Thread by @MikkiHEL

So, @UPS_Europe has once again pulled the classic "we tried to deliver the package to you but couldn't reach you" move, when I was literally sitting five meters from the door the whole time. Which they do it every time. But now they're kinda going beyond that. Let me tell you.

I live in a row house so there's no access issue, no missing door code, nothing to complicate delivery. Anybody who wants to ring my doorbell can do so with ease. And yet:

"Customer was not available" is a straight up lie. It's not a misunderstanding, it's not a mix-up, it's not a technical glitch. I was available. That driver just didn't do their job. (And that is not just on the driver, either, that's on UPS.)

I think there's a reason for this. See, you can cram a lot more deliveries in a driver's schedule if they don't actually attempt deliveries, which means you save money. At this point, there is no way this is not an intentional strategy, because this happens constantly.

I know a lot of people who get a lot of deliveries for personal and professional reasons, and they all know that when it's UPS, this happens almost every single time. The drivers simply take the package to an access point and then you're supposed to pick it up yourself.

So you have to take time out of your day and go wherever the pick-up point is. Was the delivery time-critical? Is the package something big and heavy? Too bad, you're on your own hauling it now.

This despite the fact that you have, in fact, specifically paid for delivery to your door. For somebody like me, a man who doesn't own a car or even have a driver's license, this is kind of important.

But you can't get your money back, because technically, YOU didn't pay for the delivery, the party that sent your stuff to you did. You paid them, and they paid UPS. So in order for you to get a refund, you'd have to ask the sender to complain and then send you the money back.

Good luck getting the sender, whether it's some mom and pop online store or Amazon or some rando on the internet to do that labor on your behalf.

There is no way UPS is not extremely aware of this dynamic. There are ways they could address this if they cared to. They do not.

But it gets worse. Before, it used to be that when this happened, I would call up their customer service, I'd have to argue (I make it a point to keep it polite but firm) for a while, and eventually they'd relent and have somebody haul the package to me.

Now?

Noooope.

The reason this doesn't work is because now, when I call their Finnish customer service line, I get somebody who doesn't even speak Finnish. They are in a call center somewhere, and they have no access to not only the drivers, but also the Finnish dispatch center.

The lack of Finnish is not a problem for me, I'm happy to deal with them in English. If it was my grandma? She'd be absolutely lost.

UPS operates in Finland and has plenty of Finnish employees, but their call center now only speaks English. Another strategic choice.

The lady I talked to was professional, polite, and absolutely useless. They could do nothing about it other than put a ticket in their system, which, in this case, meant they could "attempt another delivery in 2 to 5 business days."

There is no guarantee that another delivery attempt would end up being another delivery "attempt," and of course they can't tell me when I could expect it, so I'd have to be stuck at home for three days just to make sure I didn't miss their "attempt."

This despite the fact that I have paid for the earlier delivery which was supposed to arrive by a certain date (today), which failed, because their driver did not ring my doorbell or knock on my door or attempt to call me or really make any actual effort to deliver the package.

She has no supervisor or manager I could talk to. She cannot talk to the local dispatch center here in Finland directly. She cannot do anything of any substance to address any of this, because she has been deliberately disconnected from the people who do the actual delivery work.

This, to be clear, is a new development. Previously, I could talk to somebody who was local and who had access and comms with the dispatch center, and could arrange for drivers to be rerouted. They have now apparently removed that capability altogether. Not by accident, I'm sure.

It is, in fact, now impossible to contact my local dispatch center in Vantaa, Finland. The only phone number for them is that customer service number, with English-speaking service. I cannot reach anybody with any authority about this. You can't tell me this isn't by design.

I managed to track down some phone numbers. The first one was for UPS's cargo hauling operations, which I called. It was answered by somebody who was decidedly not in a managerial position, and she was like "I don't know anything about deliveries, I'm just looking after cargo."

She had a boss, who was on vacation, but she assured me the boss knew nothing about it either. She could not name a single person or give me a phone number for somebody who did, despite working at the same company. Reading between the lines, it felt like a policy was in place.

The others were cell phone numbers, with no information other than "UPS" for them, apparently also for their cargo services. Whatever, I called them. The first one didn't pick up. The second one was somebody who worked on their cargo security stuff, and he couldn't help me much.

