My wife left the house for work this morning in a justified fury. She had spent close to an hour on the phone with UPS – its mechanical voices and then varieties of humans, trying to track down an $800 TV purchased from Costco.com online and scheduled for delivery yesterday from UPS. As with all these things, she got an order number from Costco and a tracking number from UPS. As of a week ago, UPS’s site said the item was shipped, then it doesn’t arrive, and the entire transaction disappears from UPS’s site. The tracking number doesn’t identify anything.
An hour later on the phone with unhelpful UPS staff, they kept telling her that even with a Costco order number, they could not help her unless she could give them … the zip code of whatever Costco.com shipping center from which the TV had shipped. Huh? The consumer-purchaser of something on the internet from a gigantic retailer is supposed to be able to figure this out to supply it to UPS? My wife kept explaining to them that it was bought online and that Costco had given her an order number, and UPS had given her a tracking number, and it wasn’t really her problem to sort out their delivery arrangements, or track down her own stuff in their respective systems, or make their systems operate together. They kept telling her that she had to talk to Costco and get the information, and bring it back to them, but that the order number from Costco was not sufficient, nor was their own tracking number, although it had been great a week ago.
Memo to UPS. We’ve had great service from you folks, and I live by Amazon prime, but this exchange floored me. I thought we were a decade beyond this kind of conversation about an online purchase. Tell UPS what Costco.com warehouse zip code this might have shipped from, in an online order? So it turns out that having taken the Costco.com order number in good faith was merely an invitation to get ambushed and a trap for the unwary who actually believed it meant something?
My Beloved Wife, by the way, was the soul of patience, unless you saw the look on her face – she sounded like a law professor talking to a 1L class, explaining to UPS that, “You know, Costco contracted with you to do this delivery, it didn’t contract with me, I don’t understand how this is my problem to sort out once I’ve given you the information that Costco and UPS thought was relevant for a consumer to know at the beginning of this. I’m not trying to hide anything from you, it’s just that I don’t have any special information except for what you guys thought I needed to know at the beginning.” She might have added, but didn’t, “I didn’t realize when I bought the TV that part of my obligation was to act as a principal motivating an unmotivated agent to do its job and without a lot of carrots or sticks.”
I didn’t think it was a good moment to raise this with my wife, but it did occur to me that it was a nice high school level example of “cheapest cost avoider” and externalities and agent-principal failures. How on earth could it be efficient for my wife to sort out delivery systems and glitches between these two giants? On the other hand, there might be a temptation for the giant systems to push the work off on the ultimate consumer to do the work, spend the hours on the phone – until either reputation costs the businesses enough (because of postings like this one?) or else Costco figures out that UPS is shifting costs that it (in the interests of Costco’s reputation and sales) believed it had contracted to UPS to deal with, and then polices UPS more effectively.
(PS. Another hour on the phone later, UPS has figured it out and eventually the TV will come, inchallah. They figured it out, but my wife had to supply the motivation, so to speak – more costs shifted to her in overcoming UPS’s disincentive to want to sort it out on its own. As she said to me, “It’s like I have to spend a certain number of hours on the phone convincing them that I really, really want my own stuff.” That’s shifting costs, too, but in a different way – UPS underinvests in service providers, particularly for resolving errors, and then uses extended time on the phone as a way of rationing the time of its overstretched customer service reps, even though, to take Costco and UPS as its contractor at face value, the contract price promised a very different level of customer service. And do I sound like a law professor getting ready to teach a first year survey of very basic law & economics?)
(PPS. Two quick notes, glancing at the comments. One is that it’s not a question of delivery today or tomorrow – it is that UPS says it has no record of anything, although it had one a week ago. Second, although quite so that Costco is the cheapest cost avoider, it opens for customer service only at 9 am, and not everyone has a job that permits one to spend a couple of hours at work on the telephone working out whether someone in fact owes you a TV – cost-shifting again. This conversation was taking place in that magic moment when UPS opened its phone lines, Costco is closed, my wife has to be at work, and the clock is ticking. I notice that a number of commenters think I’m merely being peevish – I think these kinds of simple agency contract problems are useful devices for thinking through larger problems, and that the sensibility matters along with the sense. The irritation of some commenters seems to arise from the sense that the post is not worth the reader’s time, which is always a possibility, of course, but then it’s an interesting question – merely in my view, of course – who is the cheapest cost avoider, the writer or the reader?)
Daniel Charlies says:
Wow. Why would you buy something so big as a tv online from a discount retailer, and then take it out on the shippers when it doesn’t conveniently arrive at a set time?
There are storms around, acts of G-d. Maybe this affected your presumed delivery date?
Either way, keep your chin up and remember the real reason for the holidays. Scoring a cheap tv and getting upset at fellow humans, not so much.
December 9, 2009, 8:58 amAnderson says:
Daniel, the part about “tracking number disappears from UPS’s site” indicates that Prof. Anderson’s frustration was about more than a mere delay.
But you are to be praised for your calm, philosophical acceptance of the misfortunes of others.
December 9, 2009, 9:15 amlgm says:
If it were the IRS instead of UPS, this post might have had more right wing overtones. But at least in this case, the private sector can be just as annoying as the government.
