Good and bad UPS experiances

It's not often That Neuron2Neuron goes off the Peer2Peer/technology track much, but this I just have to share, as it relates, in a way. It's about UPS, who is supposed to be delivering a book, that will be reviewed on TorrentFreak. The book will be reviewed by TorrentFreak's US office (which is mainly the research office) so I'll give it over to them for the lowdown.
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The book comes from Oxford University Press, and was shipped from New York. The book was supposed to have been shipped 2 weeks ago, so after contacting the author (he approached torrentfreak) they went to ship it out again, and this time gave Ben a tracking number. Alas, in the address, they ommitted the unit number (the office is located in a 40 unit park, in Metro Atlanta). The best I could hope for was to keep an eye out for the truck, and flag it down. Short story, I missed the truck, and it was ben that noticed it in the tracking.

04/07/2009 11:41 A.M. THE APARTMENT NUMBER IS MISSING OR IS INCORRECT. UPS IS ATTEMPTING TO OBTAIN THIS INFORMATION.

Well, first it's not an apartment, but I'm guessing it's a standard message. I went to contact UPS to provide the info (the missing number is "2"). The email system won't work without an infotrack number. This is on a notice a delivery driver leaves when he can't deliver, but since he doesn't know where to deliver, he can't leave a notice, so there's no number. Have I mentioned that the emails can't be sent without this number? BAD

Time to phone UPS, which is based locally, in Atlanta. This is the good part. I've known Ben for years, decades almost (18 years almost) as we both grew up in Liverpool, so I have the Scouse accent. I've also now lived in the US for a number of years, in the south; my wife's southern, my kids are all southern - can you imagine my accent? I can't use drive-thrus, I have difficulty with speech recognition (I'm sick to death of reading 3001 and other books to train Dragon NaturallySpeaking) so voice-based phone menu systems are a nightmare for me. This one actually worked. GOOD
Better, as soon as I gave the tracking number (18 letters and numbers) it immediately put me through to an agent. GOOD
Even better, she had my package details on her screen, and I didn't have to repeat everything! GREAT!!
Alas, after giving her the number, which they were 'attempting to obtain', I was told that it's considered a 'new address' and wouldn't be delivered until tommorows runs now BAD (but on the upside, she was competant, and easy to understand, a rarity in customer service, and start to finish, from hitting send on my cellphone, to hanging up - 3m49s GREAT!)

04/07/2009 12:29 P.M. A DELIVERY CHANGE REQUEST FOR THIS PACKAGE WILL BE PROCESSED / DELIVERY TO AN ALTERNATE ADDRESS WAS REQUESTED

I can understand if it was a few hours later - the truck would be nowhere near, but I doubt it was that far away, or wouldn't be passing close later, on its way back to the depot. BAD

The, there is the option to be notified by email if theres a problem, or when a delivery's been done. At 1:46PM, two emails arrived together, one for the change of address, and the second for the failed delivery attempt; the change of address one arrived a second or two earlier. Very usefull system that. BAD

Of course, it's not all UPS' fault. Someone at OUP was a little careless in not putting the full address on the package. BAD
but back to Ben

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As TorrentFreak hopes to do more reviews in the future, we just hope that the bad instances are reduced, but at the same time, these things are going to happen sometimes. Look for the start of a reviews section soon, on TorrentFreak.com

UPDATE 8:15PM

MACON,
GA, US 04/07/2009 7:37 P.M. A DELIVERY CHANGE REQUEST FOR THIS PACKAGE WILL BE COMPLETED / THE ADDRESS HAS BEEN CORRECTED. THE DELIVERY HAS BEEN RESCHEDULED

gotta love it...