He was, however, very friendly and sympathetic (if careful to say anything that would indicate he was on my side) and generous with his time, and tried to figure out who I could talk to.

In the end, he gave me the e-mail address for Miina Kauttu-Hirvonen, who I believe is the director of operations for UPS Finland, which I haven't e-mailed yet but probably will. I don't expect that to do any good; I think somebody in her position knows exactly what's what.

That is to say, what I'm complaining about is, for her, how the system is supposed to run. There is no accountability for UPS, and everything's been set up to make it as difficult as possible for anybody to get any. That's absolutely not by accident.

The bottom line is that I paid for a "premium delivery" option to get what I needed shipped to my door quickly, and that is not the service I was provided, and there is no realistic remedy for it. UPS is happy to take my money and make no real attempt to provide the service.

That is not an accident, or an oversight, or an error, that is literally their business model. What if I my mobility was severely limited? What if I couldn't navigate their English-only phone service?

It's so consistent that it's hard to not see this is as fraudulent behavior.

As a bit of an update, the package is not actually where I expected it to be, which was... not super close, but not terribly far, either. Turns out it's at another access point. To get there by foot, that would be a total walk of 4.6km (2.9 miles).

It's not a huge walk, but it's definitely a walk. I don't want that, which is why, in fact, I paid for a delivery to my door. Which UPS said they would do, and claims they attempted, which is not a thing that happened and their pants are, once again, 100% on fire.

Small update: So, I have talked with Sylvia from @UPS_Europe, who has been very nice and helpful. Long story short, I was told "two business" days, and I said... well, this:

So after I sent that, Sylvia was like "let me get back to you, I'll talk to the depot," and she did, and now I'm expecting to hear from the depot either by e-mail or telephone in two hours.

Of which there are now 90 minutes left, give or take.

So I guess we'll see.

Another update: I have ordered a pizza. The delivery estimate said "60 minutes," which is roughly also how much time UPS has left if they're gonna get back to me as promised.

We'll see who wins this exciting race. (I ain't gonna lie, I hope it's the pizza. I'm hungry.)

Pizza won.

Update: I regret to inform you that the depot did not, in fact, contact me within two hours.

(I mean, they still may, but...)

https://twitter.com/MikkiHEL/status/1549042792231366656

Oh shit, I just realized I've been mispelling Silvia's name, which is unintentional. I apologize, Silvia, that's not cool.

I have messaged Silvia and pointed out the two hours have gone by without contact, and asked what was up. No response yet.

I am considering proposing that I get a cab and pick it up myself and they can reimburse me for the expense, just to see what form the "no" would take.

I think Silvia has signed off for the night. I now have Alex, who tells me that tomorrow is the day. I am, perhaps, at this point somewhat low on trust and goodwill.

UPS loves this thing where they won't give you any indication of when they might drop by, so you have to be home the entire day and then if you weren't there for the right five minutes, you missed the delivery.

Of course, you can also be home all day and they just don't show up.

I may now be slightly starting to lose my chill.

Alex didn't last long...

It is incredibly difficult to get anything out of these people. They screwed me over today, now they're like "hey, how about you just put everything you might have planned for tomorrow on hold on the off chance that this time we don't send a liar."

"Hey we fucked you over but we won't even call you."

I get it, though. Fernando is also in some call center somewhere and I'm sure the puzzle of how to get some people at a depot in another country to call somebody when he's not even on shift then is a genuine pain in the ass.

Like, what's he gonna do? He won't have any direct e-mail addresses for anybody in charge, he doesn't know anybody there, because UPS is a huge organization, and (this is becoming my thesis) this is by definition not a problem they want to solve. They want it opaque.

Their entire system runs on everybody being able to just spread their hands and looking regretful. Oh, you didn't get your stuff? Maybe tomorrow. There's nothing anybody can do about it. Nobody's in charge. Nobody's responsible. Nobody has authority about it.

It's just endless tickets in whatever software they use to manage things, coming from anonymous and semi-automated sources, going to anonymous and semi-automated recipients, and every once in a while, people with no incentive to actually truly deliver anything move things around.

What a fucking dystopian nightmare, really. Brazil, except without the fantasy sequences and Bobby DeNiro going apeshit.

They'll happily take your money, though.

