leaving parcels in bins on bin day when they are next to the road if my personal favorite experience with them.
Click to expand...

Yodel, I believe, effectively use a franchise system, for the final local delivery section, so it really does depend on who covers you - I too used to dread Yodel, but for the last couple of years it's been fine, with the local courier giving their own mobile on the 'sorry we missed you cards', answering the number after 6pm, and happy to have you pop over to their house to collect even later into the evening.
 
I've always hated Yodel and CityLink. Rubbish service. I used to use a regular online site for one of my hobbies and they suddenly switched from RM to UPS who left the parcel with the neighbours (who opened it all up and started using various things!).

Agreed that DPD is one of the better ones but I've also had good service from RM.

Amazon Logistics on the other hand tried to claim the building was shut when they tried to deliver (we're open 800am-630pm) and they had "arrived" at 3pm. I paid for fast delivery too. Worse, the items were returned to Amazon and although I got the refund, one of the items was now of stock.
 
I'll add DX into the mix as the least flexible courier. They tried to deliver when I was out, which is not uncommon. Unfortunately they had neither the provision to collect from depot (so I saved myself a 60 mile round trip) nor to specify a redelivery date / time when you're going to be in. They didn't do weekends either. Needless to say it took a few attempts to deliver! Give me DPD any day, they're excellent.
 
I think that any delivery company can at times, be classed as useless...

At present, for me it's Amazon Logistics.....

In the last couple of weeks, I've been informed that my parcel is 'out for delivery' and will be with me that day, so it arrives the next day.... I do have a safe place instruction on my orders for the rare event I'm not home (try to order so I'm home for delivery)

But today, the driver totally ignored my delivery preference instructions and leave it in my 'safe place' and give it to a neighbour, who from past experience, doesn't speak English and it takes ages once we've caught them at home, to explain what we've come about!

But what makes it worse, it's 2 memory cards and a card reader I've ordered, surely these can be packaged in such a way that they would of fitted through my letter box in the first place.... Considering that I brought a rather thick book, then fitted through my letter box...
 
Failure is a fact of life.

Quality Management Systems seek to build the doctrine of 'continuous Improvement into organisations but any sub-optimisation of process is meant to be managed out by cyclic auditing.

Plan
Do
Check (the audit)
Act

Repeat.

In reality it is a process too but not a statement of product quality.

Thus a 3rd Party InkJet Cartridge manufacturer may choost to stick their adherence to ISO9001 on the packaging as some kind of 'Quality' statement. It is a meaningless ploy unless the custlmer wants it.

They may well have their manufacturing process certified but, unless every tiny aspect of their product (from cradle to grave) is written in then it is sub optimisation and it will fail. You could (perhaps) get around failure by stating tbat you were goung to mark 0.0001% of your yellow cartridges as having green ink, then you would only fail by NOT doing it!

Motorola were not keek on that process so designed the (original) 3 Sigma system, now 6 Sigma, to reduce failure(then) to 1 in 23,000,000.

In you want to read it... be my guest. This is yout 'starter for 10.....

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Sigma

I am unaware of any prrfect system bu maybe Europe's largest robotic pharmacy at the new Brunel Building at South Meads Hospital in Bristol.

https://www.nbt.nhs.uk/news-media/latest-news/pharmacy-moves-new-brunel-building

Seems interesting and wider reading and podcast details that humans do not load the storage area, the 'robots do' and so as drug boxes can have similalar names, when humans picked they needed to be stored alphabetically. The new system does not need that restriction ad 'the system' knows where all the millions of boxes are.

Robot delivery drivers next

"YOU HAVE 10 SECONDS TO OPEN THE DOOR" -

Hmm No change there then [emoji5]
 
Last edited:
StewartR said:
I sympathise. I and my staff spend a lot of time every day sorting out delivery mishaps.