December 9, 2009, 9:19 amTim from Philly says:
Your wife should have just called Costco and told them that since UPS failed to deliver and the shipping code they gave is no longer relevant you want a complete refund and you will no longer purchase from them. Then Costco would have had the burden. And since your wife is a lawyer the Costco customer service managers would have buckled very quickly.
December 9, 2009, 9:22 amTamerlane says:
I try not ever to deal with UPS. My involuntary transactions with them have always been aggravating. Most of their employees seem to be impolite louts and/or idiots. The few intelligent and caring employees I’ve met have made surreptitious apologies to me for their fellow employees’ behavior and the corporate culture but suggested that they couldn’t do much about it.
I believe UPS employees are represented by the Teamsters. Perhaps this explains the problems. (This paragraph added partly to create “right wing overtones” ;-)
December 9, 2009, 9:29 amtarheel says:
Reminds me of the time my wife spent a similar amount of time on the phone with UPS trying to track a $200 diaper order to our new house. UPS man did not recognize our name, so he did not deliver it. UPS then looked up our name online and sent it to another person with my name at a totally different address. We just got the vendor to send us another order for free.
December 9, 2009, 9:29 amSteve says:
This post is in the very finest David Bernstein tradition, although you wouldn’t catch DB wasting time to formulate a legal tie-in!
This is shoddy service all around, but it seems like Costco would have much more incentive to help find your delivery than UPS would. As your wife correctly noted, she didn’t contract with UPS, and all they really care about is Costco’s happiness.
December 9, 2009, 9:38 amDaniel Charlies says:
Anderson,
There are storms, and it was a day late.
For this, we get a front-paged 6-paragraph rant about how his Beloved Wife dealt with the household’s frustrations — lecturing the UPS delivery guys and customer service reps that they needed to provide better service for her to figure out when the cheap tv was coming?
Perspective people, especially at the holidays!
Often, the lower online price assumes you don’t get it as conveniently if you paid and transported it home yourself. Budget some time in to deal with human frustrations, or better yet — give your wife a break and share the tracking duties.
Or… and this is why I think most men and women complement each other … you give your spouse a big hug, tell them certainly it will arrive the next day or so and won’t it be grand to enjoy once the anticipation abates and the gift has come. Women often frazzle easily over the little things.
Men don’t need to write up blog complaints encouraging such complaining behavior, but rather to know their role as perspective putters. (I learned that in Promise Keepers class.)
December 9, 2009, 9:40 amTurk Turon says:
I once shipped an expensive radio that I had sold on ebay. Shipped it via UPS from a Staples store. It arrived badly damaged. Turns out I could not file a claim with UPS: Staples was the “shipper of record”. So I had to file a claim with Staples. In order to file a claim with Staples I had to furnish: name, address and daytime phone of consignee, copy of original Staples receipt – including cash register spit-out tape, an independent appraisal of the radio, the original ebay listing showing the final price, the PayPal transaction showing any payments or refunds, etc., etc.
Never again! I don’t blame UPS for the damage (stuff happens!), but I’ll always ship from a UPS store or UPS customer service location, never from a third-party vendor.
Sadder but wiser.
December 9, 2009, 9:51 amJust Some Guy says:
I’ve had great service both professionally (using UPS as my company’s shipper) and personally, and I’ve learned a few things about them:
1) In normal transactions, their service is outstanding, cheap, and predictable.
2) In extraordinary transactions, anything can happen. Anything at all. And UPS’s ordinarily excellent tracking and problem-resolution systems can hit a wall that could stop even Juggernaut.
3) During the holiday season, they hire lots of extra labor that hasn’t a clue how to get the job done.
December 9, 2009, 9:53 amFrank Drackman says:
I’m not a luddite, but I prefer to buy a Big Screen TV in person, just like a car, hagglin’s 1/2 the fun, even Best Buy will deal with you if you flash cold hard cash in the salesmens face, and even if its a few dollars more, theres something to be said for getting that 65 inch Panasonic Plasma delivered the same day.
December 9, 2009, 9:54 amAnd don’t fall for the “Calibration Scam”, oh, it does give you a nicer picture, but make em throw it in at no cost…
another commenter says:
“How on earth could it be efficient for my wife to sort out delivery systems and glitches between these two giants”
She isn’t the least cost avoider here; I don’t know why you assume she is. The rules are set up so that UPS owes its duties to the shipper. The simple solution to this is to put the ball into Costco’s court. As soon as UPS said the tracking number isn’t valid, you should have notified Costco and perhaps your credit card issuer.
December 9, 2009, 9:54 amSkyler says:
I thought this was a Bernstein post at first, too.
I think this is a petty issue. It’s not UPS’s role to find out who shipped something somewhere. It’s Costco’s. And you got the problem fixed without a lot of trouble. What’s the problem?
Move on, there’s nothing to see here.
December 9, 2009, 9:56 amFury says:
As you had a UPS tracking number, in the future ask to speak with an On Car Supervisor. It’s been my experience that On Car Supervisors will work the hardest to correct the problem as they are the management closest to the drivers that actually make the delivery, and on-time deliveries are a metric that these supervisors are measured by.