Looks like Fernando's left me hanging. He just stopped responding after my message. I think I'm to take that as UPS considering the matter closed. Cool cool cool.

Well, speaking of UPS, here's one more fun aspect to this thing, because OBVIOUSLY this thread isn't long enough...

It's kinda funny that last week, my friend @HenriBlock was talking on his Facebook about his own UPS troubles, and everyone was chiming in. Like a dozen people just airing their exasperation with UPS and, to be fair, out courier services as well, but mostly and especially UPS.

So I knew this package was coming in, and I'd just gotten a text about it arriving soon, so I said, "oh, yeah, been a while but I'm gonna be in that club soon too!"

Well...

*gestures at everything*

I wasn't wrong.

Also. ALSO!

I just realized that I have not received any kind of notification about my package now being at the pickup point. No text, no e-mail. If I hadn't been using the tracking website, I would know nothing about _any_ of this.

What an absolute shambles of an operation.

Huh. It's almost as if UPS had a reputation for this sort of thing. Who knew?

(Everybody. Everybody knew.)

https://twitter.com/WMiljas/status/1549100836273491968

So! Good morning, everybody, it's another day.

Today, according to my friend Fernando who ghosted me, is when @UPS_Europe will make another delivery attempt. When? Who knows! I had plans for today but haha no, I have to sit here and wait and see if somebody shows up.

This is, of course, the 2nd day I've had to do that, as UPS refuses to give you any kind of estimate for when they might theoretically arrive.

It occurs to one that operating like that makes it much easier for them to "attempt delivery" at a time when "nobody was there."

Unbelievable. I just got the text message telling me that the package is ready for pick-up at the UPS access point.

So if I hadn't been keeping up with the online tracking, this would be the first I'd hear of it.

Truly marvelous service.

Out of the blue, I heard back from Silvia who's back on shift, I guess. Unfortunately, the official stance still seems to be "meh, we're just... not gonna even going to do the bare minimum here."

Aaaaand there it is, the classic "our drivers don't have phones." Yeah, they don't have company phones, because UPS absolutely doesn't want that kind of contact between drivers and customers. They want it vague so no one can be held accountable.

As if there was no way for UPS to deal with this, starting with giving them company phones. There are many other methods they could use. They don't want that. They want the plausible deniability of "oh, that's why we couldn't contact you."

Like so much of this, it's by design.

It is also incredibly galling that they're pretending that this is just another normal delivery operating by their standard service rules, as opposed to restitution for defrauding me. (I doubt that that would stick in the legal sense, but morally, what is this if not that?)

Remember how last night it was all "somebody will e-mail you or call you in the next two hours?" (Nobody did.)

Today, it's impossible to call me. It just can't happen!

The thing is, both of these things can't be true. Was it bullshit yesterday, or is it bullshit today?

I am not holding my breath that anything will come of it. The absolute contempt UPS has for me as a customer is coming through loud and clear.

It's not Silvia's fault. I'm sure she has to choose her words very carefully because some supervisor is sure to keep an eye on this.

Oh, so now they can contact me in two hours. Again!

I think the chances of it being an e-mail that says "nothing can be done" sent from an unmonitored e-mail address, rather than a phone call, are uncomfortably high, but what the hell, let's start the clock again.

One thing I wanna say: the only thing that's exceptional about this situation is that I'm making myself a pain in their ass by not letting it go, and by tweeting about it.

Other than that, this is the experience most UPS customers get. There's nothing special about my case.

Also, to circle back to a point I made yesterday, imagine if I didn't speak English and tried to navigate this situation. How screwed would I be? I would get absolutely nowhere, because there is no Finnish-speaking point of contact, and they actively deny access to one.

You will not be shocked to hear that two hours have now passed without any contact from @UPS_Europe despite their promise to get in touch with in "within two hours". For those keeping score at home, this is the second time they have done this.

https://twitter.com/MikkiHEL/status/1549310209083990018

Oh hey, Fernando's back. We're back in the land of the comfortingly vague statements. "Our team!" "The case!" "As soon as!" What's actually happening? Who knows.

I am betting nothing is happening. The package, incidentally, is still at the access point.

Fernardo is very understanding. Fernando is also very non-specific about most things. Fernando, I think, would also like me to shut up and go pick up my package like a big boy so they don't have to do the job they promised to do.

