For other Holiday Horrors posts, click here.
I bought something on eBay for The Wife for Christmas. Something expensive, something I couldn’t just go get at a store. I bought this thing very early, knowing that shipping would take a while. I instructed the shipper to send said item to my place of business, because I knew I wouldn’t be home during usual UPS delivery hours, and because I didn’t want The Wife to discover a Mysterious Package on our doorstep.
All of this would’ve proceeded without a hitch, if the package had been shipped via anyone but UPS, who are apparently criminals. Or morons. Or criminally moronic.
The package was supposed to arrive at my office yesterday. When the day wore on and nothing had arrived yet, I tracked the package. It was listed as having an Exception. And the Exception was, RECIPIENT HAS MOVED.
That came as news to me, since I’ve had my current job for a while, and our office has not moved one foot in that entire time. So I called up the UPS people, and they told me the UPS delivery guy must have gotten confused because the delivery address didn’t have my company’s name. Even though I get shipments all the time sans company name.
Apparently, my company is served by the most literal UPS delivery guy on the planet. It’s very nice that UPS is giving jobs to autistic people, but maybe they shouldn’t be delivering packages.
UPS customer service told me I had two choices: get in touch with the shipper and tell him to add the company’s name to the delivery address, or pick it up myself at a local facility. Said facility is literally blocks from my house, so I chose the latter. A minor inconvenience, but problem solved. Or so I thought.
When I got home, just to make sure the package was back in the facility, I tracked it again. This time, it had another exception, saying the delivery guy had tried again, I still had “moved”, and the package was on its way back to the shipper. In California. (In case you don’t know, I live about as far away as you can get from CA without entering another dimension.)
So I called up UPS again to try and figure out what happened. Between the online tracking and the phone reps I’m getting a lot of conflicting info, I said, so just assure me that I can pick this thing up at my local facility, I said.
Yes you can, said the UPS rep.
That’s the UPS facility in Queens, right?
Frighteningly long pause. Um, no, the facility in San Jose.
Why is it going to a facility in San Jose? Unless there’s a San Jose in Long Island.
Will you hold, please? Cue the awful hold music.
Five minutes, the UPS rep is back on the line, telling me that the package is schedule to pull a Biggie (aka go back to Cali). But he will attempt to contact the local facility and get them to intercept that before it happens.
An hour later, I got a call back from said local facility, which informed me the package was already “in processing” to go back to the shipper, and there was nothing they could do about it. Maybe you can order a new one and get the shipper to refund your money?
No, I can not do that, I said.
So this package took a week to get to me, but the second they couldn’t drop it off–at the place where I work, where the receptionist knows who I am–UPS gets rid of it like it’s covered in mad cow disease. And I had to tell The Wife, Hey, I ordered you something awesome for Christmas! But it may not get here until Memorial Day.
Just wanted to let everyone know, if you have any choice, please consider NOT using UPS. I mean, provided you’re ordering something of value that you’d actually like to receive at some point. And don’t want to RUIN YOUR CHRISTMAS.
But if you want a lot of inexplicable fuck-ups and unhelpful advice, they’re the place to go.
Last week, I referred to the original Rankin-Bass Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer as “an unbridled triumph”. I stand by that assessment, but my friend Shaun reminded me of one unpleasant factor in that otherwise spotless holiday classic: in it, Santa’s a huge jerk.