Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Plug: UPS

Note: this blog has been migrated to Medium, with the articles here available to preserve permalinks. Please see this post at https://medium.com/@ianrbuck/plug-ups-15f7d80816fe

This week I've been walking on air because the Nexus 5 that I ordered was shipped on Sunday. UPS received it Monday morning, and since I chose two-day shipping I was expecting to get it on Wednesday. I obsessively refreshed the tracking page about once every half-hour, and it became evident that I would probably get my phone a day early on Tuesday.

So on Tuesday I started refreshing the page every ten minutes, and I hung around the University's mail room waiting for that little slip of paper that said I had a package. It never came.

Right before my 2 o'clock lab the tracking page suddenly changed to yellow and said: "Exception: Invalid Street Address." At first I thought that the system was complaining that I was using a PO box. A lot of shipping system complain about that, but the University always makes it work.

Then I looked at the receipt I had from Google, and realized that I had done a stupid. I put my home zip code at the end of my University address. So the package was wandering around the Twin Cities looking for a Morris address. Not good.

The tracking page said I should contact the sender and have them change the address, but Google said that they can't do that for security reasons (to be fair, I totally understand that and they responded in about two minutes flat.) So it was up to UPS to do the right thing.

I started a live chat with one of UPS's support people, and they made the necessary changes right away. They did have someone from the warehouse in Minneapolis call me, but I didn't have to provide any extra information.

The most amazing thing about this is that the package was relabeled and sent to Morris during the night, so it is arriving today (Wednesday) which is when I was expecting to get it in the first place. UPS, I give you serious props for your efficiency and your quick and easy customer support.

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