I am kind of done with Fernando at this point. He is regurgitating UPS speak pretty smoothly, but confidence in "the team" working on "the case" is low.

There is no team. There is no case. There's just the ticket in their system and maybe something will happen, maybe it won't.

Either way, they aren't doing a single thing to expedite it. Nothing. For them, this is just business as usual, and the only difference is that somebody like Fernando has to keep talking to that one asshole customer who won't shut up. UPS truly doesn't give a rat's ass.

Incidentally, as a point of comparison, I'm also expecting another delivery today. They gave me a one-hour time window for the delivery so I know to be here to receive it. They texted me this morning to remind me about it. They will text me again when their driver is approaching.

In that last text, there will be a link to an online map where I can literally see them approaching, so I can be ready exactly when they get here.

UPS doesn't do things like this. Why? Because it's too difficult or expensive? Or because it comes with accountability?

Speaking of that last text, I just got it for this other delivery, which will be here in a few minutes. Here’s what the map they provide looks like. You get the ETA, you can call or text the driver, you know exactly what’s up.

With @UPS_Europe you get nothing.

I have nothing to update but just as an FYI, according to Silvia's message earlier, deliveries take place between 9am and 7pm.

It is now 5:11pm and the package is still at the UPS Access Point.

I was promised delivery today.

CONFIDENCE IS VERY HIGH YOU BETCHA

So, it is 7:04pm, the package is still at the pickup point, and I think it's clear I'm not going to get it today. (I have messaged them to confirm that, but no response as of yet.)

UPS promised it would arrive today. Didn't happen, and thus they have literally wasted my day.

Before this I was annoyed, but I admit that I was also amused. You know, ha ha, look at how bad this company is at the one thing it does, isn't it wild how incompetent they are?

At this point, I have to admit, I'm genuinely angry at how they treat their customers.

They lied about the attempted delivery, they repeatedly lied about contacting me at various points, they lied about delivering it today, and thus I am now doomed to also waste tomorrow, because what else am I going to do? At no point have they admitted any fault in any of this.

Just talking to myself at this point, it seems. I bet the team is so hard at work on the case that they can't waste time on customer service. And really, who can remember who promised what to whom at this point? It's ancient history.

Good morning. We have now arrived to day three of the grand "UPS demonstrates its undying commitment to its values" debacle.

Just received a text from UPS reminding me to pick up my package. That's obviously automated, but at this point? Really feels like a stiff middle finger.

I'm fully aware that by now a degree of exhaustion about the whole thing must be settling in over many of you. Believe, me, at this point I know a thing or two about exhaustion. But what am I supposed to do? Stop making their relentless disdain of their customers public?

Nah.

So. I thought we'd do a little recap of where I am and how I got here.

1. On Monday, one of their drivers pulled the "tried to deliver the package but customer wasn't available" move. This was a lie; customer was 100% available. Most UPS customers know they do this all the time.

2. The package was then taken to a UPS access point. Said access point is a pretty good distance from me. I don't drive, and in any case, delivery to my door is the service I bought. UPS took the money, lied about attempting delivery, and now they want me to do the work.

3. UPS has also apparently removed all Finnish-speaking customer support. You can only deal with them in English. Not a problem for me, but surely a big problem for a lot of Finnish customers, especially as UPS keeps "attempting deliveries".

4. Furthermore, the English-speaking customer support no longer has direct contact with the Finnish operations, and it's deliberately made impossible for me to directly communicate with anybody working for UPS in Finland. All phone numbers point to the non-Finnish call center.

5. They have repeatedly alternated between "no one can help you with this" and "someone will contact you in two hours." Despite several instances of them promising this, no one has ever contacted me from UPS, except through Twitter DMs.

6. I have asked them to deliver the package to my door, as they were originally contracted to do. They have agreed to do this, and promised delivery yesterday (Tuesday). This delivery did not happen. The package never moved from the UPS Access Point. It's still there.

7. I am now apparently being ghosted by UPS who stopped talking to me yesterday, although it's entirely possible that now that it's a brand new day, I will once again hear from them.

8. They have, throughout this, not once acknowledged any lies or broken promises and insist on talking about this as if it was a normal delivery, as if this whole thing wasn't kicked off by a blatant lie from them -- a lie that is standard opearating practice for UPS.

