The simple joy of tracking Fed Ex and similar deliveries online

i just tried to contact an actual human at UPS regarding a package that came early (i wasn't home).

NO DICE. NO HUMANS WORK AT UPS.

if somebody requests a signature on a UPS or FedEx delivery to my house I try to let them know not to bother since that means I have no chance of actually getting it.

"Funny how we deliver all these packages during the day to residents, and THEY'RE NEVER HOME! Why do all these durn people order these things then???"

i should've left a note: PUT TINY PACKAGE IN MAILBOX, THX.

01/18/2008 9:10 A.M. THE RECEIVER WAS UNAVAILABLE TO SIGN ON THE 1ST DELIVERY ATTEMPT. A 2ND DELIVERY ATTEMPT WILL BE MADE

no shit, dudes.

I don't want to put UPS drivers out of business, but UPS could save a lot of money and pollution, as well as FedEx, if they allowed a way for warehouses, by order of customer, to mark a package as "Customer will just pick it up at the center" and not drive to all these people's residences.

I mean PRODUCT warehouses, not UPS warehouses.. in the context of ordering stuff on-line.

the mailman rang my doorbell today with both a package from amazon AND a round shipping container of blown-up photos from the lab. total awesomosity.

ups warehouse should be open too! why don't they just drop it off at the nearest UPS store, and have said store open on saturdays too? the warehouse i could pick it up at is closed on saturday.

what can brown do for me? cause a giant fucking headache.

I don't want to put UPS drivers out of business, but UPS could save a lot of money and pollution, as well as FedEx, if they allowed a way for warehouses, by order of customer, to mark a package as "Customer will just pick it up at the center" and not drive to all these people's residences.

-- Mackro Mackro, Friday, January 18, 2008 4:54 PM (Friday, January 18, 2008 4:54 PM) Bookmark Link

uh, they do dude!

at least as of two years ago there was a check box on fed ex waybills for "hold at fed ex location". and there used to be a similar one on the ups software a decade ago.

Because the nearest "UPS Center" is like AT LAGUARDIA AIRPORT and I don't have a car.

BOO UPS

Also the "delivery time" estimates are awful. I had mine estimate "between 10:30 and 2" or something and it showed up at 6:30. THANKS DICKS

Try the Royal Mail's "Track & Trace". After a parcel is sent Recorded Delivery, there's always at least a 24 hour delay before you can track it on the website. So if you get something sent by 24 Hour Delivery, you can't track it at all! Often I've had the parcel in my hands, and the website still still said "Cannot trace this parcel, please try again later".

Ikea doesn't give UPS tracking numbers so iiam until the first delivery attempt. thanks cox

Why they can't deliver it to my local Kinko's and I'll pick it up there, I don't know.

"if somebody requests a signature on a UPS or FedEx delivery to my house I try to let them know not to bother since that means I have no chance of actually getting it."

Just get shit delivered to your work.

Oh my fucking god Ed, Kinko's are tiny and if they held packages for people, they'd need additional buildings. (I worked at Kimko's when they added FedEx so imagining this is hell for me.)

Meanwhile, my mom was shipping stuff to my office which essentially has 1 to 2 UPS trucks parked outside all day and the driver "couldn't find the address"

Just get shit delivered to your work.

oh right I forgot how much fun it is to haul big bulky boxes with me on the subway

getting stuff delivered to work results in some rich yuppie fuck i don't know signing for something and then leaving it in their office while they go away for a week.

Fuck UPS. Fucking thieving wankers. They charge £11 just to "administer customs charges" that weren't even charged. We bought 2 t-shirts for $40 i.e. about £20 and had to pay £19 just to fucking collect them. Yeah 90% customs duty, that's fair. There's no way if I had anything to do with it we'd have bothered with any company that uses UPS, I don't think I've ever had a good experience with them.

