A UPS Story
Posted: 30 Sep 2020 9:46 am
This is not a rant on UPS but a hopefully not too long catalog of things I did wrong that led to a long ordeal with a happy ending.
I had a very unique Sho-Bud Pro III for sale on the forum but no one was interested so I listed it on Reverb and after a few months was able to sell it. I took it to a UPS store along with three other items I was shipping out at the same time.
Mistake #1 might have been using a UPS store but the bigger goof was watching the guy slap a label on it and not insisting he put some tape over it to make sure the label stayed put.
Mistake #2 was not checking the tracking information that same evening. If I had I would have seen the other three packages arrived at the local UPS depot but the steel didn't! It for sure left the UPS store with the other three but the label must have been knocked off and it never scanned in at the depot. Had I checked the tracking all the rest of the issues would not have happened.
I did check tracking on Wednesday evening after all were supposed to arrive at their destination. I initiated a lost package investigation the next day, the UPS store was 0 help in this process and the UPS investigation process is totally opaque, you can find out nothing about what they are doing to try to locate your item until they conclude the investigation which they have 8 business days to do, extremely frustrating. After they said they couldn't locate the package I refunded the purchasers money, he did say he remained interested if it ever showed up and was true to his word.
I naively didn't know that UPS regional depots have a customer service area and you can just walk in and get help or ship packages without going to a UPS store so that was big mistake #3. From now on everything I ship out is going to be taken to that depot--one less step for things to go wrong!
This was a huge box weighing 85 lbs you don't just misplace something like that so it had to be somewhere. What I came to find out was that when a package has no label on it, it gets shipped to a central location so my steel was most likely shipped to the Kansas City (I think?) lost and found warehouse within a day or two after I shipped it. In spite of my description of it and the unique size they claimed it wasn't there---hard to believe they really did anything to locate it but I have no proof of that.
A month later I was still stewing over this even though I had a check in hand from my insurance company and my wife asked why I just didn't go to the depot so I did that and happened to get Allyson who not only knew what she was doing but really seemed to care. After taking all my information she called the lost and found facility and got nothing, she then went out into warehouse and asked around but it had been almost a month so nothing there either. When she came back to the office she tried calling lost and found again hoping to get a different person and Score! Within minutes she had pictures of the guitar up on her computer to show me!!
They had removed the steel from the shipping box and the picture of the almost pristine case convinced me it was my guitar but they also opened the case and took the steel out and sent pics of that as well!
I agreed to send it on to the original purchaser but then of course I was nervous about how they'd repack it and would it all arrive in good shape. Thankfully it did so the story has a happy ending and I tore up the insurance check.
One other item I've since learned is that some people also attach a shipping label to the instrument or case itself in case something like this happens, that might be good insurance for the future.
Over the years I have shipped and received many items from large to small and none of them have ever been lost and if not for the mistakes in knowledge and judgment I mentioned above this one wouldn't have been either! Never to old to learn!!
I had a very unique Sho-Bud Pro III for sale on the forum but no one was interested so I listed it on Reverb and after a few months was able to sell it. I took it to a UPS store along with three other items I was shipping out at the same time.
Mistake #1 might have been using a UPS store but the bigger goof was watching the guy slap a label on it and not insisting he put some tape over it to make sure the label stayed put.
Mistake #2 was not checking the tracking information that same evening. If I had I would have seen the other three packages arrived at the local UPS depot but the steel didn't! It for sure left the UPS store with the other three but the label must have been knocked off and it never scanned in at the depot. Had I checked the tracking all the rest of the issues would not have happened.
I did check tracking on Wednesday evening after all were supposed to arrive at their destination. I initiated a lost package investigation the next day, the UPS store was 0 help in this process and the UPS investigation process is totally opaque, you can find out nothing about what they are doing to try to locate your item until they conclude the investigation which they have 8 business days to do, extremely frustrating. After they said they couldn't locate the package I refunded the purchasers money, he did say he remained interested if it ever showed up and was true to his word.
I naively didn't know that UPS regional depots have a customer service area and you can just walk in and get help or ship packages without going to a UPS store so that was big mistake #3. From now on everything I ship out is going to be taken to that depot--one less step for things to go wrong!
This was a huge box weighing 85 lbs you don't just misplace something like that so it had to be somewhere. What I came to find out was that when a package has no label on it, it gets shipped to a central location so my steel was most likely shipped to the Kansas City (I think?) lost and found warehouse within a day or two after I shipped it. In spite of my description of it and the unique size they claimed it wasn't there---hard to believe they really did anything to locate it but I have no proof of that.
A month later I was still stewing over this even though I had a check in hand from my insurance company and my wife asked why I just didn't go to the depot so I did that and happened to get Allyson who not only knew what she was doing but really seemed to care. After taking all my information she called the lost and found facility and got nothing, she then went out into warehouse and asked around but it had been almost a month so nothing there either. When she came back to the office she tried calling lost and found again hoping to get a different person and Score! Within minutes she had pictures of the guitar up on her computer to show me!!
They had removed the steel from the shipping box and the picture of the almost pristine case convinced me it was my guitar but they also opened the case and took the steel out and sent pics of that as well!
I agreed to send it on to the original purchaser but then of course I was nervous about how they'd repack it and would it all arrive in good shape. Thankfully it did so the story has a happy ending and I tore up the insurance check.
One other item I've since learned is that some people also attach a shipping label to the instrument or case itself in case something like this happens, that might be good insurance for the future.
Over the years I have shipped and received many items from large to small and none of them have ever been lost and if not for the mistakes in knowledge and judgment I mentioned above this one wouldn't have been either! Never to old to learn!!