9. The only thing that's truly exceptional about this situation is that I'm tweeting about it and it got some traction. They have done this to me and others countless times before. This is how they operate. I believe it's because it allows them to cram more "deliveries" in a day.

Whew. I think that's a decent summary of where we are.

Let's see where the day takes us, huh?

And here's the official opening of today's events. Silvia's back.

Silvia is okay. She's much more of a straight talker. It's less "our team" and "your case," I feel like she is actually trying to help me within the difficult framework she's in. Despite everything, I like Silvia.

And, good people of Twitter, yes, we have another two-hour timer going! Any guesses as to how this one will work out?

BTW, looking at the messages, I'm clearly much harder on Fernando than on Silvia. Probably because Silvia speaks more like a person. Fernando regurgitates the same corporate phrases about the team and the case. Also, Fernando has the late shift, and then I'm tired and cranky.

But I do recognize that just like Silvia, Fernando is caught in an impossible position, having to navigate my easily justified aggravation and UPS's very hard-to-justify corporate behavior, knowing that some shithead petty tyrant will always be monitoring him. That sucks.

Okay, this is new. I just received a text that said (and I'm paraphrasing because it was in Finnish) this:

"Your service request has been relayed to our delivery department.
Best regards,
UPS Finland"

That's... something? But. BUT.

I never got a text like this before, and surely, SURELY I have made several service requests before this. Right? So am I to conclude that they just... weren't sent on to anybody before?

Is this supposed to be the contact from them I was promised?

Well, I think somebody finally decided that yeah, uh, maybe it's best if we actually get this thing done and maybe this asshole will shut the fuck up.

The package is on the move.

I should perhaps add that I am in no way surprised that suddenly things are happening, because I happen to know that at this point, they are getting phone calls from the media, and I'm sure that has had an impact.

I guess that's what it takes, huh?

This is what the status page for the delivery now says. It's been picked up from the Access Point, but it's not actually out for delivery. I wonder if they actually take it back to the depot first, and THEN assign it to somebody to deliver it? Who knows...

Once again, the two hours have gone by without anybody contacting me. This time, though, there was that text. I wouldn't be surprised if in their heads that's like "oh we TOTALLY got in touch with him." They didn't actually provide me with any information, but...

Back to Silvia.

Enter Mitzy.

Once again, we're talking about this as if there was no prior context to anything. I ask "when can I expect it?" and the reply is "it should be scheduled for delivery shortly." The information content in that response is essentially zero.

Welp, Mitzy didn't last long.

Of all the ways they do you, this is perhaps the worst: this is a time suck. I can't plan for anything because they tell me nothing concrete. At this point, can I afford to go somewhere and risk missing an actual delivery attempt?

Well, would you?

I mean, maybe you would. Maybe you just don't care that much about it, and if so, that's probably a better stance from an overall mental health standpoint and everything. I get it.

But for me, that really seems like a bad option. I guess it's the principle.

Silvia is pretty terse with me now. I get it, I'm annoying.

But I am not, I think, unreasonable.

I still have no idea whether my package is arriving today or not, and if it does, when I can expect it. I may very well also have to spend tomorrow on this.

Also worth noting that they picked up the package three hours ago 2.8 kilometers away from my house. I don't know where it is now, but you'd think that they could've just brought it here and ended this, right?

And I get the logistics of their operation are complicated.

But.

We have now hit a point where, when faced with another evasion when I asked for specific information, I had to get a little bit real with Silvia. I don't expect this to make any difference but god damn, you know?

Silvia is being understanding and quite nice about it, but it's, uh... not solving my problem at all. I don't think I can rely on being contacted about anything at all at this point. It's not impossible, but given their track record...

Update: Silvia tells me that I will not be receiving my package today. Tomorrow. Tomorrow, for sure! She says "I will be notified to confirm this," which I assume will be an automated message of some kind that says nothing about the actual delivery time.

No one will call me.

Mitzy chimed in with this. That's theoretically nice, I guess, except I don't see what difference it will really make. I'll keep screaming into the void and the void willl keep screaming to another part of the void, but that has no bearing on anything that actually happens.

