Why I Dislike UPS Right Now
My mom put together a package for me with some US-based food items I couldn’t find up here that I wanted – pizza dough, some powdered drink mixes, my favourite brand of iced tea, etc. I suggested she use UPS because I thought it might be cheaper since international postage seems to be skyrocketing lately (seriously, I sent a light manilla envelope to Tim before I left and it cost $14!).
She sent the package on the 15th, and was told I’d get it on Wednesday (today). My package made it all the way to Winnipeg by the 16th according to the online tracking, and I was sort of puzzled about that because if it was in Winnipeg….why was it going to take it four more days to get to me? I checked online a few days later, and the package was no longer in Winnipeg…it was in Minneapolis. Yep. Somehow, my package went to Canada then back to the US. Yesterday, it said the package was scheduled for being “on time”, but then a few hours later,it was listed as being in Winnipeg with an “exception”. UPS customer service have no idea what they are talking about and the person I spoke with had no explanation for me. Finally, the exception changed to “Pending clearing house”. Okay, that’s customs. Then, it was “Expired: Unable to resolve exception”. Again, I called UPS and the girl I spoke with didn’t know what that meant. I told her it looked like I might not be getting my package if “Exception” was going through customs and the package couldn’t make it through customs. Someone from UPS was supposed to call me back yesterday (they didn’t). This morning, I fired up tracking to discover my package was “on time” and said it’d be delivered today….but usually on the UPS site it says “out for delivery” on the day it’s getting delivered, but I thought maybe UPS in Canada was different, so I ignored it. A few minutes ago, I loaded the tracking again to see what it said, and it once again says “exception” and “SHIPMENT PENDING RELEASE FROM CLEARANCE AGENCY / RELEASED BY CLEARING AGENCY. NOW IN-TRANSIT FOR DELIVERY”….and still in Winnipeg. Winnipeg is 200 miles away from here. So….my package is going to get here today, but at 2PM it was just leaving Winnipeg? Something doesn’t add up here. Even better? Now when I check tracking it completely took away half of what I had tracked the past few days and now it only shows the package as going from East Petersburg, PA to Minneapolis to Winnipeg….and none of the other crap is listed in the tracking.
The person I spoke with over the phone even verified the address the package was going to….so I have no freaking clue what’s going on with this package, but it’s frustrating me because I want to go out and walk around or go to the library, but I feel like I can’t leave the house just in case the package shows up!
I think I’m going to advise my mom if she’s sending another package to me here to send it via USPS….unless the package does miraculously show up today and all this “exception” stuff doesn’t mean anything.
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I think that must be standard operating procedure for mailing packages to canada with UPS. I had to mail a craftster swap there once and I used UPS and it was the biggest pain in the ass. First off, it didn’t take like 5 days or whatever the scheduled time was, it took like 10 days. And it did the same thing – it listed like Tampa -> Jacksonville -> Montreal or something in a day and a half. But I don’t think it actually arrived there, I think that was just the electronic customs house or something. Because it told me it was “WAITING FOR PAYMENT” or something absurd like that at the “Montreal” location for two days. But then the next update put it in Virgina or something.
All I know is that there were a TON of “exceptions” on mine, it took forever, it looked like it’d never make it and then finally one day all of a sudden it was delivered. I’ll never use UPS for a Canada delivery again because it was just absurd.
Yeah. It was really weird, though when I did finally talk to someone on the Canadian side of UPS, they told me that UPS will sometimes mark a package as being in Canada while it’s still in the US because the shipping information/package details have been sent to Canada before the package gets there and that’s why it would show up as being in Winnipeg then back in Minneapolis. *shrug* it kind of makes sense that they’d need to give the data to the UPS Canada people, but it doesn’t make any sense why they would put the details in the tracking.