I hate ups

I shipped an eel overnight this past Monday. They still have not delivered it. It has been their error so I should get the shipping refunded but the eel has to be dead so I'm out the cost of the eel($175). It made it to the correct facility was supposedly out for delivery. They could not find the address so they sent it back. The buyer contacted them confirmong they had the correct address so they routed it back to the buyer. It will probably sit over the holiday weekend and may be delivered by Tuesday. That will be a dead eel in a bag for over 8 days. If it comes back to me I'm opening the box at the UPS Store!!!

Oh man.....That sucks....Thats an expensive eel:eek:
 
I shipped an eel overnight this past Monday. They still have not delivered it. It has been their error so I should get the shipping refunded but the eel has to be dead so I'm out the cost of the eel($175). It made it to the correct facility was supposedly out for delivery. They could not find the address so they sent it back. The buyer contacted them confirmong they had the correct address so they routed it back to the buyer. It will probably sit over the holiday weekend and may be delivered by Tuesday. That will be a dead eel in a bag for over 8 days. If it comes back to me I'm opening the box at the UPS Store!!!

your package is insured for upto $200.00 by default.
if an item that is packed up is worth more, you can always pay extra for added insurance.

sometimes it can be a b*tch to collect, but that's what small claims court is for....and the moment you state that to UPS, you'll find that they don't want the publicity and will hand you your money.

Harry
 
your package is insured for upto $200.00 by default.
if an item that is packed up is worth more, you can always pay extra for added insurance.

sometimes it can be a b*tch to collect, but that's what small claims court is for....and the moment you state that to UPS, you'll find that they don't want the publicity and will hand you your money.

Harry

They will not payout on anything perishable.
 
UPS will not pay on dead animals. You may be able to get the shipping costs back, but then, every excuse in the book is used(bad weather, etc), not to repay shipping costs.
But, I will have to say, I have been shipping with them for many years. I am extremely pleased with them and have had only a handful of problems.
Anytime to ship through UPS, Fed-Ex, there is a potential for problems as you are shipping a live animal that has been exposed to the elements, been on a few different trucks and not to mention, possibly traveling 3,000 miles on a plane.
So sure, things can happen. It is unfortunate, but that is the chance we take when we ship.
 
UPS Doesn't read the box!

Hey Cody,
My veiled arrived around 11:30 when I received him a few weeks ago. Funny thing though, as I met the driver in my driver way he said "oh I see your box is marked Perishable"... I looked at the box and pointed out it said "LIVE animal" in big print. He looked again and said "really??" Idiot. Obviously they do not read the markings on the box. However, my lil' darlin was fine and is thriving.
 
UPS will not pay on dead animals. You may be able to get the shipping costs back, but then, every excuse in the book is used(bad weather, etc), not to repay shipping costs.
But, I will have to say, I have been shipping with them for many years. I am extremely pleased with them and have had only a handful of problems.
Anytime to ship through UPS, Fed-Ex, there is a potential for problems as you are shipping a live animal that has been exposed to the elements, been on a few different trucks and not to mention, possibly traveling 3,000 miles on a plane.
So sure, things can happen. It is unfortunate, but that is the chance we take when we ship.

Obviously not every box will arrive as intended. It just really sucks when a live animal is at stake. My eel is surely dead by now and the box is not even going to be back to the UPS Store until maybe next Tuesday.
 
Hey Cody,
My veiled arrived around 11:30 when I received him a few weeks ago. Funny thing though, as I met the driver in my driver way he said "oh I see your box is marked Perishable"... I looked at the box and pointed out it said "LIVE animal" in big print. He looked again and said "really??" Idiot. Obviously they do not read the markings on the box. However, my lil' darlin was fine and is thriving.

Honestly, they do not read the markings on the box. For me, I get live insects weekly and have had alot of live shipments over the past few years so my UPS driver is more aware of a box with my name on it.
 
Jellyman,

Chances are real good he's a goner. But there is a small chance he can make it. Provided the seller fasted him properly, packed him right, and used pure O2 in his bag. Fish do survive long trips in bags, as long as their temps don't go into the extremes one way or the other. As CO2 builds in the bag it drops the PH of the water. This in return converts the toxic ammonia produced by the fish's waste/respiration into a non toxic form. If memory serves it's called ammonium.