December 9, 2009, 10:02 amCornellian says:
Go with FedEx
December 9, 2009, 10:03 amrarango says:
Presumably Professor and Mrs Anderson are not like the DC lawyer who sued the cleaners for 55 million dollars. Sorry about the aggravations, but look on the bright side–you could be dealing with a government agency.
December 9, 2009, 10:04 amJMA says:
I’ve never managed to ship anything via UPS without incident. From digging sensitive computer components out of snow banks to “losing” three hundred pounds of bulk freight, I’ve just never been particularly impressed.
That, I guess, is why it costs extra to use the other shippers at the checkout at Amazon, etc. Either I’m really cheap or just a glutton for punishment. :)
December 9, 2009, 10:07 amDavid Schwartz says:
Most likely, had you done nothing, the failure to update the status of the package (assuming it was really stuck) would have triggered an exception and UPS would have solved the problem on their own. That said, I’ve never had UPS tell me they needed anything more than a tracking number, unless the tracking number did not map to any package in their system, which case I’d have to contact the shipper.
Costco gives you your UPS tracking number as a courtesy so you can track your package and make special arrangement if you need to. If you don’t, they’ll still make sure it gets to you, as is their primary responsibility. You needn’t deal with UPS if you don’t want to. IMO, it’s usually more convenient — unless they can’t find the tracking number.
FD: Even if they throw it in for no cost, the calibration person they send usually has no idea what he’s doing and usually either makes the picture way too bright so it “looks pretty” or way too dim “to save power”. Any messing with other controls is a crap shoot.
December 9, 2009, 10:14 amEconGrad says:
I tend to handle these things in the way suggested by many of the comments above. If I have a tracking number that pulls up in UPS’s system, fine, it is their problem to find it. If the tracking number I have isn’t valid (even if it was once valid and then disappears) then it becomes Costco’s problem. “Hi, Costco, yes, I purchased a TV from you online and here’s my order number. You all gave me tracking number Zxxxxxxxx for my purchase, but that tracking # isn’t valid. Please ship another one with overnight delivery immediately. Thanks!” The only exception to this would be a situation where I desperately needed the item that I was waiting for, and perhaps even had a time-based need for it (such as I paid for overnight delivery of a textbook for a class that was staring the day after the expected delivery date). In that sort of case, I’d rattle cages at both ends to give the best chance that someone will figure it out and locate my merchandise in time. If I don’t have an urgent need for it, my time and frustration is just too “expensive” to do these other folks’ jobs for them.
December 9, 2009, 10:14 amProf. S. says:
Okay, not to be a jerk, but why did you wife think that having the Costco order number had any relevance whatsoever? You mention it at least 4 times. The order number is between you and Costco and UPS shouldn’t give a rip.
Your wife should have been on the phone with Costco. It was Costco’s responsibility to get you the package. If it didn’t arrive, she should have told them to cancel the order or tell her when the product would be arriving.
December 9, 2009, 10:14 amEarly Bird says:
My wife and I were involved in a similar situation right after the birth of our first child.
We were sitting at home, half dazed from lack of sleep, with a 2-week-old grunter ready to burst into paroxysms of anger at the smallest slight, when we got a bill for $16,000 in the mail! My wife opened the envelope, as it was addressed to her. About five minutes later she and the baby were both crying. I called the insurance company to find out why they hadn’t paid this, as it was their contractual obligation to do, and they informed me that since I wasn’t their customer they couldn’t talk to me. My wife calmed down long enough to tell them to talk to me, at which point they informed me that our provider had filed the wrong form, it should have been a global form (or something) and it was not.
Six months and six half-hour phone conversations later, we finally stopped receiving past-due notices on our debt, I’m happy to report! I must say, it’s wierd being the middle mand between an insurance company and a medical provider. You call one, and they tell you that the other party has not done the kqsdohpfsaosifj correctly. So you relay this message, which means absolutely nothing to you, to the other party, and they tell you that, as soon as they get the askjdfopajsdk from the first party, they’ll take care of things. I wished I had three-way calling on my cell phone, it would have saved a lot of time.
December 9, 2009, 10:18 amSteve says:
Second, although quite so that Costco is the cheapest cost avoider, it opens for customer service only at 9 am, and not everyone has a job that permits one to spend a couple of hours at work on the telephone working out whether someone in fact owes you a TV — cost-shifting again.
It shouldn’t take a couple hours. Once you tell them that you’re cancelling the order unless they can straighten things out with UPS, that should incentivize them right there. Another alternative your wife might consider is delegating the task to her husband, who seems to be bright enough and to have sufficient time on his hands.
December 9, 2009, 10:46 amLaura(southernxyl) says:
Yeah.
I got a $1000-plus check from the mortgage company once, out of the blue. Called and asked, what’s this for? You overpaid the escrow, she said. I didn’t think so. You paid the insurance? Tap tap tap, yes. City and county taxes? Tap tap tap, yes, city and county both.
I knew this wasn’t right, so I stuck the money in the savings account and waited. Sure enough, we got a notice from the insurance company that said we were being dropped due to nonpayment.
Refusing to get in the middle, I called the insurance agent and let her sort it out. She called me back and said it had been taken care of, and to return the money to the mortgage company with the next mortgage payment. I did wait for confirmation from the insurance company that they had been paid.
