Customer service issue

[sano]

Here is a link to a blog post about someone who is working with UPS's world renowned customer service.
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/07/what-do-you-do.html

Very high traffic blog. thousands of readers per day. He speaks and writes books on marketing and customer service.

What likely happened here?

 

[trplnkl]

My first guess would be a double labeled package, but you would think after all the phone calls and all the turn-a-rounds that would have been discovered.

 

[upsgrunt]

It also needs to be taken into account how many packages DON'T have problems and get through the system just fine. When you deal with the sheer volume that UPS does, you are going to have a few problems, but I guarantee that the ratio of good to bad is close to, if not, tops in the industry. The problem is that the bad always gets more press than the good and when a customer is really PO'd then they try to get the whole world on their side by making their situation, while very unlikely, seem like the norm.

 

[trplnkl]

I agree with you on the % issue of this problem. However it should not be THAT difficult to retrieve this man's package and get it to him. Someone, somewhere, after all the phone calls, should have made this their top priority of the day.

 

[upsgrunt]

agreed

 

[pretzel_man]

UPS electronically measures every package to determine whether or not it makes its committed service (by day and time). Our service levels are greater than 99% right now.

I'm a UPS customer as well as an employee, and I think our service levels are above all.

That being said, I've seen problems like this before. If I were to guess, it is a problem with the electronic information on the pacakge.

He mentions that it is shipped to his old address. Even if someone writes a new address on a package, its the electronic information (either in the maxi code or PLD) that is used very often.

For instance, if the package goes through an automated hub like CACH or Maple Grove, its sorted from the electronic data.

PAS uses the electronic data too....

This is very rare, but I've seen this before....

P-Man

 

[sano]

That's true Upsgrunt. We would all agree that UPS is the most reliable way to ship a package.
I am intrigued by how the issues of public relations for a large company have changed in the last 5 to 7 years. Word of mouth has always been a factor, however with the advent of blogs and web review sites the voice of each disgruntled customer has the potential to go so much farther than before. Sure makes some interesting issues.
I believe companies (UPS included) do well to be transparent by their own doing instead of being made transparent by unhappy customers. In a day when I can buy a web domain and have new website online within about an hour, a company will not be known only by its advertising. In other words you cant fool near as many of the people near as much of the time. Companies can no longer talk a good talk through their advertising, they need to actually deliver good service.
I am not being derogatory about UPS, this is about all companies.
I believe, as scary as it might be for the brand managers, it is a good thing for the consumer.

 

[dannyboy]

Well let me throw my two cents in on this one.

Four weeks ago, I shipped back a pump that was not what the customer wanted. Insured it for $1200.00 and sent it back via UPS on line, just like I have been doing for the last 10 years or so. Used the UPS number that was assigned to me when I registered.

Well, UPS damaged the pump, broke off one of the cast iron legs. They called, and I filled out the claim form on line. There was a flash on the screen that asked if I wanted it returned to a place in Danbury TX, I typed in no, and typed in the correct addy to get it returned here to me.

UPS picks up the package, and returns it to the place in TX anyway.

For the last 5 days, I have been on the phone with UPS, listening to the fact that the shipper number that I have been using has been assigned to the TX company since 1996, and that UPS considers that package theirs. But since they did not ship it, they can not file the claim from there.

But even if I have it shipped here to me, they will sent the check to the place in TX instead of me. And on and on. And for what ever reason, they seem to want to imply that I screwed up by selecting the shipper number, when all I did was use UPS on line, and they assigned the shipper number, like I said, the same one I have been using for the last ten years or so.

Now, this package, which weighs over 100 pounds has been all over this country thanks to the screwups via UPS on line. I am out the money until this gets straight, and no one at UPS gives a crap, or is interested in fixing the problem.

So, bottom line is this, when things go right, its hard to beat UPS. But when things get screwed up, it goes from bad to worse, especially when you get customer service sups telling you that YOU need to fix the problem, not UPS. Sorry, I have spent over 200 bucks already shipping this thing, the last time it moved, UPS picked it up and sent it to the wrong place. How is that my fault? And now with over 6 hours on the phone, still no answer.

