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Although I really retired
from my small repair business in April on my 82nd birthday, I
have since fixed a few things for friends and (not that I'm not
friendly), for the odd business too. Yesterday I placed an order
with CPC (I still have an account with them) for a few parts.
To make things easier in terms of promising a collection date
for my customer, I placed the order with a pretty expensive delivery
charge for "delivery before 2pm". That gives me a comfortable
enough time to fit the parts. No hassle.
I received a response from CPC
no more than a couple of hours later telling me the order had
been despatched.
Excellent as per usual... and
I'd paid about £11 to get it before 2pm the next day. |
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The next morning around
9am I spotted a white van moving very slowly with the driver
peering at my gate so went to receive my parcel. Alas he'd continued
down the lane, and anyway it wasn't a UPS van. I returned and
opened the CPC email and clicked on the tracking number. |
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Looking at the information
above.. it tells me my parcel was at the UPS depot in Preston
at 2:19 on 13th November. Well, that's the same town as CPC so
nothing surprising there. However, only one minute later at 2:20
it tells me it's "On The Way" but with a "Delay"
exclamation mark. What does that mean? Well the heading tells
me there was a "sortation delay" and the parcel has
been re-routed. This doesn't really make sense does it? A sortation
ERROR might have taken place for example, but that isn't a delay
as such.
I can recall my brother's new
cooker experiencing a sortation error. He got a phone call from
the deliveryman outside a house in Edinburgh asking why he wasn't
answering the door. Roy said he was in Bournemouth (BH23) not
Edinburgh (EH23). Was my parcel sent to Edinburgh? Is it sitting
in the back of a lorry speeding up to Scotland? Or do I read
that it was sent to Preston... not too clear here?
I clicked on " view all
shipping details" but nothing new to see here. |
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I needed a firm delivery
time (ie. I need "More support" than a "customer
service agent" can provide) so opted to use the "Virtual
Assistant". No doubt this is fuelled by AI, and indeed proved
to be an utter waste of time. This "BOT" option isn't
a speciality of UPS; it's used by loads of sellers and is basically
programmed to never make an admission of blame therefore cannot
help.
Being completely confounded
by the BOT I chose to ask it to provide me with a phone number
for a human.. which it almost did but not really as it was a
recording of a human. The recording (another BOT? managed to
receive my spoken 18 digit tracking number on the second attempt
which I suppose is pretty miraculous... but useless, as again
the options presented included no admission of an error (therefore
no solution), but did at least let me select an option to speak
to a person. Alas UPS are in a spot of bother as it seems there
are zillions of customers in trouble and I'd have to join their
queue so I gave up and let my customer know to cancel his collection
date.
A least I should be able to
claim back my £11. Yes, indeed, a nice lady at CPC promised
to refund me my postage.
I checked the tracking later
and later and finally not long before midnight the information
changed.
The lorry had deposited my parcel
at Tamworth in Staffordshire which is not far from Wolverhampton. |
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Then I checked further and can
see, although it's not yet out for delivery, it's promised by
noon tomorrow, Thursday.
What's rather puzzling is it
would appear the parcel arrived at UPS Preston from CPC (a mere
5 minutes away), then just sat around from 2:19am until 6:54pm,
14 hours 35 minutes until being sent to Tamworth (88 miles).
It says it was "re-routed to the correct destination"
at 2:20. I can't really make sense of this, but there's probably
a simple explanation.. maybe AI was in charge? |
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More progress... the parcel
left Tamworth for Southampton after waiting about 3 hours and
was quickly loaded onto a delivery van which supposedly left
at about half past four in the morning. Who gets parcels delivered
that early? Anyway it's due here, only 40 minutes away. |
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Just in case the van arrived
when I was asleep I checked the doorstep and it wasn't there.
I'm sure it'll arrive here but past experience tells me there's
only a 50/50 chance because our village often gets overlooked
by the UPS drivers.
Oh no!!! UPS have changed their
mind. The van didn't set off at 4:38... it set off nearly 6 hours
later at 10:26. |
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Presumably either AI is
messing up the information or it's finger trouble at Southampton?
I wonder where the van's heading?
I noted something a bit odd..
UPS are quoting update timing in Eastern Standard Time (EST)
which explains how they're quoting times, for example the 10:26
van departure time was written at 6:07 plus 5 hours or 11:07
GMT. It doesn't explain the departure of a van at 4:38 though.
This presumably is a fib.
One delivery route from Southampton
is via Bournemouth and the other more or less direct to my address.
If the former the 12:00 promise is a bit optimistic.
Sure enough 12 o'clock came
and went. I knew it would because UPS drivers hardly ever come
this way at the start of their deliveries. I rang UPS and after
trying a dozen button pushes got through to a young lady who
eventually agreed that they'd missed the noon deadline and, after
checking declared 2:30pm to 4:30pm, because the driver had really
important parcels to deliver (maybe those were even more delayed
than mine)?
I checked the tracking information
at 12:45 and noticed it had been "updated" at 7:40
EST, which is 12:40 GMT. Although this is 40 minutes after the
delivery time this latter is still shown as 12:00. What's the
point of saying the delivery was updated if nothing is actually
updated. Aha.. that update time is because I'm looking at the
tracking information. Nothing to do with UPS monitoriing the
situation!!
What I'd like to know is who
is to blame for the problems and false information? I can't blame
the young lady on the phone as she is said to have the same level
of information as me (according to the website). I blame senior
management because I'm always having trouble with UPS so I assume
its a business weakness. Maybe customers don't complain? Then
again if I try to complain, as I have done in the past, I'm told
that CPC is their customer.. not me. I tried to initiate a "formal
complaint" but I was given no option but to communicate
with their BOT. I tried and was given the choice of emailing
(no.. because I'm not a "customer" or phone (the same
help line that I'd rung earlier where you need to shout an 18
digit number at them). I looked on the Internet to see if there
was a way of complaining and was quite surprised at the venom
over the last dozen years or so.
I'll suggest to CPC that they
should ditch them in favour of another carrier. |
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What then happened was
I got through on the UPS phone line and told the young lady that
Southampton depot rarely deliver to me on time because the driver
ends up out of time and returns what's undelivered to the depot.
She said the depot would contact me. They did and I told the
guy that Friday delivery was awkward because I had a dentists
appointment at 10:30am so aiming for 9am wouuld be best. Can't
be done as the driver leaves at 10:30. We ended with me asking
him to do his best.
The next day I rang UPS to say
my parcel hadn't arrived and the young lady said she'd call the
Southampton depot. I received a call back quite promptly and
this time it was a lady from the depot. I explained tmy predicament
and she said the driver would make me his first call. She checked
and found that no signature was needed and I'd leave a note to
put the parcel in my greenhouse.
I arrived back from the dentist
and sure enough my parcel was in the greenhouse. Delivery had
been logged as 10:29am (at that precise time I was about to get
my teeth checked).
Needless to say I'm never going
to pay extra for a more speedy delivery.. I'll just add a few
days onto my repair quotation.
The final details can be seen
below and its worth pointing out that the delivery on Friday
was due to me phoning the Southampton depot otherwise the parcel
may have been still circulating around the district. You can
see the time from the depot to here is actually less than 20
minutes. |
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Nothing untoward here but look below. |
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