UPS used to be a great company, but not anymore

[FRSToyota86]

Our collective opinion among several friends and a few business owners who ship regularly is that UPS is no longer the great company that it was once.

If you want your orders to shipped promptly and avoid delays at major shipping hubs just avoid UPS.

It seems like if their trucks are not full at the hubs, they will hold your packages until the next day or more to fill them up in order to get most profitability and higher utilization, on the expense of the deliveries being done at a later time. Which is terrible considering how much you pay. Major competitor FedEx is always more reliable it seems.

Claims with UPS also seems like resolve in favor of UPS in a quick, swift and peculiar way.

After Hurricane Irma, our Local FedEx delivery trucks were on their regular routes with in a day, however after nearly a week, my scheduled Saturday delivery status which shows in truck and out for delivery, magically gets delayed, blaming the hurricane, which is absurd since here in Central Florida we are for most part back to normal already. It appears to me that the management at UPS is taking every opportunity, and using every excuse to resort to penny pinching, to save fuel, mileage, and not wanting to pay the price for doing business and therefore causing annoying delays on regular basis.

If you are operating an online business and selling parts or shipping to friends and family, I humbly suggest you avoid using UPS and choose FedEx or USPS, specially is you are shipping to Canada. UPS is the only company which will charge your clients on the other end a import processing fees, which is often around 35$ to 40$ USD which is aroud 50$ CND.

Thank you for reading, I tried to keep it short and sweet.

I wish UPS would eventually commit to offering better services in near future, but at the moment they do get a thumbs down, and it is what it is.

[humfrz]

DAMN, FRSToyota86, did the UPS delivery of your Metamucil shipment come late .......??





humfrz

[Twinz]

It's the other way around in our area. (SW FL) UPS is great and FedEx is hit or miss.

[StraightOuttaCanadaEh]

I hate UPS. As a canadian I don't understand why I'm paying 40% fees for a simple delivery, and when a business only offers UPS as a delivery method, I actually don't even buy their product.

[guybo]

It was just a matter of time until UPS went down the shitter. I agree with the OP and i have noticed it too. UPS over-works drivers and they work crazy hours. That alone is a recipe for poor production. I know someone who had a package arrive past 10PM a couple weeks ago. Until they revert to regular hours for their workers (40 hour weeks) and put more trucks on the road, they won't be able to keep up and maintain their formerly stellar reputation.

[mav1178]

We have no issues with UPS at work.

All our shipping insurance is done via a different company (not the standard UPS insurance via Crawford & Company). Blanket coverage for everything we ship (approx. 150 packages a day, approx. $30-50k per week via all carriers, plus covers all inbound shipments to us + drop ships to our customers where we have a financial interest in the shipment).

The import processing fee can be negotiated and reduced. It depends ENTIRELY on the shipper to negotiate these things with the carrier. We negotiated with UPS to basically reduce this fee to zero. Declared value is entirely different and at the discretion of the receiver, since this impacts claim value in case of shipment damage. You can even move over to API and do away with Worldship completely, and move to paperless invoice to reduce the fees to zero. Or, the shipper can simply pay for these things up front for the end user should they choose.

Every carrier has their pros and cons. We have not gone over/back to FedEx because they have not given us a compelling reason to switch.

-alex

[Cole]

Originally Posted by StraightOuttaCanadaEh

I hate UPS. As a canadian I don't understand why I'm paying 40% fees for a simple delivery, and when a business only offers UPS as a delivery method, I actually don't even buy their product.

Imagine my shock when I bought a used OFT from the US for 500 CAD and was hit with a 144 CAD duty charge.

[krayzie]

UPS has been shit since the beginning at least here in Canada. They have improved over the years but still some way from being a great courier service like FedEx.

Sometimes UPS drivers don't even ring the bell, just stick a notice on your door and leave. One time I caught them not showing up and just marked my package as no answer. I called and complained right away, then 30 mins later my package arrived. The driver told me the original driver just shoved the package to him at the UPS Store, probably afraid that I would kick his sorry ass.

For the longest time they didn't offer readily available local pickups in Toronto, only by appointment. Their only depot is at the other end of the city from me.

[cjd]

Worst service for me is Amazon. They've screwed up more orders in the short time they've been delivering than I've had screwed up in the past 20 years of mail-ordering stuff.

FedEx has screwed up a couple times, including an overnighted package requiring signature dropped at the wrong address and no signature... (replacement credit cards...)

UPS here is great.

That said, packages I get out of Dayton Ohio via UPS are consistently destroyed. Doesn't help that the packing job is sloppy and the contents someties heavy... but never a box I'd even be comfortable refusing and sending back. Only had items go missing through holes in the box, so far. So there is that.

The other miserably delivery was a freight company. They wanted to leave a pallet on the street and make my wife sign for it (she could NOT have unloaded it.) They did not deliver when they said they would, or I'd have been home... Fortunately my mom was visiting and told them off, and they gave in and brought the pallet around to the alley, down the sidewalk, and through the front gate so it was actually... on our property.

The long and short of it: it's not the company, specifically. It's the specific local hubs and drivers.

Shipping across international borders is a different game entirely, so I can't comment there beyond DHL getting shit to my house from India faster than UPS+USPS (SmartPost) from one states over.

[dem00n]

I'm one of the few people that think USPS is better than UPS or FedEx...

[mav1178]

Originally Posted by cjd

The long and short of it: it's not the company, specifically. It's the specific local hubs and drivers.

Yup, which is why the good hubs/territory are always run by managers who proactively address problems up front.

UPS has been great at addressing the concerns of automotive clients in Southern California, and it's pretty much the reason why all the shippers use UPS primarily in SoCal.

[8RZ]

They all suck.

[Azzudien]

Originally Posted by dem00n

I'm one of the few people that think USPS is better than UPS or FedEx...

Actually agree, USPS has become quite good at package shipping and substantially cheaper than UPS or FEDex. My company switched almost entirely to USPS few years back and we cut our shipping expenses by 30%

[x808drifter]

Originally Posted by Azzudien

Actually agree, USPS has become quite good at package shipping and substantially cheaper than UPS or FEDex. My company switched almost entirely to USPS few years back and we cut our shipping expenses by 30%

Habitually abuse Flat Rate boxes.