Any UPS horror stories?

A DAC I ordered off of Audiogon came UPS. The guy left it at my neighbors house. He opened it and found out he didn't order it. It sat at his house for 2 weeks until it dawned on him to check the label. He finally brought the unit over, and all is well now... BUT UPS said that they delivered the item, I said I never received it, and the person I was dealing with proceded to tell me I was untruthful about my claim and she took my information (supposedly). No one has called to follow up (6 weeks gone by). My neighbor and I spoke of the situation, since I received a package of his from a retailer about the same time frame that he brought over my DAC. 2 defects in 2 weeks time.... NEVER USE UPS unless you want to get a claim for defective equipment.

They were dropping off a package, and since I had a delivery pickup scheduled, the UPS guy took my package and said he was coming back to my building later and would bring the paperwork with him then. The scheduled delivery man would have had the paper work with him, but I thought it made sense that since he was here, why not give UPS the package now. Well... of course the paperwork didn't come, they did not (or would not?) know the name of the pickup man, and therefore couldn't find my tracking number or a record of my package being ever being picked up. It did arrive, but had the wrong COD amount. They have all sorts of regulations regarding not accepting different COD amounts (understandably), but since the mistake was theirs I thought that I could approve the correct amount and be done with it. But no...they wanted to send the package back to me, so that I could "verify" the correct COD amount! After hours of phone calls with incompetant "management" people they agreed to try to keep the package in the city I had shipped it to and collect the "new" COD amount, but (and get this) they could not contact their own office to arrange this because the phone line was busy all day. I told them that there must be some way to contact their own offices, and they said that there was no other way to reach it, and they needed another manager's help to finally find a way to reach the other office. I faxed a letter to them with the correct amount and after 2 days of phone calls and a big runaround they finally dropped of the package. It nearly blew the deal because of the delays. Needless to say.. I am not in a rush to use them again. Also, what's up with a "4 day" delivery that takes seven? A package is picked up at 10 a.m on a Wednesday, the 4 "business" days are Thurs, Fri, Mon, Tues, the package arrives at 6:30 p.m. Tues. Total delivery time: six and a half days. Did the package stop rolling at 5 p.m. Fri, and start rolling again at 9 a.m Mon?, I don't think so!! Did the 24 hrs of time from Thurs, pickup to the first "business" day (Fri.) not count. I assume that when someone picks up a package and is driving it to another location that it was "business", but I was wrong. What would you call it?

Like everybody else, I have my own share of UPS horror stories, to the point where I now regard UPS as being an acronym for Unbelievably Poor Service. However, for the purposes of your claim, go to WWW.DEJANEWS.COM and enter UPS as the subject and REC.AUDIO.MARKETPLACE as the forum. You will then have a litany of UPS mishaps that should keep someone reading full time for the next two years.

I would suggest eveyone to spend little more money to PACK & MARK the shipping carton right. Most of the high end equipments are very heavy for the size. Remember, UPS is a small package delivery company. UPS drivers don't carry a hand truck. Think about the packages being handled by many many different hands & transported to one, two even three thousand miles away. If you use right size carton & use good protection inside the carton & mark the carton like FRAGILE, HEAVY, you will have almost no problem with UPS. I just received a Mcintosh C-39 pre amp from Seattle to San Francisco. It took two days & received in perfect condition.

I had a visit from UPS, and they finally gave in. But of course, they had to give me a hard time about it-- saying that the box was not big enough to absorb the shock! Then, about 40 minutes of arguing, he calls his office and says, "Why didn't you handle this before? The amp's been sitting here for the past two months. It's double-packaged, and the packing material looks fine!" Double-talking Jive!!! It's finally over and I can rest easy. As for Ysim's comment, I had written "FRAGILE" all over the box along with bright yellow "HEAVY" signs. There's no packing material that'll prevent damage when you drop a 90 lbs amplifier from 10 ft above the ground. I wonder how much longer you're going to have luck with UPS, but be careful.