STupid %#%$*

Funny, for those that have been here a while, remember that lost package the guy posted a $5000 reward for? The one they use to measure the tiles on the space shuttle with? And we found it via the contacts here at BC within two days, and he had been trying through the system for over a month? Shame UPS cant be that good on their own.


d

 

[But Benefits Are Great!]

The negatives always get the attention. The 99.9% that ship fine you never hear about.

As a long-term UPS customer, I have three gripes - not that they mean anything;

1. You cannot get a real human on the phone unless you start swearing at the computer voice.

2. I print my labels on-line. It always asks when the package will be ready for pickup, and I believe that that field is never looked at. If I have a package that will be ready for pickup after 4pm, and I print the label at 9am, the driver is at my house for pickup at 9:10am.

3. I ship big-ticket items COD. Expensive, waiting-for-the-check items. I have never received my funds earlier than a week after the COD delivery. An the method UPS sends the $$$? By the US Post Office. ???????????

 

[UpstateNYUPSer(Ret)]

The negatives always get the attention. The 99.9% that ship fine you never hear about.

As a long-term UPS customer, I have three gripes - not that they mean anything;

1. You cannot get a real human on the phone unless you start swearing at the computer voice.

2. I print my labels on-line. It always asks when the package will be ready for pickup, and I believe that that field is never looked at. If I have a package that will be ready for pickup after 4pm, and I print the label at 9am, the driver is at my house for pickup at 9:10am.

3. I ship big-ticket items COD. Expensive, waiting-for-the-check items. I have never received my funds earlier than a week after the COD delivery. An the method UPS sends the $$$? By the US Post Office. ???????????

1. Simply press "0" when you first hear the computer and you will bypass the prompts. No swearing necessary.

2. Sounds like you scheduled the pickup online. You can skip this option and then get the pkg to UPS yourself, saving the $10 P/U charge as well. I always ship online and just scan them and throw (place) them on my pkg car.

3. COD funds are processed the following day and usually EFT to the shippers account. You may think of using 3rd party or collect billing and bill the shipment to either the consignees account number, if they have one, or to one of their credit cards, thereby saving him the COD charge and saving you the hassle.

 

[drewed]

Things that go bad snowball in the UPS system, it sounds it does have mutiple labels, as previously stated, and when someone started looking at it tried correcting it; and due to UPS using mutiple electronic data systems (atleast 3 used in the domestic system) fixing one and not the others probably wont fix the problem. in the 2nd quarter of this year we had a 96% service rating on time/non damaged.... we average 13 million packages delivered a day, so a day we miss service on 500,000 packages

 

[kwed95]

sounds like the classic "margin of error" we always mention when something goes wrong. I agree with it though no system is 100% correct, hopefully it gets resolved sooner rather than later.

 

[trickpony1]

3. I ship big-ticket items COD. Expensive, waiting-for-the-check items. I have never received my funds earlier than a week after the COD delivery. An the method UPS sends the $$$? By the US Post Office. ???????????

It takes 7-10 days to get your money back to you because the company puts all COD funds into high yield short term CD accounts and skims the interest off the top before sending the money to the shipper.

Been doing this for years

I understand the interest accrued is quite a large sum of money.

 

[upsdude]

Funny, for those that have been here a while, remember that lost package the guy posted a $5000 reward for? The one they use to measure the tiles on the space shuttle with? And we found it via the contacts here at BC within two days, and he had been trying through the system for over a month? Shame UPS cant be that good on their own.


d

I was thinking about that situation a couple days ago. Thank God for "dumb truck drivers" huh? LOL.




One of my kids was staying with the grand parents for a couple weeks and needed some meds that were at home. I ran by my house packaged them up and hopped online to ship. My Internet was down so I just filled out a ground ASD with my online account number and dropped off the package at the building.

Turns out the package was missed by the local sort (along with a 100 others) and hung around an extra day. I had to take the day off and meet my father in law half way (7 hours round trip) to give him the meds, fortunately I didn’t send the whole bottle previously.

Here’s where it gets good. I get the bill and UPS charges me an additional 10.00 for using an “Incorrect” shipper number. I get on the phone with a rep, she tracks the package and agrees the company missed the guarantee. She then tells me I have to pay the bill in order to get a “credit” and she also says I have to pay the other 10.00. She tells me that even though the shipper number is the same one every time I ship online, it’s still incorrect. Of course she can’t tell me what the correct number is.

