What happened to UPS?

I’ll admit that I was a little late ordering my Christmas presents.  A) I’m not a Christian, and B) The whole “consumer’s Christmas” schtick is a little nauseating.  Still, not to be a total grinch and to help stave off the inevitable collapse of our economy, I ordered some crap.  Call it peer pressure.

It was late, but luckily, the place offered “UPS three-day” delivery.  Being that it’s Christmas, and we’ve done this routine before, I assumed that that meant “three-day” delivery– since they offer other options, like two-day delivery.  One would think that the period required was the distinguishing characteristic.  Not so.  It means, “you might get it in three days… you know… assuming it doesn’t snow… in December.  And maybe not.  We’ll let you know.”  I guess that was too wordy.

It snowed.  Go figure.  About a week ago.  There’s still snow on the ground.  That, apparently, qualifies for “impossible to deliver, act of God, apocalyptic End of Times Exception” on delivery.  So I call them and say, ‘hey, I know, it’s… sort of… not ideal out… but since it’s completely easy for me to get from my house to your facility (but clearly not the other way), whattdya say I come get my stuff so that our Christmas is funnish?”  You see, their tracking tool said that my stuff was actually here in town… they just weren’t going to bring it to me.

But it turns out that you can’t actually call your local UPS facility.  You can call someone somewhere (if you convince the automated system to let you talk to a human, it *literally* tries to talk you out of it with “I can connect you, but this is the latest information we have.  Do you still want to speak to an agent?”) and they’ll offer to “pass a message to your local facility who will call you back in an hour” to let you know if you can come get your “three-day delivery” packages.

Except that… well… they don’t call back.  Not in an hour.  Not ever.  And you don’t have their number.  So, the whole thing just disappears. Hah!  Psych!

They’re really very busy.  You can’t expect them to call back when they say they’ll call back.  Logistics.  Optimized processes.  You wouldn’t understand.  They’re busy.  It snowed.  They had no idea that something like this could happen.  Snow… in December… and lots of packages… at Christmas. I’m being unreasonable.

Right… so, if you sell a thing, say, “three-day delivery” and you sell other things like “two-day delivery,” shouldn’t the onus be on you to deliver in three days?  And then, if you’re not going to accomplish that (because snow fell in the winter), shouldn’t your customer be able to do… something?  Anything?

Once, JetBlue left me in Manhattan with no more than a “we’ll get you on a flight back in FOUR DAYS”.  No “can we put you up in a hotel” or “we can get you on a different airline”.  Just… a web site confirmation of my flight, a $40 cab ride, a nasty man (I was being unreasonable again) at JFK telling me that my flight was canceled and I should call “the 800 number”, another $40 cab ride, and then a nearly impossible to reach customer service line where, when reached, I was told that I’d be put on a flight four days later.  I ended up arranging my own travel home the next day.

There’s a lesson in both of these experiences.  The problem lies not with the wholly incompetent customer service of these horrific organizations.  They suck and will continue to suck for sheer lack of understanding of the significance of the implied contract into which they engage with their customers.  I’m a human being who needs to be home to put my kids to bed, run my business, tend my garden, and live my life.  I want to be able to rely on my service providers to deliver on their promises so that I can plan my life accordingly.

No, the problem is not in our stars but in ourselves.  I have accepted a life in which I need to fly to Manhattan one day and be back in Portland two days later.  I don’t believe there even was a Jesus Christ, and yet I buy my loved ones consumer goods to be presented on his “birthday”.  For some reason, I care that my customer service call to Microsoft is routed half-way around the world to a guy obviously in Bangalore, India who calls himself Eric Thompson and hasn’t got the power or knowledge to fix the simplest of problems with their operating system.  “Sir, please rebooting your system and calling back.  This is fixing your problem with mail.”  No.  No, it’s not.

Maybe this is, indeed, and Act of God, whatever that means.  The power of the universe is trying to tell me something.  “You don’t need that stuff.  It’s not going to make anyone any happier.  Make something, tell someone you love them, cook a meal, play a game with your kids… as soon as you need to call customer service, you’ve gone off the rails.”

I keep saying that, but I keep falling prey to the pervasive framework of buying better crap and making the house “nicer.”  Next year I’ll try, really, to learn to identify those things that will make me happy versus those things that seem great but will actually bring misery.  There we go… there’s no Christmas presents this year, but I think I have my New Year’s Resolution all worked out.

** UPDATE

Our crap arrived tonight.  Let me just say that I don’t blame the “UPS guy” for this problem any more than I blame the soldiers for getting shipped to Iraq.  I would imagine that driving in that slop is no fun.  My issue is with the company that sells you “2nd Day Air” delivery but then can’t deliver it and, further, doesn’t give the customer any outlet or alternatives.  Maybe they need to provide more appropriate vehicles for their drivers.  Maybe they need to pay for more people to get the stuff moved.  Or, more likely, they need to assume that this kind of thing will happen and provide actual customer service.  For instance, they could take the phone calls and return them when promised.  In any case, it’s my responsibility no to put myself in this position.  Relying on a corporation to watch out for your better interests is like having the local vampire babysit your daughter while you go out for a midnight movie.