And hey, look, straight talk: I get why they won't call me, because if they do, it'll be unpleasant. I'll ask questions like "why did you lie to me" and "when can I expect the package" and they won't have any satisfying answers for that, because they can't be honest. They can't.

They can't say, "we're all fucked in here because we're overworked and we don't have the resources to deal with this, and corporate won't give them to us, it's a complete shitshow as is obvious to anybody who deals with us." They just can't say it. So they just evade.

UPS, the corporate entity, doesn't care about this. They never have to talk to somebody like me about it. They make literal billions in profit, according to their own financial releases, and they make it in part because they squeeze everything out of their employees like this.

So what if that means taking money for services they never provide? So what if they are essentially defrauding customers (in a sense that is, I think, hard to prove legally, but is entirely obvious morally) every day? For them, the system works.

Good people doing good things.

So, it's pretty late here, but here's something I didn't notice before, just a tiny detail: at 7:20pm, they have "registered an address change." Not sure what that really means, but I'm assuming that indicates the package the picked up finally made it to the UPS depot.

Does that mean it'll actually arrive tomorrow? I have no idea.Could happen.

Perhaps -- and this would be incredibly stupid of them, but it's possible they are just this clueless -- they treat is as any other delivery, and the driver will just take it back to the access point...

Also, on another note, I'm now seeing some geniuses popping up to point out things like "if you paid some online store for the delivery, they're the customer, not you."

No shit, you fucking dorks, I'm way ahead of you. Sit down and shut up, you're out of your element.

C'mon.

And thus, my friends, we have come to day four of the proceedings. I hope you're all having a grand ol' morning.

Me? I'm just here, waiting for Godot.

There's now a story about this in Helsingin Sanomat, Finland's most prominent newspaper. It is, of course, in Finnish, and it doesn't get super deep into it, but anyway, there's UPS reaping that good PR from all their great customer service.

hs.fi/kaupunki/art-2…

As for my package, here's the latest on it, at 2:27am.

I don't know what "import scan" means, precisely; there's one previous instance of that in the record, and in that instance, the next step with the same time stamp was "out for delivery". But not this time.

Anyway: if somebody working at UPS happens to feel like talking about the impossible conditions the company is forcing its employees to operate under, I can put you in touch with a reporter. They protect their sources, you can be anonymous.

Just putting that out there.

Oh hey, the new UPS logo just dropped. Fancy shmancy!

(Thanks, @VonAether!)

HOLY MOTHERFUCKING SHIT. My doorbell just rang. I, fresh out of the shower, wearing nothing but a towerl, opened the door. And who was there?

It was an UPS driver.

I have my package. This is not a dream, not an imaginary story.

I have my package.

But... well, stay tuned.

Let's start with this, shall we? This is what the UPS website says right now. According to them, the package is not out for delivery, and yet I have it in my hand. So that's some of that reliable UPS communication with the customer, right there.

What's more, and I'm going to choose my words carefully here, I had the chance to talk to the driver. He told me that he actually went to pick up the package from the access point yesterday (I didn't think to ask what time), and...

It wasn't there.

I mean, it had been there, but somebody else had already gone and picked it up, but according to their system, and the pickup order he had, it was still at the access point.

So even internally, the whole thing is a fucking shambles.

I'm not blaming the driver for this. He's absolutely overworked. He told me he has 120 deliveries to make every day, on an 8-hour shift. That means he has to make a delivery every 4 minutes. And that's without factoring in breaks.

This is obviously 100% physically impossible.

So I stood there at my front door for some time, wearing just a towel, talking with this guy. He said a lot of stuff I'm not going to repeat here right now. It was not a very light conversation, not really. They treat them like shit over there.

He wasn't at all aware of the Twitter discussion or the newspaper article. He didn't know there was anything out of the ordinary about this delivery. Just another job in the system. I told him about my experiences, and he wasn't at all surprised by any of it. Just how it is.

I don't want to get the guy in trouble, so I'm not gonna go deeper into this. Maybe I'm already saying too much; UPS is clearly an incredibly shitty employer, and I have no doubt they won't like this.

(For the Americans reading this, it's probably worth noting that this being Finland, they can't just fire the guy on the spot or anything because we have these exotic things called labor laws and employee rights. Which is not to say UPS couldn't pull shitty moves, but...)