You have to deal with this kind of crap all the time. In the OP story, I too would have called Costco and asked them to straighten it out with UPS. But seriously, with UPS’s own tracking number they shouldn’t have needed anything else.
I can think of several things to say here, none of which strike me as particularly ladylike; so perhaps you can fill in the blank.
December 9, 2009, 10:52 amKenneth Anderson says:
Professor Anderson is performing a crucial function of venting on behalf of his wife, but doing so by posting during a conference, and so can’t get on the phone. You might conclude that this is a Spousal Guilt Externalization Post, I suppose, and shifting psychic costs to you.
But more seriously – I am somewhat surprised by the level of commercial sophistication that many of the commenters assume should be standard for consumers going about their lives. Maybe that’s right, but I’m skeptical. If you saw the page at Costco that my wife saw, you’d have to be pretty experienced at the culture of this stuff to know that the UPS phone number is a mere courtesy … it seems perfectly natural to conclude that if the problem is a shipping one, and they’ve provided a number for UPS, they intend for you to call UPS, not that it’s merely provided as a courtesy.
December 9, 2009, 10:54 amwilliam jones says:
Your wife is the least cost avoider. From the corporations’ point of view. They don’t have to pay a dime.
December 9, 2009, 10:57 amMatt says:
I hate UPS and try to avoid them whenever possible. I’ll sometimes not buy from people who will only ship UPS. The worst thing is that they often will only deliver at times when I cannot be around, and will often not make other arrangements. I’ve had massively better service (usually at better prices) with the regular post office. After that, it’s DHL, then FedEx, and only as a last resort UPS.
December 9, 2009, 11:02 amCarolina says:
I agree with others that, frustrating as UPS’s conduct was, your wife really should have been calling Costco, not UPS. You paid for the TV from Costco – it’s their obligation to get the product you ordered to your house in good condition.
I typically get good service from UPS – our firm uses them exclusively for overnight mail, packages etc and I have anything I order from Amazon sent to the office. Still, though, they have an enormous increase in volume in December for Christmas and some things are going to get lost/broken in transit. Let Costco deal with it.
December 9, 2009, 11:19 amDavid Nieporent says:
I believe the point is, which for some reason people seem to be missing, that when UPS lost the package, UPS should have been doing the work to track it down. Thus, if for some reason UPS needed information from Costco, UPS should have contacted Costco, instead of telling his wife to get the information. And if UPS were going to contact Costco, UPS might need the order number.
December 9, 2009, 11:26 amLegalCookie says:
UPS damaged a $250 golf club sent to me as a gift. I reported the damage and they refused to pick it up for over a month. When I finally got them to pick it up to inspect the damage, they, instead of inspecting it, returned it to the sender.
I’m really pissed at UPS right now.
December 9, 2009, 11:27 amShelbyC says:
Yeah? Try calling the IRS and complaining about some government service your purportedly paying for. You think you’ll have your problem resolved in a hour or two? The issue is that we expect more from the private sector.
December 9, 2009, 11:46 amSammy Finkelman says:
The tracking number is (originally at least) for the shipper, not the recipeint. It is the shipper that has to file the claim. Most large compamnies will honor claims for non-delivery, even if it can’t be proven, except maybe when evidence like the tracking number contradicts it. They may also do it whenever they are reimbursed if they had insurance.
The tracking number is given to you so as to minimize unnecessary complaints and because sometimes you can resolve it. For instance UPS culd say it was delivered at a certaoin place and hour and signed for by so and so.
This is the first I heard of as tracking number disappearing. I don’;t think this happens with USPS (United States Postal service) Did you ever find out why?
My best ideas would be that initially the shippinbg information was enterwed electronically but the item wass not shipped soon, so it never was recorded as actually enterinbg the system at UPS. lter it was shipped but with a different tracking number.
Yes, the system COSTCO has is not a as a whole a good system, but there probably nobody at COSTCO who both has the knowledge of what goes wrong and the authority to fix it.
December 9, 2009, 11:49 amrmd says:
In fairness to gigantic faceless bureaucracies, I have to say that my one non-routine contact with the IRS was cordial (if not exactly pleasant) and my issue was resolved quickly and correctly. Now that I think about it, I never had much heartburn with that favorite target of late night comics, the CA DMV, either. HSBC, on the other hand…
December 9, 2009, 11:56 amAnderson says:
I thought this was a Bernstein post at first, too.
Those are actually my favorite Bernstein posts.
December 9, 2009, 11:57 amBruce Boyden says:
It’s bizarre that the tracking number got deleted off UPS’s system. I’ve been able to access those sometimes weeks after the product was delivered. That indicates to me some sort of screw-up on UPS’s end, that they should have been more eager to fix.
December 9, 2009, 12:02 pmTNeloms says:
I had a very similar experience with Amazon/UPS a few years ago, so this doesn’t surprise me at all, though I had the same level of surprise and disgust at the time.
What basically happened each time was that the shipping address was wrong (I had recently moved), and though I noticed this within seconds of having clicked submit, Amazon and UPS failed spectacularly to fix the problem despite numerous calls. It was the same story, with each of them requesting information I didn’t have, directing me to the other, etc.