But in context: UPS deliver about 18 million parcels every day. Let's suppose they get 99% of them right. Then that 1% failure rate is 180,000 per day, or the equivalent of the entire population of a medium size town ranting on about how useless they are, every single day. Today, every single person in Milton Keynes is complaining about UPS. Yesterday it was Sunderland. Tomorrow it might be Northampton or Swindon. Imagine. All those people complaining about UPS. They must be really rubbish, surely? Well, only if you consider a 99% success rate to be rubbish.
Click to expand...
If you're booking a flight, would you consider an airline with a 99% success rate on take of and landing ?
 
It's symptomatic of standards in all aspects of business I fear. This past couple of years my job role has changed, I now have more dealing with vendors and contractors on a daily basis. It staggers me the laissez faire a lot of companies have, I ask for prices for jobs and or supplies. If you get an answer at all it's a bonus, a lot of the time they don't even bother to quote, or come back weeks later ! It's as if they don't want my business. I'm talking significant sums of money. Has it always been this way ?
 
I've had 3 lenses back from sigma over the past couple of years and ups service has been on the money. Where as recently we have had a few deliveries from dpd and it definitely was anywhere near the service I thought it would be.
 
jimgallaher said:
It's symptomatic of standards in all aspects of business I fear. This past couple of years my job role has changed, I now have more dealing with vendors and contractors on a daily basis. It staggers me the laissez faire a lot of companies have, I ask for prices for jobs and or supplies. If you get an answer at all it's a bonus, a lot of the time they don't even bother to quote, or come back weeks later ! It's as if they don't want my business. I'm talking significant sums of money. Has it always been this way ?
Click to expand...

Dealing with British business this seems to be the norm.
 
I had a big parcel collected by UPS and delivered the next day un damaged , happy with the service
 
jimgallaher said:
If you're booking a flight, would you consider an airline with a 99% success rate on take of and landing ?
Click to expand...
Ahh the big question

First define the actual viability and semse of what the percentile is and what it means.

Here's a challenge for you, which will be worth 88 pints of beer (a Barrell), if you can find the following statement in an airlinee quality management system.

'At ****** Airways we SHALL maintain a 100% successful and safe landing rate on all our passenger aicraft services'

Any QMS must be realistic and achievable. If it is not it would be a major issue for any external auditin and certifying body maintaing internationally recognised Quality standards.

As would

"It is ****** Airways aim to offer our customers a 100% guaranteed safe arrival at theis chosen destination".

Specious promises are not recognised and, where you and I may find them tucked away in any company reports or promotional literature, they do not translate into a contract. You will generally find wording tucked away stating that the documents are not or not intended to be, a contract.

So add 'spin' to the vocabulary of the big sell.

In an organisation of, say,10 workers, one fails to turn up.... failure rate knock on? Well if the place carrys on and achieves mission success, why employ 10? Been down that road since the mid 80s.

Faolure is expected and built into the price paid.

Unless, of course, you are Gerald Ratner.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Ratner
 
StewartR said:
UPS made $5 billion profit last year in a viciously competitive marketplace. I'd suggest that indicates that they've got the whole price / cost / quality trade-off about right.
Click to expand...

What?? Profit - great if you are a shareholder.
But real life evidence of poor service (in a service sector) does not indicate they have it 'about right'

Would you be happy if you had a shed load of money, but 1pc of your customers were poorly let down?
Me, personally, I'd like 100pc satisfaction and I'd happily reduce my margin to achieve that - surely that is 'about right' ?
 
The UPS delivery guys in my area are brilliant. Never once had an issue. Maybe us Scots just do it better? :p
 
Hugh Jarse said:
Failure is a fact of life.

Quality Management Systems seek to build the doctrine of 'continuous Improvement into organisations but any sub-optimisation of process is meant to be managed out by cyclic auditing.

Plan
Do
Check (the audit)
Act

Repeat.

In reality it is a process too but not a statement of product quality.