Fuck a Parcelforce; they can never 'find' my address:

17-01-2008 04:59 London Central Depot Arrived at delivery depot
17-01-2008 14:47 London Central Depot Attempted delivery
17-01-2008 18:26 London Central Depot Returned to depot
17-01-2008 18:26 London Central Depot Automatic redelivery
18-01-2008 11:28 London Central Depot Attempted delivery
18-01-2008 15:33 London Central Depot Returned to depot
18-01-2008 18:33 London Central Depot Automatic redelivery

Parcelforce are fucking useless as well. I really don't know why anyone uses any of the fuckers, I never have any problems when people just use normal mail FFS.

"oh right I forgot how much fun it is to haul big bulky boxes with me on the subway"

Didn't you just get a huge page increase? Take a cab whiney!

I had to go down to the PF depot twice in one day last month to get my wii. The guy swore up and down that it wasn't there, and then that maybe it was there but there were 'too many cages' to get it, and then eventually he went and got it (after I phoned up and sort of bargained with the dude).

xpost lol at huge page increase

http://amysrobot.com/files/30rock_kenneth.JPG

And that's just one of many remaarks you'll encounter if you share your income.

xp

"getting stuff delivered to work results in some rich yuppie fuck i don't know signing for something and then leaving it in their office while they go away for a week."

People sign for stuff and don't leave it on your desk? That's just evil!

Heh page.

Deliveries are part of my everyone works 9 til 5 so why don't services do this stuff later, like when people are at home.

Sure it would probably cost more but the surely it can't cost more than having a parcel driven to my house when I'm not in 3 times then I finally have to get driven to the depot to pick it up.

getting stuff delivered to my work would be nightmare also, the hospital campus is huge and has several stores/supplies dept. It'd probably end up lost in some ward storeroom.

people CAN send things overnight without signature required......ya know. (I had to do it at work all the time). make sure if it's a bud that they don't require it. if it's a website, ask before you order!

You can even do that with FedEx GROUND. omg

My problem is not the signature; it's the getting big box inside the door without someone to open said door.

I worked at UPS for a month as a driver's helper (seasonal) and wound up injuring my hip after all of the jumping on and off teh truck....had to walk deadleg for a week...try carrying a box THEN!

Fuck Royal Mail for losing the LP I won on ebay and then telling me that even though I have a tracking number it can't be tracked because it hasn't arrived yet, I mean what the hell, if it had arrived I wouldn't need to track it

though I'd take them over the opposition any day in that usually they do at least attempt to deliver, mostly at a roughly predictable time, and then take it to a sorting office I can actually retrieve items from, unlike any of the other companies I've attempted to deal with

this ranks up there (in L.A. especially) with those countdown timers for crosswalks EVERYWHERE so you can see how much time you have left before its gonna turn red. A boon for you a boon for me. vilgjalrgosa for king of the universe as far as i;m concered

now we play guess what thread tremendoid meant to post that to

think we can rule out the "shagged Ariane" thread

FedEx almost ruined my LIFE once four years ago. I swore I would never give them my business again. It pains me to have to use them for work occasionally.

I get everything delivered to work and the system functions amazingly well. I am friendly with the woman who receives packages, so they arrive at my desk in a very timely fashion. Also, I drive to work, so there are no subway issues.

I probably get 100 CDs delivered to work every year, plus plenty of other shit.

I get everything delivered to work as well, via Royal Mail, and it works out OK. I just have to condition my wife to NEVER, EVER buy anything that ships via another company cos it is ALWAYS a nightmare, regardless of getting shafted by ludicrous taxes.

I want to know how an overnight package going from downstate New York to upstate New York ends up in KENTUCKY.

hubs and spokes

FedEx just drops it off by my door. Sometimes they even move the recycling bin in front of it.

Of course, the delivery guy is one of my best friends.

I know all FedEx packages, regardless of where they're from or where they're going, end up in Memphis during the night.

UPS is based out of Louisville, so maybe the same thing.

