or “Why the UPS Store doesn’t suck”.
The backstory here is long and dreary, so I will try to sum up in bullet points
January
– Lovely wife and I visit Virgina to see friends and family.
– While in Virginia, we purchase furniture, handily pre-packaged in efficient modular fashion.
– Realizing last leg of flight home will involve tiny airplane, L.W. and I investigate possiblilty that package can be shipped home instead of being checked luggage.
– UPS Store in Virginia takes our package. We pay the surprisingly reasonable shipping charges and buy a little extra insurance to cover the replacement cost of package if things go awry.
– UPS attempts to deliver package while we are not at home. I make arrangements to pick up at the UPS depot.
– 1st attempt to pick up doesn’t work out, as package wasn’t removed from local delivery truck.
– 2nd attempt to pick up doesn’t work out, as package wasn’t removed from local delivery truck.
– On 3rd attempt to pick up package, clerk goes away from the counter and a short time later comes back with a very large seen-better-days package on a cart. I don’t believe said package has anything to do with me, as it is clearly not the package I shipped. The clerk informs me that this beat up package does indeed have my name on it.
– After examining this package, I see it is constructed of two smaller square boxes opened up and stacked on top of each other and sloppily taped together to make a tall rectangular box. This “box” is the approximate height of my original package, but 3-4 times as wide. The tape isn’t doing a top notch job of sealing the flaps, so I can easily peek inside and see the disaster inside. It takes just a minute to see that my furniture is indeed inside the box. What had once been tightly packed in a long slim package is now in a jumble in the bottom of a grossly oversized slapped together box. It only takes a minute, as I had begun to have my suspicions upon observing that a piece of wood stained the same color as my purchase had broken through the cardboard close to the bottom and was jutting out at an odd angle. If I hadn’t had that hint, it may have taken a bit longer to makes sense of the jumble of crap inside the box. Looking at the remains inside confirms that my furniture had somehow exited its original packaging, gotten into the losing end of a drunken street brawl (perhaps with a UPS truck), and then been poured into this makeshift cardboard casket that was standing before me.
– I explain my situation (leaving out the street brawl theory) to the clerk and indicate I would much rather have the insurance than the $200 worth of kindling that UPS had made out of my furniture.
– After more phone calls than I can count, UPS sends the package back to the UPS Store in Virgina that originally shipped it. Hot Tip: No matter what the shipping clerk tells you, don’t put the same delivery and return address on the shipping label. Unless you want to deal with refusing a package and then finding UPS on your doorstep the next day, trying to return to sender the package you have just refused the day previous.
February, March, April
– After some initial assurances from the UPS Store that they were taking care of everything and they would contact me, I spend the next several weeks in one way communication with the UPS Store.
– At one point, I am informed that my insurance claim was denied for insufficient packaging. I was both irritated and confused. What packaging was that denial based on? My original packaging, or, more likely, the half-assed packaging that showed up in Little Rock?
Late April/Early May
– Still smoldering over my bad turn of luck of having ever darkened the door of a UPS Store, I jump on the internet, cruise over to upsstore.com, leave a last ditch email with the Customer Service folks, bitterly pleading for intervention on my behalf that I have zero expectations will actually materialize.
Mid May
– Jaw drops to floor after receiving check for full amount of insurance plus refund of shipping fee from the UPS Store in Virginia. Make plans to drive straight to the bank and cash check before waking from the dreamland of wrongs righted. UPS Store, you rock!
Saying they rock for getting your money to you four months after you should have gotten it is pretty kind, but I’m glad brown worked for you in the long run. Nice job with the rotating pics too, btw.
Shipping is weird. My mom shipped each of my kids a package for Easter leaving Hampton Roads at the same time. One arrived here in two days, the other in two weeks. That was the USPS at work. Still, for the most part, I remain impressed with the ability of these companies to get stuff from point A to point B in a timely fashion. Paying 39 cents to get any item you can imagine to travel to an exact location thousands of miles away in just a few days is still one of the best values on the planet.