Thread: Heads up......shipping via UPS.

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Originally Posted by hawk56

Pat A delivery by UPS to a business has to be signed for . A residential delivery can be left in a secure place without a signature . But then what
is a secure area ?
Robot you are right , It's amazing that a large part , like an axle , can fall from a box and it Isn't noticed !!!
ALLWAYS OVER INSURE , in the end you might break even !

yep they only leave a box at my shop a business with business addess only when its paid for with a worker or i leave a note on the shop door .both fedx and ups know me very well .but if they do drop the box or you do not recive it then its the drivers butt .do not ask how i know this

No, I have shipped a lot of axles, springs, radius rods, etc and just put bubble wrap over them and then tape the h*** out of it with clear tape. Haven't had any problems so far, although a clerk at Kinkos (FedEx outlet) wouldn't take something one time, but I went to UPS and off it went.

The hairpins were in cardboard. I first wiretied them together, wrapped them in bubble wrap, and made a box that was tapered sort of like their shape. It was 39 inches long, x 8 wide x 3 thick, kinda tough to miss.

Don

I used to ship boxes in and out from other states. I found the post office to be the cheapest... most reliable... and with the least damage. I won't use the others any more.

Jay, if you go the basic flat rate boxes there is no way to track or prove they were delivered, the PO tells me. Do you add some sort of receipt required deal or something? I would love to start using them as they are a lot cheaper. Please tell me more about how you ship your stuff safely.

Don

Originally Posted by Itoldyouso

Jay, if you go the basic flat rate boxes there is no way to track or prove they were delivered, the PO tells me. Do you add some sort of receipt required deal or something? I would love to start using them as they are a lot cheaper. Please tell me more about how you ship your stuff safely.

Don

yes there is i use them to. you can ask for delivery confirmation i get that on the flat rate boxs and insured them but after that it can be more then ups as the first $100 is free with ups

I'm going to have to sit down with the local PO and get all their rates for options. We are shipping more lately and UPS and FedEx has gone through the roof. I just shipped some headers to Iowa and the shipping was $ 68.17, and they only weighed 26 lbs.

Gotta be a better way.

Don

So far lucky with shipped parts to and from me with the exception of trashed boxes. My biggest complaint is when they deliver - it has been as early as noon, but usually between 6 and 8:30 PM like last night and that sometimes holds me up (usually my fault ordering late). Also, if it says on line that they will deliver on a particular date, it will be that date or later even if the item shows it's in the local warehouse and has been for several days

I used to ship a lot of miscellaneous items to strange parts of the world - and UPS was the worst, by far, to make it undamaged or even close to being on time. Used DHL mostly for that shipping, but they have now mostly gone the way of the gooney bird

I don't know how OD does it as an agent, I use the local UPS Store (Used to be Mail Boxes Etc. before UPS bought them to compete with the FedEx Kinkos program). They give me a receipt for each package that has the tracking number on it to prove I've entrusted them with it, and they email me the same info with a quick link to tracking, so making a claim shouldn't be too tough. Like Pat said, it's automatically insured for $100 unless extra is paid for. They don't make it easy, at least time wise, to collect though.

I haven't had anything recently go missing, but a few years back I bought a pair of old Torque thrust wheels. The seller did me a "favor" and taped the two boxes together to reduce the shipping cost. Well, what looks well taped on the garage floor at home doesn't always hold up to the rigors of the handling system. I ended up with a single box with a single wheel, but there were four frayed tape ends on the box. At that time (dozen or so years ago) all strays in the UPS system ended up at a central warehouse in, I think, Atlanta. When I finally got ahold of someone there I gave them a full, detailed description of what the wheel looked like. Three days later it showed up at the shop. The box was a little worse for the wear, but the wheel was fine. Could be Pops, your stuff is in that limbo land.

Last week I had a small package that the tracking showed had been delivered, but it wasn't on my front porch as normally happens. Once before this had happened and I got a call from a neighbor a couple blocks away that he'd gotten home and found a package on his front porch with my name on it (addresses aren't anything alike except for city/zip). So I thought, well maybe they did that again. The next morning I called the customer service line, went throught the push this button, push that button exercise and finally the disembodied "voice" said, "delivered at 3:38pm, left in the garage". Ain't technology grand? I rememberd I'd had the garage door open that afternoon, but it must have been at a time when I was out back or in the house and didn't hear the truck pull up. Anyway, went out to the garage and looked around, sure enough there it was on top of the sheet metal shear. I'm sure the driver figured it was safer in the garage than the porch.

Good luck Pops.

Bob, I also got a printout from OD for each box I shipped that day showing who it was going to, tracking number, weight, dimensions, etc, so I should be covered there. What I hope is that they don't ask me for is an invoice for value because it was a private sale to a HAMB member, and the only "invoice" is where I gave him the price and shipping in PM's we exchanged and he agreed to that and Paypal'd me the money. I did insure it for $ 200, so we will see how that goes.