Anyway. To take a step back and look at this whole sorry mess as a whole, I would just like to reiterate that this all happened because UPS is, as a matter of de facto if not literal policy, built on deceiving and, yes, defrauding their customers every single goddamn day.

They will take your money in exchange for a service, but they will not provide that service. Instead, they will blame it on you by lying that they attempted delivery, but you weren't there. They will then take the package to their access point, and they want you to go pick it up.

They want you to do a part of the labor they accepted payment for. This is not accidental, this is not an oversight, and these are absolutely, 100%, not isolated incidents. This is a matter of policy, and this is what their system has been built to facilitate.

They do it because it's cheaper for them, and enables them to maximize their profits, which are counted in billions of dollars every year. They could fix these problems and provide the service they promise, but they don't and won't, because that would cut into those profits.

To facilitate all this, they've isolated their drivers and other people working on the deliveries from the actual customers as much as possible, so you can never directly talk to them and demand accountability. The only points of contact are through a call center or online chat.

They have, here in Finland and I suspect in other countries as well, removed customer support in the local language. This is another barrier those who need help have to overcome.

All of this makes things opaque; it is impossible to know what's actually happening with your delivery. There are many, many technological and organizational solutions that would improve the level of service and customer experience. At least here, UPS uses none of them.

They don't want clarity or transparency. They don't want accountability. They want an impenetrable system that's demoralizing to deal with. That makes customers give up and just go pick up their package from the access point. They deliberately make that the easiest option.

They want to pretend that situations like mine are some kind of an anomaly, an inevitable byproduct. They are such a huge company with so many deliveries, naturally there sometimes are problems!

No. It's a system they have designed to maximize their profits.

It would be naïve to believe the people running UPS aren't aware of all of this. Of course they are. The constant lies (and I have been lied to by their customer service every day) and lack of transparency are by design.

So... this, I think, is more or less the end, at least for right now. If you stuck with me all the way to this end (and I know I'm a verbose motherfucker -- kinda comes with the profession), thank you for following along, and I hope I entertained you more than I bored you.

Also thanks to everybody who retweeted the thread and shared their own awful UPS experiences. The endless stream of people talking about how UPS has screwed them in the exact same ways obviously boosted my credibility a great deal, and it made it easier to get through this.

I know it's just tweets, but this has been a fairly exhausting experience. UPS essentially stole three days from me and the constant wrestling with their customer service (designed, of course, to make me give up and stop bothering them) was incredibly frustrating.

I'm looking forward to going back to tweeting about video games and shitty movies and how NFTs are a complete scam and if you're into them, you're either the con artist or the mark, and whatever else I usually get up to.

Peace out.

...okay. I thought I was done, but...

I just received a phone call from Miina Kauttu-Hirvonen, the director of operations for UPS Finland. I wasn't expecting it, but we spoke for 37 minutes, so, y'know, we went through this stuff in some detail.

This was not what I would characterize as an easy phone call for either of us, but it wasn't antagonistic and it was polite. Like, it wasn't a shouting match or anything. We just talked about it.

I don't want to throw her under the bus here; she was clearly concerned about being quoted (possibly out of context), so I'm gonna try and be nice about this. She explained a lot about their practical challenges and the steps she takes to ensure quality of service.

After talking to her, I am convinced that she is genuinely trying to offer a good service. However... there are a number of points where I think our views diverge sharply.

She acknowledged (she was the first person at UPS to do this) that yes, when they said they attempted delivery, that was a lie. She apologized for it.

She put that on the driver, though. Whenever this happens, it's the drivers, just the drivers, choosing to do that.

She disagreed with the idea that they are severely under capacity and unable to handle all of the deliveries they have to make, which, given how commonplace these situations are, I simply don't buy. I just don't believe that. It can't just be every driver being lazy all the time.

I brought up having heard that a driver had 120 deliveries to make in a day, and she said that's not true. I said if that's the case, UPS should be able to provide documentation that shows the real workload, and she said nothing at all to that.

There were things like this where the gap between what she talked about and what I have experienced and have heard about from countless people was simply too vast for me to believe it.

But at the same time, it was a fairly sympathetic conversation.

She had a lot to say about what she considers good service, and I have to say I agree with all of it. I don't think UPS manages to reach that ideal at all, but she clearly took it seriously.

