An interesting series of events took place recently with United Parcel Service (UPS). I arrived home from work the other day to discover a package sitting in a flower bed near my back door. It had a UPS-generated address label, made out to our address, but using my wife’s maiden name (which she has not used since the 90′s). We then got to looking closer at the mailing label. We peeled it back and discovered an original mailing label that was addressed to the same person who’s name was on the prescription bottles. Her address was different than ours, and was located in a city some 60 miles from where we lived. We couldn’t imagine why UPS would take it upon themselves to cover up the original mailing label and generate a new one, for a person with a different first name and address, and in a different city. I called the prescription company who shipped the package, and they too were at a loss as to why this might happen. The prescription company thanked me, and said they would send their patient out a new package immediatey, and I assured them I would send the package back. A few days later guess who shows up at our door? You guessed it. UPS…with yet another package for the same poor lady, again with the original mailing label – showing a different person at a different address – covered up with a new UPS label changing the recepient to my wife’s maiden name at our address. I explained the whole story to the driver and he indicated he would return the package to the shipper. The next day I took the 1st package to my local UPS Store to have it returned (I hadn’t been in a hurry to drop it off, since the pharmacy was sending out a new package to the patient). I handed the package to the clerk behind the counter and explained the problem, and that it needed to be returned to the sender. He looked at the label and said, “I can’t take this, if I scan the label into the system it will just come back to you.” By this point I was frustrated and quipped, “At this point I don’t care if you throw it in the trash. It’s not my problem, and it wasn’t my screw-up. Do what you want with it” and I walked out. So yeah Brown, I got something you can do for me… Well, I guess we had this coming… Several weeks ago my wife placed an online order for some new shoes, to be shipped to the elementary school where she works. Imagine her surprise today when my wife received an email from a man named Mark Craig who lives in Canada. Seems he received my wife’s shoes, in a package with a UPS-generated shipping label, showing his name and address. He had opened the package and found my wife’s name and address on the enclosed paperwork, Google’d the school name, found my wife’s email address, and sent her the note. Out of curiosity, when she emailed Mark back, she asked him if there was an original mailing label under the one directing the package to him. She asked if there was a label that showed her name and address. He responded yes, there was such a label in place. So this time UPS didn’t just redirect a package to a different woman’s name, at a different address, in a different city 60 miles away. This time they changed the address label from a woman’s name to a man’s name – and shipped it to a different country.
And the followup posting……………….
My fellow BS’er Bill gave me some good-natured (and deserved) teasing the other day as a result of my recent What Can Brown Do For You? post.
TheBSBlog