I eventually told her where to go and hung up. Took the bill to work and handed it to a BD guy, he had it fixed in 3 minutes tops.

No wonder folks get pissed at us. Just think, it could have been worse if the lady on the phone had exposed tattoos! LOL.

 

[But Benefits Are Great!]

... Just think, it could have been worse if the lady on the phone had exposed tattoos! LOL.

Or a goatee

 

[VoiceOfReason]

Here is a link to a blog post about someone who is working with UPS's world renowned customer service.
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/07/what-do-you-do.html

Very high traffic blog. thousands of readers per day. He speaks and writes books on marketing and customer service.

What likely happened here?

The guy says to install a broken button. What a dork. I'll just push the broken button to retrieve a package in the first tier of a pup on a rail car.

The whole thing is on the person that shipped it to his old address in the first place, and that might have been the bloggers fault for not updating his address. UPS did not send it to his old address. It sounds like we failed farther down the line but the supervisors who said "their hands are tied" are half right. You can not do anything about a package that is in transit until it hits its destination. There should have been someone looking for it, and that sucks. Delivery intercept only works on the first trip, returned stuff can not be intercepted for some reason.

It pisses me off to see that some "blogger" can make such a stink and cause such a black eye for something we didn't make the first mistake on. At the same time I am disappointed that we have had our hands on it more than once and could not correct it for him either.

I'd like to see the tracking on it in ett.

 

[sano]

The guy says to install a broken button. What a dork. I'll just push the broken button to retrieve a package in the first tier of a pup on a rail car.

I took the "broke button" to mean a way for employees to break out of the system when the system is not serving the customer. I am not a driver, but i would think that good drivers push the "broke button" frequently. Sometimes even going as far as making a left hand turn.

 

[VoiceOfReason]

I took the "broke button" to mean a way for employees to break out of the system when the system is not serving the customer. I am not a driver, but i would think that good drivers push the "broke button" frequently. Sometimes even going as far as making a left hand turn.

I would agree. There is some serious behind the scenes customer service going on with the guys on the street that no one hears about. If someone had somehow gotten this to the driver at one end or the other it would have been fixed.

 

[dannyboy]

The problem is two fold.

Take my package in TX.

First, I call customer service. She cant help, so she tries to passify me into not doing anything. Sorry, $1200 is not something I can afford to pay out of pocket for your mistake.

So she puts me through to her supervisor, who pretty much tells me its my fault because I used someone elses shipper number to ship the package with. When I try to explain to her that UPS assigned the shipper number for me to use, she proceedes to tell me that UPS's Computer system is not capable of making mistakes like that, but since the package was damaged, that I need to talk to the fine people in claims, its their problem.

So I spend time on the phone with claims, and end up having to wait on her sup to call me back. Which takes a week. And no one can seem to understand the problem from the customers standpoint. They have my package in TEXAS, I am in Tennessee. I have filed the claim, not them, and they need to deal with me, not them.

So the two issues are that #1, they do not want to listen to what the customer is really saying, only what they want to hear, and #2, even when they finally understand the issue, they refuse to rectify the problem, but instead hide behind "our hands are tied" or "that is not according to UPS policy"

As a customer, I could care less about brown policy, I want the problem taken care of. And if you are not part of the solution, its because you are part of the problem.

So, yep, I understand the bloggers frustration. It was not UPS that shipped the package to his old address, it was either the shipper, or he filled in the forms wrong. But to have the thing bounce around the country, most likely because of twin lables, or missapplied lables, and is not caught and stopped, it where UPS dropped the ball.

For all the whoopla about we know exactly where your package is at any time advertisements, we really dont. We might have an Idea where it is suposed to be, but that does not mean a thing in reality.

d

 

[UpstateNYUPSer(Ret)]

It takes 7-10 days to get your money back to you because the company puts all COD funds into high yield short term CD accounts and skims the interest off the top before sending the money to the shipper.

Been doing this for years

I understand the interest accrued is quite a large sum of money.

On a somewhat related note, how many of you know that UPS has two banks that it uses for payroll? It pays it's East Coast employees from it's West Coast bank and vice versa. The interest that is accrued during the time between the checks being cut and actually deposited can be quite large.