
Does UPS routinely lie about delivery status? - Zigurd
I&#x27;m an Amazon Prime customer. Since signing up for Prime, I have found that the package delivery status has become noticeably less reliable. There were always odd seeming revisions to package status when I was using best-effort delivery, but now that I am supposed to get two-day delivery, I find that the status is misreported, indicating my package was delivered when it was not.<p>Have you noticed a similar drop in quality of status information from UPS and&#x2F;or Amazon?
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santaclaus
For a while there was a UPS driver in my area who would flag me as not being
home and who would not leave one of those we tried to deliver stickers on my
door -- this despite the fact that I could see the apartment entrance from my
window and he never even visited the building. I would have to call the
national UPS customer support number, and they would call some local dispatch
office, and the driver would show up super pissed off within the hour. This
happened a few times until a new driver started on the route, and after that I
have had no issues at all.

Probably not as bad as my neighbor who found out that the USPS mail guy was
forging her signature on certified mail...

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kaolinite
Has anyone else been hit, when sending items via UPS, by UPS's "weight"
calculation?

I purchased a pair of shoes that I needed to return, going back to Italy, and
I received a quote from UPS - having entered the weight on the parcel I had
received - of around £50. Later, after UPS had picked up the parcel, I noticed
they had charged me somewhere in the region of £80-100.

I rang up and they explained that UPS doesn't use normal weight but rather a
UPS specific "weight" that also incorporates dimensions (i.e. two items that
are different sizes but weigh the same will have different UPS weights).

I looked on the site and they were right - there was some information about
it, plus a calculator for working it out. I must have completely missed it. To
their credit, they did refund the difference and I only had to pay the
original quote, but I do wonder how many other people miss it and end up
paying more for their postage.

Here's how to figure out the "billable weight":
[http://www.ups.com/content/us/en/resources/ship/packaging/di...](http://www.ups.com/content/us/en/resources/ship/packaging/dim_weight.html?WT.mc_id=VAN701060)

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dangrossman
Dimensional weight is the standard measure for large carriers now. The
changeover at UPS started way back in 2007. UPS does it, FedEx does it, and
USPS does it for certain classes of packages. You can thank large shippers
like Amazon that often put a tiny product in to a huge box with a bunch of air
bags: weight alone doesn't capture the fact that fewer of these boxes can be
shipped per truck/flight than if it were packaged more efficiently.

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kaolinite
Oh it totally makes sense - the thing that surprised me was how it was called
weight on the form, so I just copied the weight across from the parcel I had
received. I'm sure it was partially user error, but UPS could certainly have
done more to make me aware that there was a difference.

If you're sending parcels regularly, I'm sure this is all well known, but this
was the first time I'd sent a parcel myself (instead of just going to the post
office and have them handle it).

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dangrossman
They ask for both the weight and the dimensions of your package so that they
can calculate the billable weight for you when you purchase a shipping label.
You're not asked to calculate it on your own. I don't know what went wrong
with your shipment.
[http://i.imgur.com/32R1nF6.png](http://i.imgur.com/32R1nF6.png)

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kaolinite
Hm, that form is perfectly fine. I wonder if it changed (the problem I had was
about a year ago) or whether it was a different site I used (e.g. a UK site)
or something. I was definitely only asked for dimensional weight.

Thanks for looking into it.

Edit: have just checked the UPS site myself and they have a much nicer quote
interface than I remember, including dimensions and weight.

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thegrif
I have a bit of inside knowledge of the subject having worked for UPS and been
out during Christmas time delivering packages. Here is what happens:

Drivers get in trouble if they miss a commit time. To avoid getting in
trouble, they will scan the package and mark it as delivered - which results
in the delivery status being updated. When they make the actual delivery, they
will not scan the package (because it's already left the driver's possession
according to the earlier scan).

All package tracking is done based on scans/events. Some of those scans are of
the actual package (like above), others are based on inheritance (a trailer
containing 500 packages leaving San Francisco will show that data replicated
down to each of the packages). UPS only publicizes a portion of the tracking
data to its customers - there are events captured at a much more granular
level of detail that you can usually get out of CSRs if you call and inquire.

:-)

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davismwfl
I really doubt UPS does. But I do think 2 things happen, one has already been
mentioned about how UPS delivers the package to USPS (so as far as their
tracking is concerned its delivered), then it takes USPS another day.

The other one is when Amazon uses laser (lazer) ship. I cannot stand that
company. They are horribly late, constantly mark packages as delivered when
they aren't and their drivers (at least in our area) treat our packages
poorly. We have called Amazon and filed a number of complaints about Lazer
ship and honestly in the past 4 months or so we haven't had anymore packages
shipped via lazer ship. I don't know if our complaining helped or what but man
am I glad. We love our Amazon Prime and order a ton of stuff using it, but it
was starting to become a problem.

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t3hSpork
Twice i have noticed from USPS (of all companies) that they say delivered one
day but it's not actually delivered. It could just be me and me not seeing it.
It happened at work and there are a lot of deliveries regularly.

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greenyoda
Happens to me pretty regularly when Amazon ships via UPS and then the local
delivery (also to my workplace) is handed off to USPS. (You can see the
transfer to USPS if you track the package via the UPS tracking site.) The USPS
delivery always arrives on the day after I get the delivery notification
e-mail. That's also the day after Amazon promises it will be delivered,
effectively making Prime a 3-day service instead of a 2-day service. Articles
shipped all the way via UPS usually arrive as promised after two days.

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t3hSpork
That must be whats happening. The package, in these cases, always arrives the
next day (third day).

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TheAdamist
Is it actually UPS delivering the package? Many of the prime packages go
through lesser known delivery companies that have been accused of fudging when
packages are delivered.

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Zigurd
Every time I've seen a delivery, it's been a UPS truck. But that's a good
question. I'll check to see if I'm getting UPS tracking numbers. Recently I've
relied on the status that's integrated with Amazon's site.

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Kirth
Curious whether parcel delivery companies have their drivers manually validate
when the package has been delivered. Or is the status an estimate based on
time/progress?

