Fun with UPS

Last week, I ordered a case of ammo from Ammoman. It shipped on-time, and was out for delivery on Friday when the tracking page reported “THE APARTMENT NUMBER IS MISSING OR IS INCORRECT. UPS IS ATTEMPTING TO OBTAIN THIS INFORMATION.”
Odd. I called up UPS, and they had the wrong apartment number. They tried delivering to #ABCD instead of #ACBD (( Numbers masked to protect the guilty. )) Thinking that was weird, I checked the invoice from Ammoman. Turns out that I fat-fingered the keyboard when I had entered my order, and the wrong apartment number was in my order, which was dutifully provided by Ammoman’s shipping department to UPS. Oops.
“No problem”, I thought, “UPS would surely understand that typos occur, and allow me to simply correct this mistake over the phone.”
Alas, it was not to be; the sender is the only one who can change the delivery address, even when such a change is minor.
I call up Ammoman, get their after-hours sales guy, who informs me that the ladies in shipping have just left for the long weekend. I explained the situation, asked nicely, and he agreed that he’d give UPS a call. In fact, he did more — he called one of the ladies from shipping who was only a minute or two away, and she came back to call UPS. Fantastic.
After work, I checked UPS’s tracking system again, to find that the system reflected an address change. To double-check that everything was in order, I called UPS. Evidently Ammoman provided the correct apartment number, but UPS screwed up, and simply removed the apartment number from the delivery address. Somehow, I suspect my condo’s management office won’t know what to do with a case of 5.56mm NATO.
UPS insisted they couldn’t do anything, as the shipper needed to make the call. I explained that the shipper had made the call, even after they had closed, and UPS screwed it up. I politely insisted that it’d be much easier all around if they simply corrected the address and attempted to deliver again today (after all, it was still on the truck and they can wireless update the driver’s tablet). After some time on hold, they said it’d be impossible.
“Fine”, I said, “just have the local depot hold the parcel for pickup, and I’ll get it tonight before I fly out to a friend’s wedding.” The agent says she’ll try.
The agent calls the local depot and, sounding excited, announces that they’ve been able to update the address, and they’ll deliver the package on Tuesday! What, Tuesday doesn’t work for me, because I work in Tucson and won’t be in town to pick it up until the next Friday? I wanted it held? Oh, I’m sorry, that’s impossible; after the sender made the change of address, there’s no way for them to hold the package.
I explained that attempting re-delivery would be futile, and it’d be much simpler to just hold it for pickup, and would they please call the local depot to ask if they’d do it. After another interminable delay on hold (frequently interrupted by the agent apologizing for being on hold — I don’t care about waiting, it’s fine, don’t bother coming back on the line unless you have something informative to say), they said the local depot would hold the package and, in fact, would call me directly to make sure they got everything straight.
A short while later, the depot called and everything seems to be in order. They’ll hold it until next Monday, and my wife (( I’m still getting used to saying that. )) said she’d stop by sometime after work (she works in the same town where we live, and can stop by the UPS depot later in the week) to pick up the ammo.
Moral of the story: check your address prior to submitting an order. Spending 10 seconds to check that everything’s correct beats 30 minutes on hold with UPS. The local depots are considerably more flexible in dealing with various issues than the corporate call-center people. Also, Ammoman’s shipping ladies are awesome. I should send them flowers.