ideas worth stealingUPS moves at the speed of, well, something damn slow.
Little story for you today, in three parts.
Part I:
Guy needs to send a package. Guy walks into a UPS store and plops down a piece of paper with an address on it. UPS writes it up using the wrong address, and sends off the package.
Part II:
UPS delivers package to the address on the label. How they did this, I have no idea. The address on the package (which is wrong) doesn’t actually exist.
I checked.
Part III:
Guy calls UPS, opens a trace for a package delivered to a non-existent location, addressed incorrectly by … yup … UPS. Possible delay in final package delivery?
Eight business days. Eight … business … days!
Sorry, they said. We do apologize. But despite that you are the one waiting for the package, the sender has to call and open the trace. Despite that we addressed it incorrectly, we can’t promise delivery will take any less than eight business days. And depite that we delivered it to a location that apparently doesn’t exist, we can’t get off our butts and do a single thing to make your life easier.
Sorry. We do apologize.
Moral of the story?
You can’t just design an experience. You have to deliver on it. Every single day.
Update: The package was eventually delivered later today, as it was supposed to be, so I can’t accuse UPS of being slow. But I can still accuse them of being lazy. They did, after all, make a series of mistakes that led to this fiasco in the first place.
Posted by Robert on August 1st, 2007
one comment
Similar story:
I was planning a trip to Europe, so I applied for a passport. Being a naturalized citizen, I had to submit my original naturalization papers that I was promised would be returned to me with my passport. Several weeks passed and finally I received a package with a passport in it — but it wasn’t mine. As a bonus, I also got someone else’s naturalization papers. I called the post office where I submitted my application to let them know I got someone else’s passport and to ask what happened to mine. They told me to send the passport and papers I received to the person they belong to (I had all their personal information right there with the documents) and that in order to receive my passport, I would have to wait for whoever received it by accident to contact their post office. I assume they would then be given the same instructions I got.
That’s right — the post office had no way of tracking where my very important citizenship documents were actually delivered and I had to rely on the good will of a stranger to get them back. Not only that, but I also had to keep my fingers crossed that whoever got my papers would not use them for identity theft.
I did eventually receive my passport (just in time, too), but I certainly did not enjoy the weeks of waiting without knowing when and if I would get my proof of citizenship back.