What was amazing was that the two addresses were only one block apart, but the eventual solution was to have UPS knowingly deliver it to the wrong address, then have UPS do a retrieval (I forget the term they had for this) and bring it back to their distribution center, then reship it to the correct address 200 yards away from the original address. I tried very hard to intercept the package at the first address, but because they couldn’t tell me exactly when it would be delivered, and because the retrieval was going to happen soon after the first delivery, this wasn’t easy. In the end, I managed to intercept the retrieval guy as he was picking it up about to bring it back, and convinced him to just let me have it.
This same problem happened to a friend, with very similar results. It’s been going on for years, and there is very little incentive for either Amazon or UPS to work out these kinks as the post notes. Oh well. At least it makes for some good stories.
December 9, 2009, 12:05 pmShelbyC says:
I’ve had those as well. My point here was that Ken’s better half was calling UPS about a TV she was supposed to get from Costco, in exchange for the money she paid them. If you called the IRS to complain about not getting some service from the govt that you expected in exchange for your taxes, you wouldn’t get very far. All the IRS does is take your money, and it seems Costco had no problem doing that :-).
December 9, 2009, 12:13 pmElliot says:
Now that this situation is publicized on the web, please keep us updated about the hoops UPS and Costco jump through to save their reputations. Had a call from a VP yet?
December 9, 2009, 12:23 pmEW1(SG) says:
Anderson says:
So am I.
Costco provides UPS their order number as an alternative database retrieval index to locate the shipment: if UPS has lost its own tracking number, there isn’t any reason to believe that the Costco order number isn’t also missing (but hey, anything is worth a shot). However, since it was Costco that contracted with the carrier, only the shipper really has any recourse against the carrier, and you (as the recipient) should be aware that if UPS can’t locate your goods, then you have no alternative but to contact your vendor (Costco).
Costco provides you with the UPS tracking number for exactly that: tracking the merchandise, but there isn’t much else you can do with it unless the customer representative you contact at UPS is willing and competent.
December 9, 2009, 12:26 pmEW1(SG) says:
Elliot says:
LOL!
Surely you are familiar with United Breaks Guitar?
Come to think of it, last time I flew United, they broke off a single prong on the charger for my laptop. I have no idea how.
December 9, 2009, 12:31 pmShelbyC says:
It still seems your problem is with Costco, not UPS. I’d bet dollars to donuts that UPS never got your package, and killed the tracking number for that reason. But even so, the next step after verifying that UPS has no information about the package is to contact Costco. I’m not sure it’s fair to expect UPS to track down a package that a third party claims that another party shipped simply because they have more convienient call center hours. And it’s not UPS’s fault that Costco posted their number on its page.
December 9, 2009, 12:44 pmohwilleke says:
The basic structure is this dispute is very common everywhere that multiple entities involved in the same consumer transaction are linked by contract, rather than serving as parts of a single firm.
You see it in switches of phone service from one provider to another (almost never trouble free). You see it in almost every purchase of health services by someone who has health insurance (or Medicare). You see it when you try to resolve an account that has been sent to collections. You see it when a retail store sells a good guaranteed or warranted or rebate eligible that is offered by an unaffiliated good producing company. You see it when different firms are responsible for hardware problems and software problems in an IT system. You see it when an employer outsources COBRA administration that in turn involves dealings with a third party insurance company (or two).
In some ways, division of responsibility by contract can be very efficient. My firm can get large copy jobs done much more cheaply by a third party provider, for example, than it can do them in house. But, multi-firm contract linked entities do customer service very poorly.
Much of this flows for genuine confusion and lack of communication across firm boundaries. There is also a fair spread between the cost minimizing way to provide minimum contract satisfying service and the optimal level of cost devoted to customer service when transactions are seen globally. By not collapsing provision of a service into a single firm, one creates myriad microexternalities that are quite hard for even well meaning senior managers that supervise the relationship to get right.
December 9, 2009, 1:03 pmEW1(SG) says:
Anderson says in a PPS:
I agree, although I think agency contracts with a common carrier aren’t as simple as they first appear.
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December 9, 2009, 1:05 pmDavid Schwartz says:
It’s also not unusual to have a tracking number that is not in the system of the company the tracking number is for. Large vendors have a block of tracking numbers they use for packages and assign a new package a number out of that block. This may happen before there’s any contact with the shipper. In the normal flow of things, an electronic notification is sent to the shipper to expect the package shortly thereafter. There may be a window where you have a UPS tracking number and UPS has no idea that number has been assigned.
If something delays the packaging, say it’s a big TV that needs special packing, insurance, and some kind of high-value supervisor sign off to make sure Costco’s not handing UPS an empty box, that window can get mighty big.
Some shippers won’t even report the tracking number until they scan the item. And if that scan occurred on a truck in the middle of nowhere, it might have to wait until the driver can communicate with headquarters. Even then it might be batched.
Though these days, with high-volume merchants and high-volume shippers, there’s usually an instant electronic notification. If nothing else, it closes the window in which the package can get lost between the two companies with one expecting the other to deliver and the other having no idea the package exists or is on a deadline.
December 9, 2009, 1:06 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
I guess the reason I would know to go to Costco is because of problems I’ve had with both UPS and Fed Ex and orders for the laboratory. I learned pretty quick to call the Fisher rep and say “fix it”.
