Why UPS sucks hard (hint: I still don’t have my new jacket)
29Feb2008 Filed under: ramblings Author: MikeWhen I ordered my ScotteVest jacket, it wasn’t without some degree of hesitation. I had noticed that they shipped to Canada via UPS, which I consider to be one of the worst courier companies of all time. But the idea of a geek jacket with pockets inside pockets (and did I mention the magnetic closures?) got the better of me and I placed my order.
The jacket was originally scheduled to arrive yesterday. As I work from home, waiting around for it to show wasn’t a problem. And that’s what I did for the entire day. At 3 pm I noticed my package’s tracking status had been updated; apparently a delivery “attempt” was made, but they couldn’t find the main entrance to the building.
I called UPS and offered to pick it up at their depot instead. The woman I spoke to said that I’d get it the next day for sure, and that all I needed to do was give them updated delivery instructions. Our building has a 24 hour concierge, and he will accept packages on our behalf. She confirmed that the driver would leave the package with the concierge today.
Flash forward to 3:30 pm today. Nat comes in the door with a UPS delivery attempt notification. Apparently I owe brokerage fees on the package, something both UPS reps I spoke to last night mentioned nothing about, assuring me that the package would be left with the concierge.
If that wasn’t annoying enough, UPS wants to charge me $79 for “importing” the package. That’s 61.5% the cost of the WHOLE JACKET, and is completely, utterly and totally insane. I ordered a $2400 laptop from the US once and didn’t pay that much to import it.
In any case, I still want the jacket so I guess I’ll pay the damn fee. I did manage to get $30 off the jacket when I ordered it, so that offsets the brokerage fee somewhat. I called UPS and got a little angry (I apologized immediately as it isn’t the fault of the person at the other end), and arranged to pick it up at their depot (on Monday, as apparently they’re closed on weekends).
I’ve also emailed ScotteVest to inform them as to just what a ripoff it is to import one of their jackets into Canada. It’s not their fault that UPS charges what it does, but maybe they can look around for alternative shipping companies – I’ve had good experiences with Purolator in the past.
Sigh.
- Tags: annoyed, ripoff, scottevest, ups
6 Responses to “Why UPS sucks hard (hint: I still don’t have my new jacket)”
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My name is Mike Kelly. I'm a Kitchener, Ontario-based technologist and non-practicing physicist. strangely entangled is my home base on the internet. If you look hard enough you'll find some blog postings, articles, photos and other stuff I thought might be interesting
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Guess I’m not the only one - UPS sued for outrageous brokerage fees at strangely entangled
March 19th, 2008 at 5:39 pm
[...] I mentioned previously, UPS nailed me with an excessively large brokerage fee on a jacket that I recently purchased from a [...]
WTL
May 11th, 2008 at 9:58 am
I’ve had the same complaint about UPS when ordering from ThinkGeek. I’ve asked them repeatedly to send stuff by the post office so stop getting these insane bills from UPS.
Oddly, ThinkGeek doesn’t seem to care at all – they never even bothered to reply to my email. :-/
kim
January 21st, 2010 at 6:34 pm
i’m still waiting for ups to deliver my package to me. it’s ridiculous that they expect someone to physically be there to sign and pay for all their outrageous COD charges (people have to work to pay for those packages, taxes, duties and brokerage fees!). why can’t you pay for these fees online and then have the driver leave the package? and why does someone have to sign for it in person? sure, maybe they’re “protecting” you by ensuring you get the parcel. but if i’m going to sign off on it and someone steals it, that’s my problem. their website sucks and i had to read a bunch of pages before it said that you can only redirect the parcel after the first attempt (and i’ve now had two attemps to deliver). and why can’t i get a real person when i call their telephone number. i will never again buy from a retailer that ships from them. it is just too much of a headache. f*** you, ups.
Paul Klipp
April 22nd, 2010 at 4:43 am
I had the same problem, and I told Scott Jordan of Scottevest that it would be good if he could offer more shipping options. His reply was “BS, our order fulfillment rocks!”
I haven’t bought from them since.
Mike
April 28th, 2010 at 11:19 am
Paul: Wow. Seriously? Scottevest does seem to have changed things – we ordered a hoodie for my wife and they sent it via regular post – no crazy UPS fees.
Paul Klipp
May 5th, 2010 at 6:40 am
@Mike you can confirm it in the Twitter stream. Scott Jordan responds violently to any criticism. I once saw him call a guy who split a seam on new pants “fat”. That’s customer service! But, yeah, I see they switched to USPS from UPS, but they still don’t offer any options. Is it so hard to let the customer choose how they want their parcel shipped?