If and when he arrives and "if" he is alive forgo all normal methods of acclimation. Just float him (bag still sealed) to equalize the temps. Then dump him in. You do it like this because as soon as you open the bad you release the CO2, this will allow the ammonium to be converted back to Ammonia. You want him out of there ASAP.

I've had to do this with several shipments of new imports out of Brazil.

Edit, I see you are the one who did the shipping. Might want to email that to the customer. Then again I'd let it go. No use in getting their hopes up.

Oh and that would be a NVM if this is a SW eel. He's soup by now.
 
Jellyman,

Chances are real good he's a goner. But there is a small chance he can make it. Provided the seller fasted him properly, packed him right, and used pure O2 in his bag. Fish do survive long trips in bags, as long as their temps don't go into the extremes one way or the other. As CO2 builds in the bag it drops the PH of the water. This in return converts the toxic ammonia produced by the fish's waste/respiration into a non toxic form. If memory serves it's called ammonium.

If and when he arrives and "if" he is alive forgo all normal methods of acclimation. Just float him (bag still sealed) to equalize the temps. Then dump him in. You do it like this because as soon as you open the bad you release the CO2, this will allow the ammonium to be converted back to Ammonia. You want him out of there ASAP.

I've had to do this with several shipments of new imports out of Brazil.

Edit, I see you are the one who did the shipping. Might want to email that to the customer. Then again I'd let it go. No use in getting their hopes up.

Oh and that would be a NVM if this is a SW eel. He's soup by now.

Yeah, it was a saltwater dragon eel. I had him almost two years and was just wanting to downsize my collection. The box went to Hawaii, was out for delivery the next day, and then all the excuses as to why it was not delivered started up. Somehow the box managed to be sent back to Kentucky and that is where it is now and they were planning on sending it back to Hawaii??? The UPS store where I mailed it has not rerouted it back to the store and it is supposed to be there Tuesday. I hope they pop the bag between now and then and it stinks up their facility. He was an awesome eel and deserved alot better.
 
Dam, that sucks. Those are sweet eels.

Ya, SW prohibits that process because it's so alkaline. Sorry man.
 
There's not enough of a market for a live animal delivery company... Logistically, it would take hundreds of trucks in hundreds of cities, not to mention deals with all the airlines (unless you were buying airplanes, like UPS and FedEx do). Thousands of employees.... All the while trying to keep prices halfway decent so that people use it. Plus, there's no way of knowing that you're getting a live animal to begin with. Someone could claim DOA, and if you were intending to guarantee that, you would have to check the health (and to make sure it was even alive to begin with) prior to taking every package. Plus, by opening the package, it makes you responsible, unless you do it with each shipper, which just adds to the time and logistics of it. The network it takes to make a shipping company amazes me. Imagine setting up a company that can take a package from essentially every major city in the US, getting it to almost any other city in an 18 hour period. Still amazes me. And that's just within the US.

I don't think the current shipping methods are all that bad. Yeah, there are bad drivers that don't ask for a signature, but if they're packed properly, it doesn't matter if something is dropped or upside down for a while... I have shipped well over 1,000 boxes of live animals, many of them leaving in the 110-120 degree heat in Las Vegas during the summer months, and to this day I think I've had less than 10 DOA shipments in all of that. Almost all of them I attribute to the heat of Las Vegas (probably half of the DOA's I have had were stuck in Vegas in the summer months the night I shipped them off, and I knew they'd be DOA before they were delivered). It could be much worse.

I think it'd be more along the lines of somewhat timely shipping(services anywhere from overnight to 4 days) but with packages kept in climate controlled conditions. Live arrival would not be guaranteed and otherwise would be similar but you could ship and know that your packages would NOT get left out to burn up or freeze or similar stories. I know someone who shipped a box of fish that got so hot the bags melted together(though the majority of the fish survived!).
 