The funniest one was a buret that I ordered (just glassware with a stopcock) that the Fisher folks felt moved to put inside a large box with a skull-and-crossbones on it. I waited for my buret for a while, couldn’t get the tracking number to work at all, and called the Fisher rep. He had to do quite a bit of calling to track the thing down. It seemed that the people at the local hub had seen the skull-and-crossbones and had refused to put it on the truck. We had to go to the hub to pick it up, and found it in the corner of a supervisor’s office, where it was going to sit presumably FOREVER since they’d not contacted us or Fisher to do anything about it, and where it could outgas whatever chemicals or cooties or whatever they thought it probably had.
December 9, 2009, 1:07 pmDjDiverDan says:
My own past experience with home delivery by UPS has also been less than satisfactory. On one occasion, the UPS driver delivered a package to the wrong house – it was the same street name and number as mine (but without the EAST), but a different town and zip, about 5 miles away; the package was appropriately addressed, just misdelivered. Luckily, the recipient was honest, and UPS was able to retrieve it and get it to me. Another time, I paid for rush delivery to get something in 2 business days; the seller was in the next county over – in Arlington, Tarrant County, Texas – but UPS misdirected the (again quite properly addressed) package so that it took 9 days to get to me, and managed to take a trip from Arlington Texas through about three other states before getting the whole 42 miles to my house; and no, despite constant bitching to UPS and the Seller, I did NOT get a full refund of my Rush Shipping charges. A third time, UPS delivered my order from Casual Male not to me, but to the local store at the mall — I had to call several times to figure out where it was; if I WANTED to go to the store, I would NOT have ordered it on-line, and would NOT have paid shipping charges (Casual Male did refund me my shipping charges on that sale). Yes, there have been occasions where UPS actually got it right (I just got a UPS delivery from Amazon.com yesterday), but three bad experiences makes me really distrust UPS.
December 9, 2009, 1:09 pmChicago says:
I agree with some earlier commenters that contacting Costco would be the easiest way to fix the problem, but let’s assume (per the post) that wouldn’t work. Wouldn’t the next-easiest option be to report this as fraud to the credit card company, and let them work it out with Costco?
December 9, 2009, 1:15 pmBrian K says:
I had the exact same question! why would ups keep track of costco’s sales information?
December 9, 2009, 1:23 pmTwirlip says:
Sounds like UPS lost some information in a computer glitch.
December 9, 2009, 1:42 pmToby says:
While the post is ostensibly a complaint about UPS, it is actually praise for UPS, at least relative to Costco. While it is clear that the entire contract is with Costco, I would guess the Missus made the assessment that UPS would figure it out eventually, even with limited involvement, Costco might never figure it out.
Faced with Costco, she chose to use the company with less involvement and less intrinsic information.
December 9, 2009, 1:44 pmTwirlip says:
Obviously, they do.
UPS needs a good deal of Costco sales information – who the item is being shipped to, where the item is being shipped from, etc. It sounds like they no longer have at least some of that information, (where it was being shipped from) hence my suggestion that they lost it in a computer foul-up.
December 9, 2009, 1:47 pmjcm says:
“I think this is a petty issue. It’s not UPS’s role to find out who shipped something somewhere. It’s Costco’s.”
December 9, 2009, 1:53 pmIt happened to me. I only ordered some law books. 120$. That was the minimum salary of one month ,here.I asked Amazon, and they said the package is soon to be delivered, for 2 weeks. I wrote UPS, and call by phone . They answered: Its in the warehouse, soon will be delivered. Finally ,after a pair of insulting calls to UPS,they discovered the reason: the printed guide was different from the electronic data. One month after i received them. It was… 1999…
John says:
A bit off topic but: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzZ0nz7XVFo
December 9, 2009, 1:54 pmAllen says:
I spent $10 shipping a $100 book via USPS, paid for tracking and delivery confirmation. A week later my buyer emails saying they never received the book so I call USPS to sort the mess out. Long story short, my receipt showing tracking numbers and the fact that it was done via teller at a Post Office wasn’t proof enough that the book ever made it in the system (the tracking somehow didn’t get activated) so I was out the shipping and the book. Post Office rep called me a few weeks later to ask how I was with the service.. You can guess my response.
I hate ‘em all now.
December 9, 2009, 1:56 pmpdxlawyer says:
Prof Anderson and his wife appear to have assumed that UPS issuing a tracking number means that Costco actually physically consigned a TV to UPS for delivery to them. Seems to me at least possible that UPS assigned a tracking number in response to a computerized request from Costco. Then, when Costco (or whoever Costco contracted with to fulfill this order) didn’t actually have a TV available to ship within a week, or whatever period UPS uses, UPS voided their tracking number, causing it to “disappear”, because no shipment had ever taken place. This is all speculation, of course, and I have no specific knowledge of eiter the Costco-UPS interface or Costco’s usual e-commerce fulfillment practices.
Though I understand their frustration, I am among those who are inclined to place the problem in Costco’s lap. The Andersons are pissed at UPS because they were talking to UPS, and the only reason they were talking to UPS rather than Costco is that UPS was answering its phones and Costco wasn’t. UPS is thus being punished for its good service.