Thus a 3rd Party InkJet Cartridge manufacturer may choost to stick their adherence to ISO9001 on the packaging as some kind of 'Quality' statement. It is a meaningless ploy unless the custlmer wants it.

They may well have their manufacturing process certified but, unless every tiny aspect of their product (from cradle to grave) is written in then it is sub optimisation and it will fail. You could (perhaps) get around failure by stating tbat you were goung to mark 0.0001% of your yellow cartridges as having green ink, then you would only fail by NOT doing it!

Motorola were not keek on that process so designed the (original) 3 Sigma system, now 6 Sigma, to reduce failure(then) to 1 in 23,000,000.

In you want to read it... be my guest. This is yout 'starter for 10.....

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Sigma

I am unaware of any prrfect system bu maybe Europe's largest robotic pharmacy at the new Brunel Building at South Meads Hospital in Bristol.

https://www.nbt.nhs.uk/news-media/latest-news/pharmacy-moves-new-brunel-building

Seems interesting and wider reading and podcast details that humans do not load the storage area, the 'robots do' and so as drug boxes can have similalar names, when humans picked they needed to be stored alphabetically. The new system does not need that restriction ad 'the system' knows where all the millions of boxes are.

Robot delivery drivers next

"YOU HAVE 10 SECONDS TO OPEN THE DOOR" -

Hmm No change there then [emoji5]
Click to expand...

This is all well and good in centralised operations, such as a factory or warehouse but once you're talking about a bloke in a van knocking on doors, you're getting less and less control of your process as there is less oversight and visibility of the activity. Chances are the business is driven by a huge list of metrics at every stage and while doubtless customer satisfaction is a major one, I'd be surprised if it's set at 100% due to the inevitability of natural variation due to 'special causes' e.g. Traffic accidents, etc.
It seems we've all suffered poor service at some stage, I'd suggest that the lesser operators are paying their drivers for every parcel they deliver i.e. If it's taken back to depot they don't get paid for it, or are on a bonus for achieving high delivery rates, thus driving poor behaviours.
 
hats nothing

My son in brazil is doing open uni course, so sent over uni books and 3 birthday cards for the grandchildren. Customs in Brazil demanded £96 to deliver the birthday cards . We refused so they removed them and sent the uni books 3 months later.
 
I find DPD excellent. Never any damage. I have ordered mounts from Frith twice for my RPS panel and on both occasions they have been damaged in transit.mtge mist resent box arrived with a 7inch rip to the box..probably the fork life thing mentioned earlier. Almost 2/3 of the mounts damaged. This means another day in waiting.. I think it is interlink? It must be costing Frith a fortune. Maybe I should suggest DPD!
 
Much depends on the individual making the delivery, Hermes has a bad name in some areas yet it's excellent here.
 
DPD are as rubbish as the rest of them.:LOL:

Got confirmation of a parcel arriving today between 11.39 and 12.39, so I went out to the Post Office at nine thirty. Got back to find an e-mail had arrived at 9.46 confirming I'd rearranged delivery for tomorrow. Oh no I hadn't!

No way to change it back so I've got to wait in for it. It's nothing important, so maybe I won't. :D
 
Some years ago my brothers business relied on courier services, sadly his experience showed they were all terrible, he tried them all (we're talking hundreds of thousands of pounds a week delivery) and the one thing they all had in common was they lost a fair percentage of stuff, never got any back and broke a fair amount of what they actually managed to deliver (usually on the wrong day) In the end he was using parcel farce (our nickname for them) they were about the best of a bad lot. But being serious it was a real problem, he lost a huge amount of stuff over a year or so, and we're talking serious money here.
 
I went to the local PO which is a Hermes drop off point. As I was at a T junction the guy was picking up the parcels. I was literally next to his back door looking into the van. He dragged the massive netted bag across the road and proceeded to throw all parcels right to the front of the van (from the back door on a LWB Sprinter) I even saw him throw two red parcels covered in fragile tape! I then made eye contact with him thinking he would stop it and he didn't!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top