UPS’s own employees making the business look bad on the Internet
I’m sure most UPS employees are fine people with a stressful job. I should say, however, that next to search queries for how to get rid of U3 on a thumb drive, the most popular query for this site is “UPS sucks”, because, well… my experiences with UPS have not been all that great, and apparently other people haven’t been having fantastic experiences with them either.
The problem is that because a lot of businesses only ship with them, they’re often the only game in town (because they’re cheap), so it’s not as if anyone has a choice in terms of using them most of the time.
I certainly never chose to ship with UPS when I had other alternatives. Your mileage may vary of course, but in recent years, my experiences with UPS were not good. Don’t get me wrong – some individual delivery drivers have been kind and helpful and diligent, and it is a shame that what I generally presume to be a bad customer service model (rather than individual drivers) means that there’s more focus on the substantial negatives people experience than the people who do a good job. That’s unfortunately the way of the world.
Buuuuuuuuut…
A gentleman referring to himself as “Mr. Big” (overcompensate much, dear?) from Florida (specifically, 76.108.125.137 , which resolves to a dynamic Comcast IP (c-76-108-125-137.hsd1.fl.comcast.net) - West Palm Beach, perhaps?) chose to demonstrate how classy some of UPS’s employees really are by leaving me the following message this morning:
you people are idiots,, please dont use ups,bunch of retards,,first off unless you live in complete filth in the ghetto , or THE SHIPPER PAID TO MAKE SURE WE DONT LEAVE THE PACKAGE WITHOUT A SIGNATURE then you are outta luck,we cant leaveit,, the last thing we want to do is go back to the same stop the next day, as for the sea cow that said ‘ oh,, thats terrible the driver would not bring the package up for the pregnant woman” boo hoo,, we have on average about 190 stops a day and everyone we deal with has a bad back, is crippled,, old,, pregnant, retarded, some reason why they want us to do more than we are paid for…jerks,,, ups has been around 100 yrs and is still payin its employees well and makin a ton of money….HA HA HA
Hmmmm. So UPS, is this the public face you want to display?
Complain about UPS on the Internet, get told you’re a a retard, and a jerk, a sea cow for sympathizing with a pregnant woman, and get (really, so eloquently) informed that UPS has been around forever, is making loads of money, and you, the customer, can suck it?
My personal suspicion, given the number of hits I get for UPS sucking in various forms, is that businesses that use their model of making customer service effectively unavailable (and having a standard set of falsehoods used as a delay tactic for angry customers) which don’t also provide reasonable service to their customers will eventually collapse under their own weight, though it may take a while. If you’re the only game in town by virtue of being the cheap choice of online retailers, it takes a while for customers to decide to pay for more expensive options or to simply stop using particular services until they start offering multiple shipping options. When we still lived in the US, I often opted for 2-day FedEx, USPS or DHL when it was offered, even if it was more expensive, to avoid having anything important go via UPS. I wanted to ensure I actually got what I asked for when it was supposed to come and didn’t waste multiple days waiting for it or find it stolen (by the way, “Mr. Big”, I didn’t live in the ghetto – I lived in a city. Cities are densely populated and not all people are scrupulous, as you surely know from *ahem* personal experience). If companies like UPS continue to go for increased profit margins at the expense of actually providing the service they’re paid to provide (delivering when they say they will deliver, not lying about having tried to deliver it afterwards, etc.), they will eventually run into problems, though I do suppose the lesson of the U.S. economy in the new millenium is that you can lie for a damned long time – at least long enough to run off with the profits, leaving employees like our friend here screwed.
Anyway, I should state, for the record, that I didn’t post this because I’m somehow upset by it – I’m actually amused.
Especially since Mr. Big — whose charming (and certainly fake) email address was, incidentally, entered as “slapyousideways@yahoo.com” — got here by searching for the following phrase: “why working for UPS sucks”.
UPS, you may want to have a chat with some of your Floridian employees about 1) how not to represent your company, and 2) how to be less stupid on the Internet.
Just sayin’…
(1.14.2010 – and it appears we have another winner on the employee list. Of course, it could be the same dude coming through a Tor server (don’t think I didn’t see that), but if not, welcome, “bossman” from somewhere near Valencia, CA… you’re the next contestant on the Circle of Jerks ™! – pun intended.)
I live in Louisville, which is, I believe, the hub for UPS air. I know a lot of UPS employees who happen to work at the airport, and they make it perfectly clear that they HATE UPS customers, especially around the holidays. One such individual that I know personally through an exotic beer club, has both posted online in chat forums and said to a group of us, in person, that if you ship during the holidays and your packages arrive all busted up, tough luck to you. He even went so far to say that on some packages marked as fragile they will throw them around, to ‘relieve tension’. I have inferred that this is done because they are angry that they are getting paid overtime on top of holiday pay, and they feel they should not have to actually do any work to get their paychecks…and from the people I know, UPS does indeed pay their people very well as your “Mr. Big” noted.
Like you, I have stopped using UPS if I have any other options available, it’s a shame DHL has downsized so much as to be almost non-existent in the U.S. now.
I wish I could say the company I work for felt the same way, but at least we do offer alternative forms of shipping (USPS and FedEx).
Good post. I am not going to defend the UPS guy all the way but those guys bust their a*& all year long. To me as an ex DHL employee of 22 plus years, UPS drivers are some of the hardest workers in America. And when it comes to the holiday season, it is off the hook. When we look at the customer service end of shipping, they are all geared towards confusing the customers and not releasing any info while tracking a package. They might just say “out on route”. There are a lot of moving parts in the shipping business and countless chances for things to go wrong. Like I said, I’m ex DHL and an Airborne Express legacy “now that was a good shipping company” you never bitch about the customers in an online forum. Bitching should be kept in house between drivers. Fyi, some customers are indeed something to be desired. Customers pay the bills!!! Sounds like the driver was blowing off some steam. Not in the right direction in my opinion. If you are gonna bitch, shoot it at UPS mgmt. or the union. They make the rules in the end.
In my blog, it is very anti DHL, Union and politician. All three had a role in the story. I never complained about customers. If you know the demise of DHL and the story, that is where I come in. The customer is not to be blamed on what happened. I as a driver did what I can do to retain customers but, DHL had something else in mind. You can tell that UPS driver that he is lucky to have a good paying job still because it sucks loosing a $70,000 + income. Good luck to you with your blog and everything else that you do.