Man Orders TV Through Amazon, Gets Assault Rifle

cheryl

I started this.
Staff member
Man Orders TV Through Amazon, Gets Assault Rifle - Wired

The evidence points to a UPS mix-up. The outside of the box had two address labels on it – and Horvitz’s address was on top.

“There’s a UPS label on the outside of the box that matched my information, and had the tracking number,” Horvitz said. “But underneath my label — the plastic bag with my label on it — there was a UPS label affixed to the box with other information on it.

“UPS puts the name label on and then they put a second small sticker — a redundant sticker with the tracking information on it,” he said. “There were two different small stickers as well. There was a small sticker that matched the label under mine, and a small sticker that matched mine.”

UPS did not immediately return a call seeking comment.
 

UpstateNYUPSer(Ret)

Well-Known Member
UPS does not put the name label on--that it is done by the shipper. The small "redundant" labe is called a Preload Assist Label (PAL) which tells the loader where to load the package on the car. Somewhere along the line the original label was covered by a second label, which was then given a PAL and delivered to the consignee. The folks in the destination center are not going to know or have the time to investigate as to why there was one label on top of the other. Scan the bullseye, SPA, load pkg, deliver pkg.
 

'Lord Brown's bidding'

Well-Known Member
Exactly. Why do people think UPS puts address labels on boxes? The customer does that, unless it's an address correction, but that doesn't cover the whole label, just the bad address. The label in the picture was a new label, complete with a new tracking number. UPS doesn't do that.
 

yeldarb

Well-Known Member
I had to pick up a package from an elderly woman who was furious because it was stuff that she had not ordered. It was adult toys and such. The box had a label which had been cut off another box and taped on this box. Probably done by a clerk just wanting to get home early. Every day, UPS reboxes thousands of packages which have been smashed. The mix up could happen easily, and it does.
 

PiedmontSteward

RTW-4-Less
A few years back, we had a guy drop a box in the outbound on Noonday with a fully loaded and ready-to-go AK-47. The rifle went off and shot a hole through the trailer and out into the yard.
 
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