How far in the hierarchy does the incompetence spread?

BigFatRat

big louse mouse
The way UPS has dealt with the recent bad weather in WA and OR is insulting. No one expects deliveries to proceed at normal pace when there's a snowstorm, but UPS seems to have fallen on their ass and enjoys the show of their own falling apart.

They are now days behind and on top of that they are working at reduced capacity. Not only packages aren't delivered (some residential neighborhoods are still covered in slush, although all main roads in Seattle are fine) but people are told they cannot pick theirs up at the local distribution centers. My package has been stuck in the Seattle UPS center for 5 days now and I keep hearing the same things when I call - due to bad weather (there hasn't been any new bad weather since last Sunday) we stopped all ground deliveries, etc etc. Apparently, because of the "concerns related to the safety of the employees" they don't allow people to come and pick up their parcels either. This doesn't make much sense; people would gladly drive in the snow to the local UPS center and stay in line to pick up their packages, and UPS can easily beef up support at those facilities by paying overtime rates to a handful of employees.

I was finally able to get a manager on the phone who admitted they were 7 days behind with the deliveries. How is it possible that a company the size of UPS, with their considerable logistical and material resources goes belly up over three days of heavy snowing? A snowstorm is a rare event in Seattle, so someone on the Midwest or Northeast tell me, does UPS perform that poorly every winter? Is this snowstorm just a convenient cover up for the fact that they can't cope with the volume of holiday deliveries anyway?

It's during crisis situations when companies gain or lose the respect of their customers. UPS has certainly lost mine. I wish I could say I will never use UPS again, but unfortunately I have no choice. I'd feel better about this if at least UPS would not bombard ups with all the work-ethic ads, "what can brown do for you" etc, who extol the virtues of the business and the idea that the customer is King and always gets their service on time. Nobody at UPS cares when the customer gets their delivery; most times things just work fine, but when they fail, they fail monumentally. What's the customer got to do, it's not like there are so many alternatives...

Incidentally, a Google search for the sentence "UPS sucks" yields 15,300 results today. Searching for "FedEx sucks" yields only 7,470 results. Which means that UPS sucks roughly twice as much as FedEx.

Happy holidays!
 

Overpaid Union Thug

Well-Known Member
The way UPS has dealt with the recent bad weather in WA and OR is insulting. No one expects deliveries to proceed at normal pace when there's a snowstorm, but UPS seems to have fallen on their ass and enjoys the show of their own falling apart.

They are now days behind and on top of that they are working at reduced capacity. Not only packages aren't delivered (some residential neighborhoods are still covered in slush, although all main roads in Seattle are fine) but people are told they cannot pick theirs up at the local distribution centers. My package has been stuck in the Seattle UPS center for 5 days now and I keep hearing the same things when I call - due to bad weather (there hasn't been any new bad weather since last Sunday) we stopped all ground deliveries, etc etc. Apparently, because of the "concerns related to the safety of the employees" they don't allow people to come and pick up their parcels either. This doesn't make much sense; people would gladly drive in the snow to the local UPS center and stay in line to pick up their packages, and UPS can easily beef up support at those facilities by paying overtime rates to a handful of employees.

I was finally able to get a manager on the phone who admitted they were 7 days behind with the deliveries. How is it possible that a company the size of UPS, with their considerable logistical and material resources goes belly up over three days of heavy snowing? A snowstorm is a rare event in Seattle, so someone on the Midwest or Northeast tell me, does UPS perform that poorly every winter? Is this snowstorm just a convenient cover up for the fact that they can't cope with the volume of holiday deliveries anyway?

It's during crisis situations when companies gain or lose the respect of their customers. UPS has certainly lost mine. I wish I could say I will never use UPS again, but unfortunately I have no choice. I'd feel better about this if at least UPS would not bombard ups with all the work-ethic ads, "what can brown do for you" etc, who extol the virtues of the business and the idea that the customer is King and always gets their service on time. Nobody at UPS cares when the customer gets their delivery; most times things just work fine, but when they fail, they fail monumentally. What's the customer got to do, it's not like there are so many alternatives...

Incidentally, a Google search for the sentence "UPS sucks" yields 15,300 results today. Searching for "FedEx sucks" yields only 7,470 results. Which means that UPS sucks roughly twice as much as FedEx.

Happy holidays!

If you have a problem with our service as a result of bad weather I suggest you stop pestering managers and and go straight to the top to the man that is responsible for all the mess in the first place........GOD. Good luck with that.
 

