more wonderful service from UPS

Originally Posted by The BoidSmith

Did you check the links? It seems there was bad weather indeed during those three days.

Yeah, I did. But the package was still moving around after the fact. Which is why I ask: why could it not, in a 24 hour period, "move" to its destination only an hour away?

And again, the package was already going to be late when it was shipped from Kentucky....a couple thousand miles and 3 hours away from the "adverse" weather. My main point in complaining to UPS was the simple fact that they screwed the pooch before they can blame the weather. If weather was indeed bad, they should record it more accurately in the tracking history. And if indeed, the holidays causes genuine delays because of increased business, and they cannot guarantee their delivery times, then the company should either offer discounts for Next Day shipping, etc, or they should simply withdraw those offers during the holidays.

I know I'm mostly preaching to the choir here. But the main objective of this thread is a "Don't make the mistake I did" message to any newbs out there who still think UPS is the way to go.

I can offer some ideas...

As to the price, I believe dimensional weight is you answer there. They have two ways of incurring costs, one is by how much your package weighs and thus costs to move around, and the other is how big it is which affects how many packages they can move around. When looking online for an idea of price by weight try and see if they have box dimensions listed as well...

As for the miss...I work for a telecom giant not UPS, but we measure orders by time as well. If we miss a commitment, it goes in the miss column of some spread sheet. For every day we miss after that nothing happens in corporate college ejimukatud turdland as the order stays in that column and we measure movement into that column, not how many days an order is there.

UPS has the same level of COT I work for since these "executives" are so inept that once they completely screw the pooch at one company they move to the next. I will be willing to bet all the hair in both my ears (no really, take it...) that once your package missed the target time they failed to care. As in at all. So sorry...that sort of thing.

Of course this is all speculation...but based on some level of experience...hope your critters made it safely...

Thanks, Drew.

The animals did make it there okay, thankfully.
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If I haven't heard back from them by next week, I'm gonna knuckle down and actually call them to see if I can squeeze something out of them. Regardless, I'll be sure to let everyone know my experience with them.

I just had a similar situation with UPS earlier this week, the animal didn't arrive till the day after the scheduled date and luckily was okay when it finally did arrive to his new home. I blame this 100% on the holidays, I will never again ship in December. I've shipped with UPS 20+ times with flawless results. They are known to put "adverse weather conditions" when they delay a package for any reason, which I certainly don't agree with. I would just suggest not shipping around the holidays next time, and you should be good.

Originally Posted by Abby

I just had a similar situation with UPS earlier this week, the animal didn't arrive till the day after the scheduled date and luckily was okay when it finally did arrive to his new home. I blame this 100% on the holidays, I will never again ship in December. I've shipped with UPS 20+ times with flawless results. They are known to put "adverse weather conditions" when they delay a package for any reason, which I certainly don't agree with. I would just suggest not shipping around the holidays next time, and you should be good.

I agree that not shipping around the holidays is a good policy, but what about those who rely on their herp business to pay bills?

To be honest the holidays are no flipping excuse for UPS to miss a commitment. I do not care how many boxes of toys and fruit cake are flying around the country in a big brown vehicle, if it says live it should take priority, and that is not a hard thing to impliment.

Originally Posted by Drew Zaun

I agree that not shipping around the holidays is a good policy, but what about those who rely on their herp business to pay bills?

To be honest the holidays are no flipping excuse for UPS to miss a commitment. I do not care how many boxes of toys and fruit cake are flying around the country in a big brown vehicle, if it says live it should take priority, and that is not a hard thing to impliment.

I'm sure a month of shipping down time isn't going to cause anyone to starve, if you can't survive a month or two without selling a reptile you probably shouldn't be relying on this as your sole income... This is an unpredictable market... Never guarantees!

I do agree that they should still get your packages to the destination, if not perfectly on time atleast within a few hours - certainly not the next day. BUT, just because that is how it should be, doesn't make it realistic to think it's possible for any shipping company to guarantee. Most actually have a section on their sites about holiday shipping and say volume is so high you should be aware that you could face a delay. UPS, FedEx and especially USPS are known to have this happen to them... It isn't just UPS that faces holiday delays unfortunately.

Just like we should avoid bad weather, we should avoid bad shipping times for the company. The amount of packages that go through cannot be predicted to the T with how most stuff is bought, sold and shipped online these days. I would guess a lot of holiday shipping is sent overnight because people procrastinate and end up sending presents late so they pay for next day. This may be why they don't do as great a job prioritizing packages like say a reptile shipper would. We need to realize these guys rarely are reading the details on packages, there are too many of them, thus time would be slowed even further. Besides, in their view one UPS Next Day shipment is no more important than the next. Who are we to say that our packages deserve faster arrival than someone else's who paid the same premium? In a perfect world we wouldn't have to deal with these things as we'd have our own reptile company that is separate from the others, but that is merely a pipe dream that I don't see happening anytime in the foreseeable future unfortunately

I also wanted to say that Next Day Air delays are caused by Next Day Air volume... not Ground. If you send a Next Day Air package and a Ground package to the same address at the exact same time, the Next Day Air package will get their first. Even if the boxes are at the same hub, less priority shipments are not put on the first round of trucks that go out in the day. Therefore Next Day Air packages are always loaded first, which leads me to believe a lot of Next Day packages are sent during the holidays.

Originally Posted by Abby

I also wanted to say that Next Day Air delays are caused by Next Day Air volume... not Ground. If you send a Next Day Air package and a Ground package to the same address at the exact same time, the Next Day Air package will get their first. Even if the boxes are at the same hub, less priority shipments are not put on the first round of trucks that go out in the day. Therefore Next Day Air packages are always loaded first, which leads me to believe a lot of Next Day packages are sent during the holidays.

FALSE!

I have one driver... and one truck. If I have an express shipment and a ground shippment set to arrive on the same day... I get them at the same time. Both sometime after 2pm.

Originally Posted by RidgeTop Reptiles

FALSE!

I have one driver... and one truck. If I have an express shipment and a ground shippment set to arrive on the same day... I get them at the same time. Both sometime after 2pm.

If you are talking about FedEx I have no experience with them... I was talking about UPS. Also, if your overnight shipments get to you at 2 pm I would guess your packages get there on the same route at the same time because you live in a rural area and your next day packages are not guaranteed early for your area. Here where I live you are guaranteed 10:30 am arrival. They bring the next day packaged at that time and do less priority packages on different routes later in the day.

Originally Posted by Abby

If you are talking about FedEx I have no experience with them... I was talking about UPS. Also, if your overnight shipments get to you at 2 pm I would guess your packages get there on the same route at the same time because you live in a rural area and your next day packages are not guaranteed early for your area. Here where I live you are guaranteed 10:30 am arrival. They bring the next day packaged at that time and do less priority packages on different routes later in the day.

Im talking about UPS as well. It doesn't matter if its an express package or ground. It's coming on the same truck and it will arrive sometime after 2pm.

and Yes... I am rural... and I wouldnt have it any other way. No traffic... no congestion.... no city BS!

Originally Posted by RidgeTop Reptiles

Im talking about UPS as well. It doesn't matter if its an express package or ground. It's coming on the same truck and it will arrive sometime after 2pm.

and Yes... I am rural... and I wouldnt have it any other way. No traffic... no congestion.... no city BS!

I'm willing to bet that it's due to you being rural... Where AM arrival is available there are more than one route for the types of packages. Of course I can't speak for all hubs, but that's my experience here.