Anybody had anything stolen by UPS?

[Mr. Pink]

Shipped a pair of rare skis to a friend in Denver. My bad, screwed up the address, couldn't deliver, sent back to where ever they park a bad address. Fixed the address, but now I'm being told they are officially lost, and an investigation is under way. That was four days ago. I suspect theft at this point, but still have hope. Could somebody actually get away with this inside the system? Final address is a UPS store, so, no porch thieves involved.

[prototoast]

Given your own described issues with the address, I think it would be a high ly unlikely coincidence that explanation for a package with a known address. Screw up would be theft, but obviously it's not impossible. If you can go to the UPS store in question, I would recommend that, but even that is no guarantee.

Unfortunately, the general state of package delivery right now is that things work exceptionally well when they work well, but once something goes wrong, it really goes wrong.

[JWB475]

I ordered a set of downhill skis from an online vendor and UPS delivered an empty box to me. It was obvious the box was completely empty but they delivered it anyways. It wasn't taped very well so it's hard to say if someone opened it or the box just broke open in transit along the way. The vendor took responsibility and sent me anothet pair...

[Old School]

They didn't get stolen.

Those guys could care less about your skis, or your bike, or your stereo. Now if a big smelly box comes through from "Mendocino, California", that's a different story.

The skis didn't get stolen, they went into a HUGE warehouse of boxes where the address is invalid, and will eventually be returned to you.

They almost always will not forward something from a "wrong address" to another potentially "wrong address"

(fool me once, etc)

[rwsaunders]

I had an attempted theft of a case of wine by FedEx. I say attempted, as the driver repeatedly claimed that nobody was home to sign for the delivery and as I was working from home the whole week, I called BS and called the winery.

The following day I received an email from the winery stating that the case had been delivered. I called BS again and asked for a receipt with my signature. The winery then emailed a forged receipt…I say forged as the idiot driver faked my signature, and the winery had my signature from another order to compare.

The winery then notified FedEx, who then had to notify the ATF…crazy $hit when alcohol is involved. Three days later my security cam picked up a FedEx driver “dumping” the opened and taped case by the mailbox and not bothering to deliver the case at the home with a signature. I sent a clip of the video to the winery and let them have at it from there and after the claim was made, they shipped another case via UPS and picked up the opened case.

[David Kirk]

Back in my Serotta days we had a good number of bikes "go missing" when being shipped UPS. It turned out that an employee at a hub knew what the Serotta logo on the box meant and he would rip off the shipping label so it could not be delivered and would go into "overage". There it would sit without any way to identify it and then the guy would buy it for nothing at the regular overage sale and he would then sell them.

The guy was found out and he was no longer a problem. We also stopped putting our logo on the box and then all our issues ended.

I think theft in the UPS system is extremely rare but it does happen.

dave

[jadmt]

Originally Posted by David Kirk

Back in my Serotta days we had a good number of bikes "go missing" when being shipped UPS. It turned out that an employee at a hub knew what the Serotta logo on the box meant and he would rip off the shipping label so it could not be delivered and would go into "overage". There it would sit without any way to identify it and then the guy would buy it for nothing at the regular overage sale and he would then sell them.

The guy was found out and he was no longer a problem. We also stopped putting our logo on the box and then all our issues ended.

I think theft in the UPS system is extremely rare but it does happen.

dave

I think a lot of people started putting the human biohazard stickers on packages to prevent that from happening.....

[paredown]

Doh--USPS, not UPS...


I had a NOS Campanolo Centaur 11 medium cage mech disappear in the morass of the Philadelphia hub. Never turned up, just vanished. There was some discussion among some eBay sellers that this was not an uncommon occurrence with small high value items at that hub.

But this was one one item out of hundreds that I have shipped, so I still think they do a pretty good job. (By contrast, Canada Post in Vancouver used to have a terrible reputation for theft, especially on international parcels.)

[tomato coupe]

Originally Posted by paredown

I had a NOS Campanolo Centaur 11 medium cage mech disappear in the morass of the Philadelphia hub. Never turned up, just vanished. There was some discussion among some eBay sellers that this was not an uncommon occurrence with small high value items at that hub.

I don't think your average UPS employee has any idea what a Campy derailleur is. And, if they did, why would they steal lower level Campy?

[Old School]

Originally Posted by tomato coupe

I don't think your average UPS employee has any idea what a Campy derailleur is. And, if they did, why would they steal lower level Campy?

True. Long cage, I can understand, but medium cage?

[bshell]

I think it's pretty rare, too. But

UPS picks up a bike box, doesn't scan it to the system and ...pooof. Claims he didn't pick it up but a neighboring camera says otherwise.

[robt57]

Once, yes.

[ssb94]

I worked in a UPS hub about 10 years ago. It would be hard to get away with outright theft. As others have said, it's probably sitting in a warehouse with thousands of other packages. It can be hard to figure out where a package started or should end if the label is damaged. The more it's handled and the larger or more awkward the box, the more likely that is to happen. Probably an honest mistake.

The hubs operate at a such high speed and employees handle so many packages in a day that they don't really have time to think about what might be inside. After a while, they're all just boxes (except the weird **** that isn't boxed like mufflers and tires 😂)

[sg8357]

Originally Posted by David Kirk

[snip]
I think theft in the UPS system is extremely rare but it does happen.

dave

Used to have gold delivered to the shop, it was in sheets, 4"x6"
packed in unmarked padded envelopes, never had a problem.

[carpediemracing]

I'm in the "sitting in a lost packages area" side of things.

Not UPS, USPS, I shipped a relatively large item (car part) from CT to PA. It was about 4 feet long, maybe a foot wide in the package, and weighed about 30 or 40 lbs. So it was't light, and it wasn't small.

I think it was supposed to take 3 days. Took maybe 3 months. It got to PA in a day or two but after going to one or two places in PA it sort of disappeared. The receiver went to different post offices, the hub where it was supposed to be, etc, and no one knew where it was. Tracking number and everything.

Then out of the blue it showed up at his house. It was still packaged the same as I packaged it, address was on there, mailing label, everything. I asked because I figured I maybe didn't do something right. Apparently it sat in some hub somewhere for a couple months. I'm guessing it fell off some conveyor rollers on some long stretch of rollers, fell under/behind, and no one bothered picking it up or no one noticed.