BigFatRat

big louse mouse
If you have a problem with our service as a result of bad weather I suggest you stop pestering managers and and go straight to the top to the man that is responsible for all the mess in the first place........GOD. Good luck with that.


Hah, that's the same excuse that every UPS phone operator has.

God may be responsible for bestowing this bad weather upon us, but ours is the responsibility to ride through it. We can give up and admit defeat and just let things be, and it will work out in the long run, but as a company, you lose credibility.

I'm not cynical enough to blame the drivers, who nonetheless have been out there in the cold doing at least some of the past deliveries these days. But somewhere up the chain some people have been promoted to their level of incompetence and failed. They probably have conveniently gone on vacation when the first snowflakes stated falling.

UPS management is probably just talking about layoffs now while the service centers are understaffed and people call to inquire about their week-late packages, more and more angry with each day that passes.
 

Catatonic

Nine Lives
Look you Big Fat Rat...wait a minute, that's your name...never mind!

No good business person is going to plan and spend for the worst case scenario. People who do that are called "ex-business owners".
I, of course, was not involved in the planning for the Northwest but I understand very well as to why we could not react in the short period of time.
 
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Big Fat Rat. if your package was the only one delayed by the weather it would be easy to let you go by and pick it up. However when it is just one in 50,000 + packages stored in several trailers full as well as stacks within the building and hundreds of package cars, it would be nothing less than a miracle to find any single package. The proverbial "needle in a haystack" becomes a reality. I'm sorry that your package is out of reach, but if you can tell UPS how to find that one package in the mountain of cardboard, I'm sure they would pay you to come by and pick it up.
 

Johney

Pineapple King
Big Fat Rat. if your package was the only one delayed by the weather it would be easy to let you go by and pick it up. However when it is just one in 50,000 + packages stored in several trailers full as well as stacks within the building and hundreds of package cars, it would be nothing less than a miracle to find any single package. The proverbial "needle in a haystack" becomes a reality. I'm sorry that your package is out of reach, but if you can tell UPS how to find that one package in the mountain of cardboard, I'm sure they would pay you to come by and pick it up.
We have a winner!
 

BigFatRat

big louse mouse
Of course it's not only about my package; UPS is days behind. Rest assured, I've gone through anger and frustration and now I'm in the resignation phase - I'll just wait, and in the meanwhile I'll write annoying forum messages to alleviate my boredom, because I have no life.

It seems however that the whole business has failed (temporarily) because of an attitude problem, not because things can't be solved. If anyone should have the right resources to deal with this that would be UPS, but someone has let things fall and break and then shrugged in complacency. "Duh, it snows. Act of god, can't do anything..."

I see this with my coworkers too - many of them still claim to be stuck in snow at home, although the snow has melted enough to the point that every car equipped with chains and every SUV can go anywhere.
 

old brown shoe

30 year driver
Fat Rat I hear where you are comming from. Ups cannot predict the weather in advance but peak season comes at the same time every year. This year has been a joke to say the least with not enough people and no rental trucks. We did buy a bunch of bycycles with little carts behind them that did not get used. As for your google search of UPS sucks, we deliver alot more packages than fedx. So we proubly suck about the same if you take that into account. And I did stay at a Holiday Inn last night so that makes me a expert.
 
Hah, that's the same excuse that every UPS phone operator has.
Now just what would you have them say? "Oh Sir we are so sorry for the delay in your shipment, but our CEO is a dimwit with no clue as to how to run this company."? However true that may or may not be, it aint gonna happen.

God may be responsible for bestowing this bad weather upon us, but ours is the responsibility to ride through it. We can give up and admit defeat and just let things be, and it will work out in the long run, but as a company, you lose credibility.

I'm not cynical enough to blame the drivers, who nonetheless have been out there in the cold doing at least some of the past deliveries these days. But somewhere up the chain some people have been promoted to their level of incompetence and failed. They probably have conveniently gone on vacation when the first snowflakes stated falling.

Yet your cynicism is directed to those very drivers. The rank and file employees are the majority of this board with almost an equal number of middle to lower level management people that are not in positions to make significant changes to the system to accommodate the amount of flow that has clogged up our systems in your neck of the woods. In short, you are preaching to the choir.

UPS management is probably just talking about layoffs now while the service centers are understaffed and people call to inquire about their week-late packages, more and more angry with each day that passes.
what would you have us do or say here?
 

