Wendy DeCora.com

Grrr. Arrrgh. Weep.

Last Wednesday, October 3rd, I took a framed item to The UPS Store in Coralville to have shipped to my Uncle Ron for his birthday which is tomorrow. And even that wasn’t easy. I went halfway through my lunch break intending to go to the Mailboxes, Etc. store that is downtown Iowa City on Market St. Except apparently not. I know I was there several years ago and just assumed it was still there. Its not. Except the building it used to be in still has several signs up for it, but the store just isn’t there. So after walking around the block a couple of time carrying my frame looking lost, I gave up and went to Coralville. Upon entering the store, there was just one customer and one employee. The chick working the register was trying to put a new roll of paper in the receipts dispenser joby. She couldn’t figure it out for anything. She asked both of us customers if we knew how it worked. She then called her boss and he couldn’t do anything over the phone. Somehow after about 10 minutes she got it to work. Lovely.

I finally get waited on. I needed to have the frame packaged up and sent. No problem she said, it would be delivered on Monday, October 8. I gave all the shipping information, paid my $20, got my lovely tracking number and went on my way.

On Friday, I checked the UPS website to see where my package was. The status came back as

and nothing else. I checked a few more times this weekend and the same thing. I checked this morning. Still the same. Assuming “shipper” meant The UPS Store, I called the local store. Apparently “shipper” means me. I talked to a woman there who told me that there was nothing more they could do since it had left their store and I should call UPS Customer Service. She gave me the 1-800 number and told me how to skip through the menu and get to an operator [press 0 three times, useful].

I called the number and got a human rather quickly. But a low-level human who told me that their system said just what the website was telling me and they can’t try to “put a trace on the package” until after 7pm eastern time. What? She just kept saying “check after 7pm” over and over. She also said that the package might just be delivered as it should be and it would just suddenly show up as delivered tonight. Then she said I should check with the local UPS Store again.

So I call the store back. This time I get the manager. He assures me the package isn’t just sitting on a shelf at that store. He says that the packages don’t get scanned into the system until they leave the main distribution point from the Coralville warehouse and that the people that do that are “low on the food chain” and may have “missed scanning” the package. Lovely. But the thing I don’t understand is how the package could get missed being scanned at all points along the way if it ever left Coralville. This guy also said it might just show up as delivered magically. And then he said there was nothing else that store could do for me now that the package was gone from there.

Fast-forward to 5:59PM Central and I re-load the UPS website at 6:01PM and nothing changes status-wise. I wait another hour and call UPS again. I get another person and I explain my situation again. She puts me on hold. I wait. She comes back and apologizes and says that I was told incorrectly and that they actually can’t start tracing the package until after 12AM. She keeps telling me there is nothing more she can do and that actually I will have to work with the UPS Store I shipped it from to start the trace. WTF??!?! At this point I’m starting to lose it because I’m so pissed and I’m so very upset at the prospect of this gift being lost. Its an irreplaceable family item. I don’t care if its going to be late to be delivered, I just want to know where it is! I ask to speak to her supervisor. She agrees and says she has to put me on hold. Cue hold music. tick tick tick. Then a real human pops on and says, “please hold another moment.” The hold music goes away and I hear an automated message saying “Thank you for calling Mailboxes, Etc/The UPS Store customer relations, we are closed, our normal business hours are…” The hell? Then silence for a minute, then muffled talking. I strain to listen and say “hello? hello” over the muffled words. The words clear up and I can now hear an automated menu. “Press ‘3′ to speak to a customer relations representative.” I press ‘3′ and get dumped into a voice mail box that says, “thank you for calling customer relations, we are in a meeting right now, please leave a message.”

I left a semi-coherent message, wondering mainly why they were in a meeting at 7PM and wanting someone to call me. I at least want to lodge a complaint about the inability to lodge a complaint.

So I guess I wait until tomorrow morning to start calling again.

Why this package of all things I’ve ever mailed? And I went with UPS instead of USPS because I was more afraid of something gnawing on a package sent by USPS.

Posted in Random Ramblings

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