Joe,
I feel for you. I restore and sell recond parts for Little British
Cars for a living, and rely on UPS/USPS for my parts lifeline. A disgruntled
doc once told me that if he has a package that "Absolutely, positively" has
to be there, such as a heart and lung to go into his own body, he would
rather rely on his spiteful and drunken ex-mother in law than the UPS fort he
organ donor delivery . I actually have better luck with the post office than
with UPS because the PO delivers on Saturday and Sunday; UPS doesn't arrive
until 4:30pm which can kill an otherwise perfectly good Monday....
My worst experience? I sent a very expensive, freshly smoked vacuum
packed turkey to my parents via the old 2 day UPS for Thanksgiving. Eighty
miles. This was "Pre-tracking/pre overnight" era. It was a no-show. They
agreed to pay me for the insured value. Around Christmas, the package turned
up on my parent's doorstep. The box was crushed and there was a hole in the
vacuum wrapper. How anyone could have stood the smell is beyond me....
However, another obviously content employee I know says UPS is
on-time 99.99% of the time. They must be somewhere in-between. A little
math lesson, perfesser....
UPS ships 300,000,000 packages between Thanksgiving and Christmas
(peak season for getting the hot rod back together....) If 299,997,000
packages were delivered on time, then 3000 fell thru the cracks and didn't
make it ON-TIME. That's because they were shipped to desolate places like
Dallas and Chicago and New York City. So, if 99.99% of the remaining 3000
eventually make it to their actual destinations, the remaining 3 completely
undeliverable, yet plainly addressed and wholly unreplaceable at any cost,
yet somehow uninsured packages get shipped to the UPS's Black Hole Division
which is located in beautiful downtown Bountiful, Utah, just a short drive
from nowhere where they sit until the middle of August.... and are finally
tracked down via www.oops.com...
....on the phone, a dutiful employee:
"Hello, UPS Black Hole. Oh, I'm sorry, sir, we only have three packages
here. Oh golly, they ARE yours! Well, gosh, figure the odds.... Oh, I'm so
sorry again, sir, but gosh darn it, we close down this afternoon for
Speedweek. We all go down to Salt Lake City and sell Mormon Meteor Tee Shirts
to the tourists. We'd be more than happy to send them right off. The
packages, sir, not the Tee Shirts. The shirts are fourteen ninety five, plus
tax and UPS shipping and are high quality one hundred percent cotton. Oh, I'm
sorry. You mean your packages.... Sure. They're headed your way as we speak.
Oh, by the way, since we're out here in no-man's land, shipping time can be
as long as 3 weeks. WE get everything in and out by way of the Post Office.
Takes a day or two less. You should be getting it a couple days after this
Speedweek nonsense is over.... Have a pleasant day, sir...."
Mark Childers Union Jack Spares & Repairs Virginia Beach Virginia
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