Posted By:
Tom Boblittwhy anyone would not take out insurance on ANY item of value. The cost is overall negligible in the overall scheme of things.
As for post office, UPS, etc. we've all hashed and re-hashed the whole things many times (I'm gonna re-hash another time so if you have a closed mind, press the 'back' button your browser at this point). Everyone has their own favorites and for the most part, each service does a good job at what they do.
As a UPS employee, I appreciate Leon's comments and hate to hear comments like Jay's and Julies. Does it happen with UPS? Yep.....Fedex? Yep.....Post Office?....Yep. Unfortunately, people are human and some are downright liars, cheats, and thiefs. Is there a greater percentage of them per annum at UPS versus Lawyers, Stock Brokers, Bus Drives, Trash Collectors?
With 360K+ employees at UPS, 850K+ at the post office and 170K+ at Fedex, there's dishonest people at all three. I'm sure Fedex and the Post Office, like UPS, do as much as possible to root out illegal employees and prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law. Some people may not believe that statement that but what possible benefit to UPS--both from a cash outlay and from lost goodwill--could it be to cut checks on what was previously reported as $100K once worth of stolen merchandise versus investigating and prosecuting. If that was the case, shame on UPS or any of the other carriers.
A lot has changed in the last 10 years with the express carriers (UPS, Fedex, DHL, Airborne, Emery, etc) and MUCH more will change in the next 5 to automate MANY of the processes that we and our competitors have to reduce delivery times and make sortation automated and more accurate. Packages that travel through the $2 Billion Dollar hub in Louisville here are only touched by humans to unload and then load the packages. All the sortation is automatic. The packages never touch each other either with a 15-18" cushion of metered flow to help reduce or eliminate damages. Anyone travelling through Louisville, let me know and I can try to get you a tour.
Just a note to the wise....I once ran an import sort at UPS where we got in TONS of packages from overseas for clearance. MANY of the packages were addressed from 'Gold and Silver Exchange' to 'Dans Pawn Shop' (names changed to protect the guilty). Then you have 18-20 year old kids sorting the packages. You do the math. Using labelling that doesn't scream out what is in the package always helps to protect your goods. Almost as important as the inside packaging on something. Not only from UPS employees but also if the package is released by the UPS driver at your home or if it is left with someone else or if you have it delivered to work where the mail room signs for it.
Okay, I'm sensitive about this as if anyone couldn't tell. Guess we must be doing something right as we, for 20 years, have ranked number one in our industry with Fortune and for last 5-10 have ranked in top 10 of ALL companies in customer satisfaction/value.
If ANYONE ever has problems with UPS shipments, don't hesitate to email me personally as, while I might not be able to solve the problem directly, can help direct you to people in tracking/tracing and security that can hopefully help in the process. In addition, I have some internal tools to help track/trace packages that may have more detail than what is typically on UPS.com.