Miami Corp Order & UPS

[regalman190]

So....I wish I could run my business like UPS does. I place an order for Recacril with Miami Corp so I could receive it by this Friday. Miami processes the order and goes out as it should. UPS makes a sorting mistake and now instead of receiving my material tomorrow, I won't get it until next Wednesday....five days later. Calls to UPS from Scott (who is great to work with) at Miami and a call from me to UPS make no difference. When I asked how UPS was going to compensate me for their screw up and my delays......nothing. Basically, tough sh_t!
So now I have to tell a customer that they're bimini top won't be ready for this weekend and it wont' be until next week. UPS is horrible!

Sorry to vent, but I am PO'ed!

[bobbin]

I have never had an issue with UPS.  But I would be pretty irritated, too.  THEIR error has put you on the -hit list of your customer, and you ordered in plenty of time to receive the goods and do the work. 

Thoughts:
1.)   If you are so inclined, perhaps another 'phone call to complain and a follow up e-mail to the person that fielded your complaint and their supervisor.  And then a more formal letter to make sure the financial ramifications of THEIR error are made clear to the company. 
2.)   A request to your supplier that shipping options become part of their service.  I find that frequently Fed Ex is less expensive than UPS, and there are times when I wish suppliers would just use the gool ol' post office for small items!

Yeah, it's work to do that, but if we don't squawk when corporate error makes an impact on us they will have no reason to change or make restitution. 

[Mike]

Was thar scott in jacksonville miami? I talkex to him today.
Ive had thoose problems with ups misplacing a  order   
I had ine delevery on e paid with a money order.  Well my driver tell me that somone lost the pouxh full of cods including my M/O paymrnnt could  make it up. I said i used  cash. They lost it tough $h!p

[Mojo]

Knock on wood. I have never had a problem with UPS, fed Ex or USPS.

I would have been livid if that happened to me.

Chris

[gene]

I worked at UPS whilst in college. I was a Teamster (union), so I know what it's like to have your right to vote taken away from you.

I sorted packages and speed was the only thing that mattered, unless there were 'ties' standing around. (Visitors or upper management).

We broke so much stuff in sorting but were told that it's cheaper for UPS to pay damages than to slow down and not break it in the first place.

It could be worst. We say "going postal", not "going UPS".

gene

[bobbin]

So Gene, as a former employee and union grunt what, precisely, is your advice to Regal.?

Are you saying that he ought to pursue his complaint or simply "let it lie"?

(Mercifully, I was never a member of the garment workers' union)

[regalman190]

Mike....Scott is in Rochester. But the shipment was coming from Jacksonville. It shipped the same day I ordered it. Miami did everything right. UPS messed up. As I said a few phone calls did nothing. The woman I spoke to told me when there is a mistake sorting it takes four days to re-route it. Scott at Miami spoke with one person, and I spoke to another. Neither one could change the shipment.

I prefer FedEx myself. I don't seem to have any problems with them. I just don't understand the lack of customer service. I would be out of business in a heart beat if I treated my customers that way.

[ahkahn]

Sounds like Scott at Miami did a great job going above and beyond to try to help you, even though UPS didn't budge.  UPS runs at a 99.8% on time rate...  unfortunately you got caught up in that fraction of a percent.  Maybe you should play the lottery?   :-[

This is true, we surrender all control of the package once we submit to UPS.  Most customers get upset with the supplier when these things happen... we can't control it.  Regalman, you're frustration is directed at the right people..  but in my experience they won't do anything unless it was shipped air. 

-Andrew

[stitcher_guy]

Too late now, but in the future it might have worked to re-order your materials to get it on time, and then when the first-ordered package arrived, you simply refuse it. My driver has said sometimes the package will simply fall off the conveyor or something stupid like that, and it doesn't get picked up or reinserted in the delivery timeline until later and that throws off the delivery schedule.

I'm lucky in my vantage point. If I order to Miami by 2p CST, then I can have it next day by 9:30a (my driver delivers me at the start of his route). Even better, still, I can order with Andrew at DLT/Dubois in Chicago up until about 4:30 (but it's a gamble that late) or 4p to be assured of it going out, and I get the order by 9:30a. They also have another delivery company, SpeeDee, that does it for about half the cost, but I don't get the order until midday the next day.

[gene]

bobbin, I think there's nothing he can do except complain some more. If he had documents that show actual damages or if he is a really big UPS user and he can threaten to take his business to someone else then a district manager might call on him and give him some discounts or something. But the people I know are trained to not give away a penny.

I knew some clerks who worked with damaged packaging and the first thing they were taught to say was that the broken item was not properly packaged. And they never saw the packages themselves.

It is amazing how accurate they are with the kind of volume they process.

I was working there when UPS first got into the overnight business. They originally guarenteed overnight delivery. Fed Ex was simply saying they would get it there overnight. I can remember managers walking a single overnight package from the trailer truck to the delivery truck and putting it on the driver's seat. They made sure they had zero failures when they went after the overnight delivery business.

gene

[ahkahn]

Russ,

I am not a supporter of your idea of reordering and refusing the original package.

That is sticking it to the supplier, which is not fair in this situation.  The supplier has to pay the UPS BOTH ways, a $10 return fee from UPS, and they have a cut on the shelf they may never sell, sit on for a long time, or end up with a remnant.  Not counting the cut, that could be $40-$50 back on the supplier. 

And yes, after 4:00pm Central time (or 5:00pm eastern) it is a gamble.  We'll do it if it's small and you express a serious emergency, but our pickup is between 4:00pm-4:30pm.

-Andrew

[regalman190]

I agree with Andrew. There have been situations where a supplier made the error and they make good on it by doing just that. Ship the product again and overnight it. But again, this was not Miami's fault so I would be paying the overnight charges in addition to the other charges Andrew described.

[gene]

My UPS guy dropped of a bolt of fabric today. I said, in a rather nasty voice, "Why did this take so long to get here!"

He looked at the tag and said, "It shipped out 3 days ago for normal ground delivery." I said, "Oh. OK. Never mind."

He already thinks I'm a nutter so I didn't bother telling him that I was joking.

"Nutter" by the way, is an English (as in England) word that I have picked up from talking with some English (as in England) people and I don't know what exactly it means but I am fairly certain that it is not a compliment.

gene

[Mojo]

It means you cannot think to pour piss from a boot. :)

Chris

[mike802]

Hi Gene!  Nice to find a fellow ex ups'er  Do you know of any support groups?   :D
Gene is absolutely correct, ups is only interested in one thing, SPEED!

I worked the unload for three years, thats the poor guy who has to get into the feeder (tractor trailer, trailer) and push out all the packages, its stack on a roller conveyer and push it all out the door onto a wide belt, the belt is always on go and the sorters have to turn the packages and read labels and sort to the proper side of the belt for the car loaders to pick and load.

Please read that last paragraph as fast as you can to get an idea what your head feels like working for these jackals.  My supervisor would randomly stop in to yell at me to pick up the pace, I was told her grandmother could move more cube.  I believed her, until one day I poked my head out of the feeder and learned I was the only unloader!  The mental games these people play are unbelievable.  A guy who loaded trucks would take a vacation the replacement loader would have a total mess on his, or her hands.  But when the regular guy came back management would tell him that his replacement did such a better job than he did and if he didn't get it together his job was on the line. I could go on and on about the abuse ups employees take on any given day.

So point blank, any complaints will probably get you no where. When I opened a shipping account of my own I took my business to Fed Ex.