I think the service at UPS is horrendous. I wish businesses that use courriers advertised which! Better still, that they could offer the customer the choice among several.
In trying to get my Apple Watch serviced, Apple uses UPS to deliver me the empty box in which I am to send the Watch for repair. So far, according to the proof of delivery, UPS has delivered that box… twice… but to the wrong person… twice. I don’t know them, nor where they are though. And neither does UPS.
They can investigate. But it takes eight business days, and first you have to file a complaint, and then perhaps the shipment can be located and delivered (but my hunch is that it’s a big IF).
Lousy customer experience, down to the website
Other aspects of the UPS service are bad. I have first-hand experience with two:
- an account is required in order to do anything pertaining to a shipment you are the recipient of (that’s right, you not only did not select that carrier yourself, but you also need to give them personal data, and they don’t say anything about what they will do with it),
- the account creation process breaks, possibly because it makes some pretty dumb assumptions.
For personal reasons I use French regional settings but English language on my devices. It might explain why the UPS account creation process chose to establish my account in the USA –a field in the form that I could neither toggle nor edit. Obviously, the account failed as invalid.
And yet, as I fiddled with it to fix it, and after the site stopped responding for a while, I found out that the account error had simply vanished. I dug around in my new Hawaii-based UPS “My Choice” account, and couldn’t find any trace of stored physical location.
False claims in the field and on the web
Once logged in, I tried the “change my delivery” button. After all, this is 2022 and for a while now all modern carriers have offered recipients the possibility to reschedule, or supply backup delivery instructions. Their button did not work. It either took me back to the tracking view, or showed a never-ending spinning wheel named “authenticating” even though I appeared to be logged in still.
Later, I found out that in order to be able to reschedule a delivery, UPS first must attempt to deliver and fail. How moronic!
This type of delivery prohibited the option to pick up at a third party facility. I assume that requesting delivery in my mailbox, front door, garden or at my neighbour’s was equally not an option, but nothing was explicit.
In any case, it would be useful if they set some expectations about what I may or may not do with the “change my delivery” button. I created an account with the purpose of doing something that eventually wasn’t possible.
Groundhog Days
Day 1: I paid for a Watch battery replacement. Apple sent via UPS a box for me to send the Watch back to them.
Day 2, morning: The delivery was set to take place between 9:30 am and 1:30 pm. I waited at home. At 2pm the tracking page indicated that the estimated delivery time had been updated. It then was “by end of day”. Sigh.
Day 2, afternoon: The shipment was marked as delivered, at 2:38 pm, at “Office”, signed by someone unfamiliar. There was nothing I could do about this shipment on the UPS website. I was not happy.
Day 2, Apple hotline: On their end the box was marked as delivered. They were not particularly sympathetic to the fact that I had stayed home for nothing, and they could not redirect the delivery: they didn’t even know where it had been delivered. So the first repair order was canceled, and I paid for a second one, which triggered a second shipment with UPS.
Day 3, morning: The delivery was set to take place between 8:30 am and 12:30 pm. I waited at home. At 1:30 pm the tracking page indicated that the estimated delivery time had been updated. It then was “by end of day”. Sigh.
Day 3, 1:35 pm: The tracking page indicated that they had missed me and would try on the next business day. I was furious.
Day 3, UPS hotline: The person on the phone did not seem surprised nor bothered that the courrier had neither rung my bell nor my phone. I was told that someone from another department at UPS would call back within the hour with an update and perhaps tell me when I might get the package. I continued to wait at home.
Day 3, 2:30 pm: Nobody called. On the tracking page, the shipment was marked as delivered, at 1:46 pm, again at “Office”, signed by the same unfamiliar person. I was outraged.
Day 3, second call to the UPS hotline: Another person, equally careless, said the only information they had that I didn’t was that the location of the package delivery was in fact “Office of the director”. I then learned about the complaint being the first required step to the investigation which may take about eight business days. and which may or may not surface where the effing package ended up.
Day 3, Apple hotline: The first person to actually sound sympathetic! But there wasn’t anything they could do other than canceling the second repair order, and get me to pay for a third one, which triggered a third shipment with UPS. That one is set for Day 7 because it’s a Monday.
Day 4: I finally clicked the UPS link I was sent the day before to file a complaint. Unsurprisingly, an account is required to do that too! I was ready to go into as much detail as needed. I had screenshots of everything. So I was very dismayed when I realised it was a click-through process where I had to chose which pre-set scenario matched my situation the best, among a selection of six or seven. I was also quite dismayed that it didn’t let me file a second complaint for the first failed delivery.
Unfortunate AND ironic
Isn’t it ironic that I opted for the home pickup/delivery for my Apple hardware servicing because I was disappointed that our local (it’s still a 66-kilometer round trip) Apple Store Genius Bar is nothing but a collection desk? They do not do any onsite hardware service. They send it elsewhere, it takes 10 to 15 days, they get the product back, let you know it’s ready, and you come again to retrieve it and pay for the service.
Update on Day 7
UPS delivered!!! (Albeit an hour late)