I agree that this illustrates some interesting issues in commercial law. Consider for one thing that UPS’ only contractual duty is to Costco, its shipper. It was Costco who chose UPS over FedEx or the USPS, so UPS has an incentive, as well as a duty, to make Costco, rather than the Andersons, happy, if it has to choose between them.
This also may illustrate one of the under-appreciated virtues of e-commerce – its ability to substitute computerized contractual arrangements for physical shipping and warehousing. By way of example, if I buy a BigBrand TV in a physical BigStore, that TV was shipped by BigBrand from its factory to its US warehouse, from BigBrand’s US warehouse to BigStore’s distribution center, and from BigStore’s distribution center to the particular BigStore I visit, where it sits on the shelf for a while before I buy it. If I buy a BigBrand TV from BigStore.com, in many cases, the TV goes directly from the BigBrand US warehouse to my front door, thus avoiding the labor and physical insfrasturcture involved in 2 sorting/loading/unloading cycles, as well as potentially saving some shipping costs through more direct routing.
Of course, when virtual transactions are substituted for physical ones, there is more chance for confusion affecting the person at the end of the chain, the consumer. This is one reason to avoid them (as I usually do).
December 9, 2009, 2:03 pmptt says:
No doubt, UPS moves over a million packages a day. With the holiday season, even a dampened one, it probably shoots much higher. Costco sells, I would think, tens of thousands of items a day online.
Now, take a deep breath and imagine if all these transactions were managed as well as legal billing is.
Case closed.
December 9, 2009, 2:18 pmShane says:
This is why I get annoyed when people express horror at health care provided by the same people who bring you the post office. I’ve always thought that the post office was better than the alternative private sector companies. Not to mention out here in the rural areas, the private companies contract out last mile delivery to the US Postal Service anyway.
To go slightly off topic and discuss these issues in the context of health care, though – Principal/agent problems? Efficiency-reducing cost shifts? This is par for the course for insurance purchased on the individual market (where I spent the first 22 years of my life as a child of small business owners). There, you might have many different interests between the hospital, multiple doctors, insurer, and consumer. It’s sad that the Army has provided me with the most hassle-free health care of my life, despite several emergency room visits and an emergency surgery.
December 9, 2009, 2:20 pmJohn Moore says:
As a software developer currently working with connecting systems from different companies, all I can say is that it’s a wonder anything works.
As background, I’ve been designing and building complex, large scale transaction processing systems for almost 40 years. I’ve seen amazing stuff (in the scary category).
For example, unless its changed recently, the odds are that your credit card transactions are processed in 40 year old assembly language, running on a 45 year old “operating system.”
And, you never, ever want to look inside an airline reservation system (been there, done that).
Unfortunately, as the meritocracy has taken hold, the humans that eventually get into the loop are often less motivate or intelligent, and also are likely to have less training and less information available to them. This makes the problem even worse.
Then there’s dealing with Dell’s India based support… Never again.
December 9, 2009, 2:21 pmNickM says:
NEVER send a valuable, insured package from a UPS store unless you are shipping under your own UPS account (or the recipient’s UPS account).
UPS takes the position that the UPS store is the shipper, not you, and any insurance refund is to be sent to the shipper.
Nick
December 9, 2009, 2:52 pmChrisTS says:
Please tell me this is a joke.
December 9, 2009, 2:58 pmTHESMOPHORON says:
My experience with UPS mirrors this. I refuse to do business with them; FedEx is often cheaper anyway.
December 9, 2009, 3:05 pmvic says:
I had the same thing happen to me shipping an apple laptop. I was persistent and actually got to speak to a person with a brain, after some rather dogged insistence. In any event the computer was most likely purloined by someone at the UPS warehouse, apparently it was a common event with desirable items. He apologized and told me what to do. I got the computer 10 days later and several long phone calls later.
Time is money, you are absolutely right UPS is shifting the costs of doing this on to the consumer.
December 9, 2009, 3:07 pmSunTzu's Nephew says:
I guess that supervisor wasn’t well liked….
December 9, 2009, 3:19 pmbrawny stallion says:
ask anyone who’s ever worked for ups and seen firsthand what a zoo their sort/load operations are, and they’ll all say pretty much the same thing: if it’s really important; absolutely, positively has to be there; or you don’t want to have to ship it more than once……then use fedex.
ups expects their drivers to make 18-25 deliveries every hour they’re on the road. *extremely* difficult to do. so, naturally, the drivers take shortcuts every chance they can. if “accidentally” misdelivering your package can save them a minute or two, well….
December 9, 2009, 3:23 pmSunTzu's Nephew says:
We’ve all had horror stories with shippers x,y,z and usps, no doubt.
On average, and with few exceptions (which is why they merit comment) the privates do pretty well indeed, or at least UPS and FEDEX (I don’t deal with Purolator or DHL, to the point I won’t buy something if thats the only shipping option).
However, for sheer, gross malfeasance and incompetence, there is no organization as bad as usps….. Tracking doesn’t mean anything (except you got snookered for an extra $0.50 or whatever), insurance is a joke, and frankly it’s barely worth the risk of them delivering junk mail.