On the other side of the coin, years ago we ordered something and it never came, but the tracking info showed the driver had left it "at the front door." The shipper filed a claim and as part of it UPS did their investigation. We had a UPS investigator come to our house and interview us. He was retired ex cop or something and I got a little annoyed because he basically was telling us we got the box and were lying and stealing it. He didn't come right out and say that, just his cop type attitude and the way he hinted that we got it because the driver said he left it there. (I guess we were guilty until proven innocent.) But after he saw we lived in a nice place and didn't seem to be the kind of people who would rip them off for a $ 100 item, he backed off and they paid the claim.

On a side note, a while back it was on the news that a UPS driver was busted in a nearby town because he had something like $ 20,000.00 worth of stolen packages in his home. You would think the flags would have gone up because he had to have a lot of customers on his route filing missing package claims.

Don

UPDATE !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


I put in a claim with Office Depot and Pam there has been working on it for me. Luckily, I had insured it for $ 200.00 so I figured it would take time but that I would be ok in the end.

Today I got a PM on the HAMB from the guy in Tulsa who bought them and he says when he got home last night he tripped over a box at his door ! When I track the shipment now it shows it was left at his door at 7:08 pm last night. That is 17 days since I shipped it. He says the box is in good condition and not only are the addresses I wrote on the box legible, but so is the OD plastic envelope with shipping paperwork that Pam put on there.

He wants to keep them and is Paypalling me the money today, so we are right back where we were on Oct 3rd...............un freaking believable !!!! Makes you wonder where it has been for all this time.

Whatever happened, the problem started because the driver, who picked it up at OD, DID NOT SCAN IT. It went out the door, and if he would have scanned it the package would have been in the UPS system, just like the other 2 I shipped that day. So I only see two possibilities:

1) He forgot to scan it and when it got put out of his truck at the UPS depot that night it had no scan and went into some lost bin where it has been laying, or....

2) He didn't scan it on purpose, and took it. Then when I confronted him at OD that night he realized this one was going to be a problem and put it back sometime later when he was unloading his truck at the end of the day.

I hate to think #2 happened, maybe it just fell off of some conveyor belt and was legitimately lost all that time. But there is no question the problem started when he didn't scan it at OD the day he walked out the door with it.

Very strange, especially that there is no record of this package even moving cross country until UPS shows up at his door and just leaves it late in the day. I called Pam at OD and told her to call off the dogs.

Don

I think I'd go with door #2, after you confronted him he probably did just what you think he did and decided it wasn't worth the hassle for him trying to explain what happened. I've had the same problem with my letter carrier.

I think there might be something fishy about this whole deal. When I confronted him he did not want to be part of that conversation, AT ALL. Kept trying to walk away from us. The problem is, UPS will probably do nothing to investigate this either, too much trouble.

Oh well, at least the stuff finally got there.

Don

Originally Posted by Itoldyouso

UPDATE !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


I put in a claim with Office Depot and Pam there has been working on it for me. Luckily, I had insured it for $ 200.00 so I figured it would take time but that I would be ok in the end.

Today I got a PM on the HAMB from the guy in Tulsa who bought them and he says when he got home last night he tripped over a box at his door ! When I track the shipment now it shows it was left at his door at 7:08 pm last night. That is 17 days since I shipped it. He says the box is in good condition and not only are the addresses I wrote on the box legible, but so is the OD plastic envelope with shipping paperwork that Pam put on there.

He wants to keep them and is Paypalling me the money today, so we are right back where we were on Oct 3rd...............un freaking believable !!!! Makes you wonder where it has been for all this time.

Whatever happened, the problem started because the driver, who picked it up at OD, DID NOT SCAN IT. It went out the door, and if he would have scanned it the package would have been in the UPS system, just like the other 2 I shipped that day. So I only see two possibilities:

1) He forgot to scan it and when it got put out of his truck at the UPS depot that night it had no scan and went into some lost bin where it has been laying, or....

2) He didn't scan it on purpose, and took it. Then when I confronted him at OD that night he realized this one was going to be a problem and put it back sometime later when he was unloading his truck at the end of the day.

I hate to think #2 happened, maybe it just fell off of some conveyor belt and was legitimately lost all that time. But there is no question the problem started when he didn't scan it at OD the day he walked out the door with it.

Very strange, especially that there is no record of this package even moving cross country until UPS shows up at his door and just leaves it late in the day. I called Pam at OD and told her to call off the dogs.

Don

Don it is more likely it was misplaced in a hub sort.Yeah I yrs ago worked for them.

Yeah, I guess, that makes more sense. But if he had done his job and scanned it, as he stressed he does with EVERY box he picks up, this never would have happened in the first place. It all started with him missing it.

Don

UPS is so big,they really don't care much about the little guy.They have contracts with big companies that has a built in freight flow rate.