When I first moved from CA back to MS and was working long distance with my client on a magazine, we probably spent $200 per issue on overnights back and forth, plus discs with finished files to the printer. Now we send one 2nd Day Air package in each direction per issue, with the rest zipping along the internet tubes.

you still charge him the $200 though, right?

pretty much all UPS goes through the louisville airport, as with fedex and memphis. it's fucking amazing what goes on. the sorting and moving goes so fast that sending a letter through UPS or FedEx overnight and letting it go to ky/tn and come back is faster than using interoffice mail in some places

My last job involved our warehouse sending out gigantic fucking satellite dishes (like, over 1m across) and boxes full of electronics out to installers all over aus to do sat installs with. The amount of times T0ll, Fed3x et al "lost" a shipment of like, 5 or more of these fuckers was astonishing. At one point a dude from our warehouse got fed up and went to the T0ll warehouse demanding to know where this "undeliverable" stuff was and could he just damn well look for it himself?

The T0ll dude admitted that after a certain time (couple weeks?) they move undeliverables to another warehouse alltogether as unclaimed. But they dont tell anyone this or look there if people ask. And then after another few months THEY SELL OFF THE STUFF THAT IS UNCLAIMED.

WhutinTheFckinFuck.

but why was the overnight package still in Louisville two days later?

fucked up conveyor belt obv

I remember seeing these a couple of years ago and thinking they were pretty cool:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRcDvJE5HZ8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzsXqawswPc

First one is weather radar of FedEx planes being diverted from due to a storm over Memphis, second is time lapse animation of all FedEx air traffic over some period of time (a couple of days, maybe?). You can just see them pouring in and out of Memphis in big clusters.

http://www.ups.com/content/us/en/resources/service/support/operation.html

what the fuck does "recognized, but not observed" mean

"We acknowledge the holiday, but we're working anyway."

They're not working very hard at knocking because I fucking was awake and didn't hear them knock.

Def. doesn't need to be near a holiday for them to do that.

yeah that sounds like default behavior.

I just hope my furniture isn't all fucked up from being on a truck for days :(

I mean christ, its not like I like in a 6 floor walk up. I live right on the street.

a pox on Fed Ex for the Saturday I spent like five hours at the office waiting on some time sensitive items that had been sent (at a significant rate increase) for Saturday delivery. Not only was I there but I had informed the security guard to not let them get away without dropping off said package, i.e. she could sign for it or whatever. It never showed, and after almost 45 min. finding some one who could locate it without me knowing the tracking number I was informed that it had been returned to the hub because my office wasn't open. BULLSHHITT!! I'm here! The security guard is here!! Arggh. I ended up driving 45 min out to E. Jesus to pick it up myself. Shouldn't the sender be reimbursed for what they had to pay for Sat delivery, You dicks?? "No, sorry that's not really the way it works, sir". Well, fuck off and die then. Good Day.

They're not working very hard at knocking because I fucking was awake and didn't hear them knock.

dude, they're trained to knock and run unless sig is required...otherwise they couldn't get their job done quickly. probably banking on the idea of you opening the door at least once in the day!

My package I was tracking got delivered today and the guy said something like "Wow, it's a good thing you're home!" I hadn't really planned on the delivery coming today but it sounds like I lucked out.

You bastards better deliver my Macbook today. It's 4 p.m. on Friday, I'm starting to get a little nervous.

http://www.2pass.co.uk/nervous.gif

Type: Package
Status: Delivered
UPS has delivered the shipment.
Delivered
Delivered On: 07/18/2008
2:58 P.M.
Delivered To: AUSTIN, TX, US
Service: GROUND

IN YOUR FACE, ROCK HARDY!

NOOOOOOOOOOOOO

FedEx, how could you give this package to UPS to lose?! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

fedex sent mine to the wrong address :(

I'll bet they screwed up Rock's delivery so badly that what arrived at my apartment isn't even what he ordered! It's probably what I ordered.

Got it! I was probably that dude's last delivery of the day.