How UPS Stole Christmas

I'm not going to do this in rhyme.  I considered it, but I'm too angry and would start rhyming naughty words, so we'll stick with non rhyming rantage.

My husband and I are products of a technological world.  We are online or otherwise connected most of the time and neither of us really loves malls or crowds. This means at Christmas time we spare ourselves the crush of people, and spare them our attitudes, by doing much of our shopping online.  Generally, this is a very pleasant way to do things as we can get exactly what we want and just wait for the pretty boxes to arrive.  They come by a variety of methods, USPS, UPS and FedEx and we've never had a problem...until this year.

Going back to November Bunneh had a melt down of one of his favorite tech toys and I decided as he had been eyeing an upgrade anyway this would make for a good Christmas present.  I made all the arrangements and ordered said item just after Thanksgiving, figuring this gave us several weeks for delivery. The order went through without a hitch and was scheduled to arrive via UPS on December 4th.

December 4th came.

December 4th went.

No box.

There were other boxes, but not this box. The box I needed to be here to sign for so had rearranged schedules to be here for the bleeping box.

So I was patient.

A few days later I called the nice folks I'd purchased the toy from.  They were very kind and looked up statuses and came up with "the weather delayed UPS and it's out for delivery today".  Yay for out for delivery, and I could understand weather delay as there had been ice storms all over the place.

So again patience.

Again a rearranged schedule to be home.

Again no box.

Another call to the company.

A call to UPS.

Another 'out for delivery'.

Another schedule change.

Another no show.

By this time I'm seriously starting to lose my patience with the whole thing. Other packages are arriving without a hitch. Even other freaking USP packages are arriving, but not the one I'm most concerned over.

So another call to the company.

Another call to UPS.

Another 'out for delivery'.

Another schedule change.

Another no show.

Tonight I check the tracking again.  Now they say they cannot find my freaking house number.

Are you @#&@#($*& kidding me? What kind of excuse is that? They can find my house number with other packages. FedEx, USPS and the newspaper boy can find my house number. I think someone just didn't want to have to make one more delivery tonight and gave up, choosing something at random from the 'problems we can blame on someone else' file to keep it from being 'out for delivery' but never got around to being delivered AGAIN.

And naturally the UPS 'live chat' service is closed. The phone lines are too stuffed with call volume to let me talk to anyone and email disappears into the great beyond. If they can't figure out what the number is supposed to be they'll return the box to the sender and we'll be starting all over again, which means there is no way this box is making it by Christmas.

What the hell UPS?

During all of this our normal mail has solidly come every day, rain, snow or shine and our USPS packages were here on time.  For all the crap USPS takes they do the job.

I can't say as much for the United Parcel Service, and given the option I'll choose non UPS carriers.

Maybe we'll have Christmas in January this year.  Hopefully the package will have shown up by then.

Merry Christmas, honey.  Here are some nice socks.