But for real UPS fun, try ordering a $10 item and have it delivered in Canada…with a minimum $35 ‘brokerage fee’. Fool me once, shame on you……
December 9, 2009, 3:27 pmbyomtov says:
I am somewhat surprised by the level of commercial sophistication that many of the commenters assume should be standard for consumers going about their lives.
Me too. At an absolute minimum someone at UPS should have known what causes a tracking number to disappear. And they shouldn’t make you wait around on hold while they figure it out. How about, “We don’t know, but we can call you back when we find out.” The problem was somewhere in the Costco-UPS universe, and either company should have been able to figure it out.
December 9, 2009, 3:36 pmRT says:
They’re not called United Parcel Smashers for nothing you know…
December 9, 2009, 3:54 pmChris Travers says:
I agree that the next step would be to take up with Costco the question of delivery.
I had to do this with Amazon once and when it became clear that the package was untrackable and hadn’t arrived, they refunded my money. I would HOPE Costco had the shipment insured and that insurance covers loss on UPS’s part. I would hope they could recover their money.
But it isn’t the customer’s problem at that point.
December 9, 2009, 4:11 pmChris Travers says:
John Moore:
You wouldn’t believe the horrors I have seen in recently developed accounting software packages :-P At least one I worked on for a while was practically the best textbook one could ever want on how NOT to write Perl code, design databases, design software, do accounting, or even think through algorithms. It was clearly written by a novice in the language who had no relevant experience doing anything. Somehow the software managed to work for most users most of the time.
It isn’t too uncommon I run into idiots doing things like storing financial numbers as IEEE floats…..
I think a lot of the problem is that even large-scale business apps have very little geek appeal, so the software engineers and developers are usually second-rate at best. Also there is a rise in seeing software engineering and development as something one can be competent at after a short program at a vocational college.
As a self-taught software engineer (NEVER having taken a course in that as part of my formal education) I find it scary that I meet very few software engineers working on business apps that I can consider my better or even my equal (operating systems are different. There are many great software engineers in that, firmware, and embedded spaces, but business apps are held together with twine and duct tape).
December 9, 2009, 4:27 pmSunTzu's Nephew says:
LOL, you’ll be waiting a looooong time for that call back….
December 9, 2009, 4:44 pmSunTzu's Nephew says:
Most coders who write business apps have NO freaking clue about business…..
December 9, 2009, 4:46 pmChris Travers says:
SunTzu’s Nephew:
Or about writing apps….
Bad combination.
December 9, 2009, 5:11 pmGeoff says:
True, but I think the contracts are symptomatic than the primary issue. The main problem in the examples you cite is one of incentives: a telephone company with which you are discontinuing service has little reason to ensure that your move to a competitor goes smoothly. While they may not actively work against you, they certainly aren’t going out of their way to smooth over any rough spots.
Similarly, Prof. Anderson’s wife is not a customer of UPS, but of Costco. (Costco is actually UPS’s customer – it pays the company’s invoices.) So while UPS should presumably be able to work out the problem, it has much less reason to do so than Costco – Mrs. Anderson isn’t paying their bills, and the cost of the shipping represents a much smaller amount of money at stake than the price of the TV.
As Anderson alludes to in the PPS, his wife was really trying to solve the wrong problem: she was attempting to find the specific television that was lost, when what she really wanted was just to get a TV from Costco.
December 9, 2009, 5:35 pmreadery says:
You’ve discovered the secret of success in business. One cuts costs and saves money not by solving problems, but by pushing them onto someone else.
Much as in law — the real gains come not from solving problems, but figuring out how someone else can be blamed for them.
December 9, 2009, 7:40 pmChris Travers says:
Geoff:
Agreed. Usually if I am going to contact UPS it is either to address a question or concern that is clearly addressable by them (i.e. “What do I need to do to have you drop a package off at my work location instead of at home?”) or to get information when going back to my vendor (“What can you tell me about this package because I am about to call Costco and try to get it straightened out with them?”).
In the end, I generally presume that the main point of contact is with the shipper, not the shipping company.
This being said, UPS’s tracking system is “interesting” at best. I bought a new thinkpad because my laptop is starting to run into hinge problems, and UPS listed it as shipped “GROUND” from China….. Apparently this REALLY means Air internationally and then ground in the US.
However the tracking has been intermittant, the entries are in a seemingly random order, and right now I have no idea where the laptop is except that it was released from customs two days ago somewhere presumably in the Western US.
December 9, 2009, 9:15 pmRAZ says:
When UPS mistakenly delivered three of my packages across the street (to 16 instead of 15) to a vacant house, it took me weeks of phone calls and emails to figure out what happened when the landlord mistakenly pulled the packages in and waited till the prior tenant came by to realize the packages were for me and not him. UPS demanded that I file the missing package complaints with Amazon, The gap and a third vendor instead of acknowledging that three packages all marked as delivered at the same date and time were missing. I no longer have packages mailed to me via UPS if at all possible.
December 9, 2009, 9:44 pmbyomtov says:
Sun Tzu’s Nephew,
LOL, you’ll be waiting a looooong time for that call back….
No doubt. I was talking about what ought to happen, not what does.
December 9, 2009, 10:46 pm