Do you have this shipping (UPS) issue in your office?

[John105]

I work in a 19 story building. UPS does NOT go to the respective co's mailrooms. All shipments are left on the ground floor in a loading area.

I cannot tell you how many times, over the last 5 years, that I've shipped things, to have them not scanned in at all.

No pickup, no origin scan at all. Some of the things I'm sending are $10-$50k+

First of all, it's stupid to leave it in a common area, but I'm not the director of shipping.

It simply drives me nuts when I send say a box that's $8k, and there's no trace of it 3 days later.

Before anyone says, well, that's your fault it's not insured.

Think about it--if it's never been scanned, what good is insurance? Or, I could be wrong as I believe the driver has to leave signed paperwork.

But how can they be this sloppy for years and years?

I had to send a replacement where the contents were about $8k--yep, pulled it out of my ***. And, I personally drove the box to the UPS store to get a receipt.

If I had to bet my life? The missing box turns up scanned in IL, or Ontario CA, its destination, with its origin scan (it's happened before and I'm in Phila). The chances are that it does get delivered, but I'll never know until next week.

 

[Pew]

IMO it sounds like negligence with your UPS delivery guy(s). Our UPS guy at work pre-CV19 (downtown Chicago) was great. He knew the hours, holidays, and many employees of every company in his route but he was also with UPS for 20+ years, downtown for over half of them, and this specific route for over half of those.

In a normal company your UPS guy probably would have been fired already, you can probably guess what is helping him keep his job.

 

[SC Maintenance]

In the case of the OP - the way this works is that even if the driver doesn't scan it - when he dumps his pick ups on the belt at the Distribution Center the first thing that happens is they go through a singulator and a fixed position bar code scanner. Even if that doesn't read - your box is rejected and circles around to go through again. My point is either your package had no label, or it never made it to its first stop.

We don't have the outgoing problem - our company runs a pretty tight ship. Its the other end, where someone will sign for 35 packages all at once and inevitably be missing one, then call us and tell us they never got it. Of course we send them tracking that says UPS delivered it and their person signed for it, but of course they still expect us to send another. And of course we do not, but people truly do expect it.

Had one a month ago worth at least $5K. Industrial instrumentation is expensive.

 

[cptbarkey]

with that kind of $$$$ outflow of product, its worth paying the extra money to put it in a truck and hand delivering to the UPS hub, or find another carrier. way too much business risk going on as-is.

 

[John105]

with that kind of $$$$ outflow of product, its worth paying the extra money to put it in a truck and hand delivering to the UPS hub, or find another carrier. way too much business risk going on as-is.

I have brought it up and was told you’re ok if something is lost use plausible deniability.

I get it but I feel cheated that a box worth $7k is missing. I’ll post later in the week would not surprise me if it originates in Hodgkins IL or Ontario CA and gets delivered. Has happened several times. It’s 2 of 2 and now box 1 shows departed not delayed.

My co ships dozens upon dozens of laptops and the guys who do them also are uneasy as I am…those are about $1500 each and clearly in their Dell boxes and usually not lost. But have a lack of tracking like I’m experiencing

 

[SC Maintenance]

I work for a small industrial company and our office alone ships maybe $10M a year, with the average box likely being worth $5K and weighing maybe 10 lbs, the vast majority UPS or Fedex. We don't insure any of it and loose almost nothing - but I presume the shipping guys make sure it gets scanned going on the truck. It truly amazes me, but I have been in some of these big automated distribution centers, and there pretty impressive.

Customers on the other hand loose stuff on their end all the time.

 

[Hall]

UPS stopped scanning individual packages at pick-up years ago, at least for larger volume shippers. The first scan is always after 7-8pm in the evening at the center when the truck gets unloaded. Unless the quantity is small enough and you line the packages up with the barcode easily visible, then you ask them to scan them, it's not going to happen.