BigFatRat

big louse mouse
Yet your cynicism is directed to those very drivers. The rank and file employees are the majority of this board with almost an equal number of middle to lower level management people that are not in positions to make significant changes to the system to accommodate the amount of flow that has clogged up our systems in your neck of the woods. In short, you are preaching to the choir.

As you have undoubtedly quickly figured out from the tone of my posts, I am venting here. There's no proper response to venting except from "**** off", but I still expect the resignation of the local operations manager and a personal apology from your CEO.
 

Big Babooba

Well-Known Member
Incidentally, a Google search for the sentence "UPS sucks" yields 15,300 results today. Searching for "FedEx sucks" yields only 7,470 results. Which means that UPS sucks roughly twice as much as FedEx.

Happy holidays!
Actually, UPS's PPS (Package Per Suck) ratio is better than FedEx's

Using Peak Day projections
FedEx - 9,800,000 / 7470 sucks = 1 suck per 1311.914 pkgs
UPS - 22,000,000 / 15300 sucks = 1 suck per 1437.908 pkgs
So it takes UPS almost 127 more packages to register a ding on the old Suck Meter then FedEx.:laughing:
 

BigFatRat

big louse mouse
Actually, UPS's PPS (Package Per Suck) ratio is better than FedEx's

Using Peak Day projections
FedEx - 9,800,000 / 7470 sucks = 1 suck per 1311.914 pkgs
UPS - 22,000,000 / 15300 sucks = 1 suck per 1437.908 pkgs
So it takes UPS almost 127 more packages to register a ding on the old Suck Meter then FedEx.:laughing:

Thanks for straightening out the math. This is how thorough, unbiased research should always be conducted!
 
P

pickup

Guest
As you have undoubtedly quickly figured out from the tone of my posts, I am venting here. There's no proper response to venting except from "**** off", but I still expect the resignation of the local operations manager and a personal apology from your CEO.

I am also patiently expecting the entire declassification of the files relating to the jfk assasination so that I can know the true murderer(s) of the 35th president of these here United States of America. I think my expectation will be fulfilled before yours. Do you really think a personal apology is coming from the CEO and if so, what purpose will it serve?
 

dilligaf

IN VINO VERITAS
As you have undoubtedly quickly figured out from the tone of my posts, I am venting here. There's no proper response to venting except from "**** off", but I still expect the resignation of the local operations manager and a personal apology from your CEO.
Venting or not you are still a great candidate for the poster child of the month for a cereal box. And it's a pretty safe bet that you won't get an apology from our CEO or for that matter the resignation of the local ops mgr.
 

dilligaf

IN VINO VERITAS
Actually, UPS's PPS (Package Per Suck) ratio is better than FedEx's

Using Peak Day projections
FedEx - 9,800,000 / 7470 sucks = 1 suck per 1311.914 pkgs
UPS - 22,000,000 / 15300 sucks = 1 suck per 1437.908 pkgs
So it takes UPS almost 127 more packages to register a ding on the old Suck Meter then FedEx.:laughing:
My hero, you are so good at math BIG!:bow:
 

BigFatRat

big louse mouse
No Problemo. Just don't ask me about SPORHs.:sick:

I had to "google" that one ;-)

You can keep my package for a while, it's in good company. At least it will have a good time among 50,000 of his kind.

I'm tempted to magnify this little suburban weather incident to national scale. Philosophically speaking, no UPS involved. Remember after Catrina, fingers were pointed left and right. But while the magnitude of the damage could not have been easily predicted, thinking in retrospect, the subsequent catastrophe situation could have been much better managed. Police had fled, trucks with aid were stuck, fema pretended not to have known how bad New Orleans really was, not enough buses were sent to evacuate, and so on. Certainly a lot of people in positions of power blamed their incompetence on the "act of God". Is anybody learning anything from past events? We are the nation with the most resources at our disposal, yet out vital systems stumble and crash every time the weather gets a bit frisky. Since I'm in a doomsday mood, it makes me think that "The Day After Tomorrow", that catastrophe flick with Dennis Quaid, is actually an example of the good weather-crisis management...
 

BigFatRat

big louse mouse
Venting or not you are still a great candidate for the poster child of the month for a cereal box. And it's a pretty safe bet that you won't get an apology from our CEO or for that matter the resignation of the local ops mgr.

Then I want a gift certificate too, for one free UPS shipment. And I want the certificated sent via USPS, please.
 
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