UPS 'lost' my lower receiver.

[Robb]

My order from Palmetto made it to the UPS Hub in Commerce City and then disappeared, never made it on the truck for delivery and appears to have vanished into thin air.

The package should have been to me around Dec 6th. I talked to UPS and Palmetto after a week of no delivery from the UPS hub and Palmetto opened a claim on Dec 11th. I emailed a contact at Palmetto day before yesterday and her response was that I'll "be notified when UPS finishes their investigation of the trace of the package." I was really hoping Palmetto would leave me out of the loop and resend my order.

This is the current status from the UPS page: *Commerce City, CO, United States 12/17/2013 3:03 P.M. Tracer request. / Claim issued.*

How do I handle this? Should I just sit back and wait, request a replacement? I'm ready to contest the charges and reorder.

[rondog]

I've heard a lot of horror stories on the news about UPS and their package overload/backlog this holiday season, they're having Hell this year - too many people shopping online.

Hopefully it'll turn up! If not, you may have to get loud, "where's my GUN? I've been expecting my GUN for weeks now! You've lost my GUN? Somebody stole my GUN from UPS???? Find my GUN!!!" I've heard that'll build a fire under their asses....

[Gman]

...too many people shopping online.

There's no such thing. UPS is in the shipping business. For every online shopper, it's a business opportunity. If they can't run their business well enough to take advantage of those opportunities, then the folks running UPS aren't doing their fiduciary duty for their shareholders.

[Jeffrey Lebowski]

There's no such thing. UPS is in the shipping business. For every online shopper, it's a business opportunity. If they can't run their business well enough to take advantage of those opportunities, then the folks running UPS aren't doing their fiduciary duty for their shareholders.

That could be said of any publicly traded corp that isn't nailing it. I'm not sure I'd call bad management that exactly. Does your company have the agility to scale up and down when your volume doubles temporarily and you have a strict time-frame?

[PugnacAutMortem]

That could be said of any publicly traded corp that isn't nailing it. I'm not sure I'd call bad management that exactly. Does your company have the agility to scale up and down when your volume doubles temporarily and you have a strict time-frame?

It's not like it was a sudden thing though. Christmas time is the same time every year...UPS just doesn't want to spend the money hiring seasonal workers.

[Double00]

It's not like it was a sudden thing though. Christmas time is the same time every year...UPS just doesn't want to spend the money hiring seasonal workers.

Not true. UPS screwed up big time. It had nothing to do with not hiring seasonal help. The system got overloaded plain and simple. I have been working 12hrs days since the beginning of Nov. It wasn't the lack of seasonal help.

[Graves]

It's not like it was a sudden thing though. Christmas time is the same time every year...UPS just doesn't want to spend the money hiring seasonal workers.

It isn't the same every year. Every day this peak season yielded more volume than our peak day last year. And as for seasonal employees...we STILL have over 130 rental vehicles on the road, and peak should ended the day after Christmas given last year's record. I guess the rentals will be used for a couple more weeks. With 2-300k pcs moving through there a day, I'm sure we're bound to make a few mistakes...

ETA: Im only talking about the commerce city location.

[Gman]

That could be said of any publicly traded corp that isn't nailing it. I'm not sure I'd call bad management that exactly. Does your company have the agility to scale up and down when your volume doubles temporarily and you have a strict time-frame?

Yeah, because hiring temporary help during the Christmas shopping season is new and unique to retail and shipping.

In other news, Butterball seems to be able to figure out that they get a lot more customer contacts around the last Thursday in November and staff accordingly.

There are a ton of businesses that have to adapt to the realities of our modern day society, unless you're the US Postal Service. You either adapt or die.

[Jeffrey Lebowski]

It's not like it was a sudden thing though. Christmas time is the same time every year...UPS just doesn't want to spend the money hiring seasonal workers.

Do you really think it is that?
http://upsjobs-problemsolved.com/home

Yeah, because hiring temporary help during the Christmas shopping season is new and unique to retail and shipping.

In other news, Butterball seems to be able to figure out that they get a lot more customer contacts around the last Thursday in November and staff accordingly.

There are a ton of businesses that have to adapt to the realities of our modern day society, unless you're the US Postal Service. You either adapt or die.

Do you really think Butterball significantly increases their staffing around the last Thursday in November?
Which do you think is easier to predict? How many turkeys you are raising on your farms, and therefore need to stuff into sacks, or how many companies out there may or may not use your services and how many presents people may or may not buy this year as the economy and holiday retail cycles over the past few years? Shipping an unknown quantity of items all over the United states is JUST LIKE retailers staffing registers at Target and Kohl's, right?


Just think, if UPS hired a few of the folks here to manage these logistics, they wouldn't have to deal with with the backlash. Well, that's just not doing fiduciary duty for the shareholders.



Edit: And I'm not apologizing for them, but let's be serious and sincere for a moment in our critical thinking and criticisms of why this may have happened. Maybe their whole routing system did go down. Maybe the weather did impact some deliveries. But the stories I'm reading also include a lot of what Double00 is saying, too. Is this really the worst thing that can happen to you during the holidays? If so, count your blessings. Seriously.

[Great-Kazoo]

UPS Customer service how may i help you.
Yes a firearm was lost in transit from the manufacture. it has been XX days with no response. As of today i have notified the ATF about theft within your organization, have a good day.

UPS "lost " a FN-FAL i shipped to MA say 10 years ago. Tracking showed in transit, yet no delivery to the address it said "delivered" to. UPS jerked me around for 5 min, till i said. Your driver and warehouse have no idea where it went. No problem. I have ATF on the other line and they will be handling the investigation from here. 5 min later, that lost in space rifle was located, go figure.

One of the main reasons there is a required next day delivery on hand guns was the high theft from within ups and fedex. Supposedly better oversight of firearm shipments would solve the issue.