I hate UPS, too. Of three incoming shipments to me this year, UPS has screwed up two of them and delivered on the 2nd day. I should be receiving a pair of WC Nosy Faly right now but instead they're still on the east coast, in the same city they were shipped from yesterday afternoon. Oh, I hate UPS!
 
Our UPS guy knows us by name, always speaks to us as we go for walks in the neighborhood and always hand delivers our animals and goodies to us. After reading this thread, I realize how fortunate we are.:)

LanceCham sent animals arriving at 9:30am and 9:40am. Our UPS guy held the boxes exactly they way they were supposed to be held and did not jerk them around at all. (BTW, he's also a herp lover so he completely respects the process and the nervousness we all experience while waiting for our animals).:D

I'm sorry so many of us on the forum have had such horrible experiences with delivery.:(
 
I've actually had more good luck with UPS, Fed Ex and USPS than I have bad. I have found that with USPS it is best to pick it up as soon as it arrives and they contact me pretty quickly. Like Tyler said, there is always risk involved, and that is something that we have to take into concideration. I have shipped a lot of chameleons and recieved chams, dart frogs and birds and I have only had a couple of issues. UPS lost a panther chameleon that was on its way to Georgia. It dissappeared in KY somewhere. It was scanned in but never scanned out. Im pretty sure that someone stole it. They do pay if they lose the package, at the time it was $100 unless you had insurance. It was settled and they sent me a check but it took a little bit of time. I hate to think of what happened to that poor chameleon. The only other issue I have had was last week with Fed ex, I ordered a new light with T5s for my saltwater tank, and I saw that it showed up on the tracking but it wasn't at my house ($300 light), so i called them and had dropped it off at the wrong address. I got the address from them and went there, luckily the people were nice and gave it to me, it was a business. Fed ex contacted me and said that they would get it and deliver it the next day but i had already picked it up so I let them know. I'm only listing the bad cases that I've had, but i have had many more good cases just too many to list. When I plan on recieving something live at my house I take the day off or make sure that someone will be there all day because you never know when it will show up. Also, never ship any later in the week than wednesday, that gives then an extra day or two to get there if they mess up without sitting over the weekend somewhere. Glad everything went well with your shipment. They usually end up coming through, just a little late sometimes.
 
I like my UPS guy here now... I was furious with them a year or so ago, but problems have since been fixed. I can't control what happens in the destination cities, but I finally got a grip on the Las Vegas system with my packages. I have a daily pickup, and I leave my work at 3 or so, and they pickup at 3:15-3:30, so I basically leave packages there and go home.... A few times, I would go back into work the next day in the AM and my packages would still be sitting there (pickup never came). I vented to everyone local with UPS in person and on the phone (because calling their 800 number you just get some receptionist), and I vented to the UPS booth that they had set up at the Daytona show last year trying to convince reptile business owners to use UPS. A few days after I got back from Daytona, a UPS rep showed up at my office and promised me that they would never miss a pickup again and set me up a nice discount, and almost a year later, they never have missed a pickup (even on Fridays when I told them they never needed to come). I now have the rep's cell number and my driver's cell number. Problems solved.

I really think that it comes down to how much money you're spending with shipping. The higher your weekly shipping bill is, the more you get what you want, including discounts and getting your demands met. I guess it's all business, which is fine with me as long as my boxes become a priority. I don't think it's easy to get in good on the recieving end, since you're not the one paying the bill to them.
 
When I got my cham from Lance, it was supposed to arrive by 12 because I don't live in a major city. Well, the stupid driver couldn't find my house - not at all a difficult palce to find - and after numerous calls to UPS from both me and Lance, I had to go to a town 45 minutes away from my house to pick him up - after 5:30. Thank goodness he was still ok, but it could have had really bad consequences. :mad:
 
I don't think it's easy to get in good on the recieving end, since you're not the one paying the bill to them.

Over the years I've learned that a cold coke and a small snack goes a long way! Take care of your driver and they normally take care of you.
 
So you dont 'Tip' deleivery folk in America? only waiters?
Maybe some dont care, but some take pride in their job and appreciate you acknowledging that.

A case of beer for the garbage guys at xmas, something for the grocery guy and a freindly thankyou each time goes a long way. :)
 
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