One would reasonably expect, that a courier company such as UPS would strive to do one thing well: delivering parcels.

I recently ordered items (a 480GB SSD via Fedex and some Gelaskins via UPS) from the United States. The Fedex order was shipped on the 19/1 and was delivered on the 23/1. The UPS order was shipped on the 17/1 (arrived in Johannesburg on the 19/1) and after much reluctance from UPS and several escalation calls was eventually delivered on the 25/1.

Click on the tracking records below to get an understanding of the dismal service delivery – and it needs to be noted, that UPS in the past was less enthusiastic of delivering parcels – at times they did not want to deliver to a residential address (the parcel was dropped at a post-office, despite the shipping being door-to-door) and other times, delivery was not attempted without me having to phone them.

While I was excited to receive my Gelaskins on the 20th January (the tracking did say “Now in transit for delivery” I was reasonably expecting delivery on Monday 23rd January. That Monday I was told, that delivery was already attempted twice (no indication on tracking information) and a 3rd attempt was on hold since UPS could not contact me.

The delivery was supposed to happen on the 23rd by 4pm, but UPS did not show. On the 24th I was told that import duty was due, and I asked for the inspection of the parcel prior to delivery and then pay online while the courier is present. The courier arrived at 3pm at our business and within the 2 minutes it took me to finish a conference call, the courier disappeared. He then arrived again at 17:10, refused inspection of parcel prior to payment and said that his shift is over and he needs to leave (considering that inspection and payment would have not taken more than 5 minutes).

Insulting is that the tracking information was updated at 17:01 (almost ten minutes before I actually spoke to the courier) and a subsequent tracking update at 21:00 of another failed delivery attempt (in fact there was no delivery attempt as it was confirmed by our security company).

Another delivery was scheduled for the 25/1 by 12pm. By 2pm the courier still had not arrived, but I was promised that he would be there by 4:30pm. Phoning UPS at 4:15pm and escalating to a supervisor, it became apparent, that the driver had just arrived at the depot and did not attempt delivery.

It took several escalation calls until UPS decided that they will arrange special delivery at my home the same day by 7pm. The driver did arrive before that and although the parcel looked “man-handled” and folded in places, the content itself was in good condition.

Since this is not the first unpleasant experience with UPS and previous similar incidents and complaints did not resolve the root-issue, one needs to ask the question: “Why is a courier company like UPS incapable of fulfilling it’s core business service – delivering parcels on time?”