She agreed that the customer service not speaking Finnish was a problem, and told me they're in the middle of rebuilding a Finnish-speaking customer service, that the attempt to have it in English only had turned out to be a mistake that they were now fixing. Fair enough.

We also talked quite a bit about how courier companies operate in general, and the challenges they face, and how those challenges have changed with COVID and other factor. It was a pretty far-ranging conversation.

I appreciate that she reached out and took the time to talk to me. Media's been reaching out to her over this and that's a very awkward position to be in, and she knew I was angry and frustrated. That's not an easy call to make.

I think, in the beginning, she had a concern that I could just be really shitty to her, maybe use this call against her somehow. I'm definitely not trying to do that, I'm just... trying to honestly tell you what happened, because it's now part of this story.

(I told her that yeah, I would most likely refer to this conversation on Twitter, but it wouldn't be any kind of a personal attack or anything. And it isn't. But she is the director of operations at UPS Finland, and she's in charge of a lot of this stuff, so it is relevant.)

It was, all in all, a good-natured conversation. I'm not quite sure where it left us, really; I'm certainly more sympathetic towards her than I was before. She seemed like nice enough a person.

It didn't do anything to address the underlying issues in how UPS operates, though.

I continue to believe that things are the way they are on purpose, and people like her are simultaneously a part of what keeps the system running, but also the ones being chewed up by it -- not as much as the drivers, certainly, but she wasn't untouched by the pressure.

I think at the end of the day, in her world view my experience was an anomaly. They keep trying their best, and any failures are on individual employees.

In mine, failures are the inevitable results of an overtaxed system that's maximized for profit.

I dunno what to really make of this whole conversation, but it happened, and I'm glad she called me. It did, at least, clear the air some.

I have been getting messages from the inside. If you're wondering about the actual working conditions inside their depot, here's an image I was sent (and have permission to share). There is a conveyor belt under that. They don't have enough space for this operation.

(I also have video that shows the scale of this a bit better but I'm not 100% sure I have permission to share that so I'm waiting to confirm that. Just in case you didn't notice, though, you can see a truck just on the left side of the image. This is them loading the trucks.)

Here's that video! You can really see how many packages they have vs. the number of trucks. I think it's ridiculous to suggest that this is a manageable workload and it's just up to the drivers to deal with it. (This is a busy day, obviously not every day's like this, but still.)

I also got a message from somebody who says they worked as a UPS driver for three years. They say that in the summer of 2018, when they started, they had 60 to 80 deliveries per day. "For a new driver, 80 is a lot, but an experienced driver who knows the area can do it."

"A year after that, Miina joined the company, and the number of stops went up to 80 to 130, and experienced drivers were pressured to do even more than that."

And when they couldn't do all of it, they were sometimes told to just take what they can't deliver to the Access Point.

(These quotes are my translations from Finnish.)

I double checked if they were literally instructed to record these deliveries as ones where the customer couldn't be reached. They confirmed that yes, a few times they were explicitly told to do that.

For the record, I have not confirmed this person's identity, and this is the internet, so take this with a grain of salt. However, I think this 100% fits what I've seen and heard elsewhere.

This driver also said that UPS prioritizes business over private customers, and all operations are prioritized as follows:

1. Pickups from businesses
2. Pickups from private individuals
3. Deliveries to businesses
4. Deliveries to private individuals

This makes perfect sense, of course, because taking in new business (accepting packages for delivery) brings in income, whereas completing old business (delivering packages) does not. It's not hard to see how this inevitably leads to them exceeding their own capacity.

Also, as far as the claim that UPS is rebuilding their Finnish-speaking customer service goes, looks like that's taking a while, huh?

https://twitter.com/Citykauris1/status/1550087236816863233

The driver goes on to tell me that UPS used to pay for the drivers' phone plans, so they could make calls and the company paid for them. Now they don't. Some drivers would make calls on their own dime, but they only had time to do that a few times a month.

"It sounds stupid to say that you could only provide proper customer service twice a month, but you had to choose between having a meal break and being yelled at for not delivering enough packages, or delivering it all and shuffling away like a dead man at the end of your shift."

Looks like the user I was quoting here went private, but FYI, they said that they were given the exact same story about "rebuilding the Finnish customer service department" 1.5 years ago. Obviously, that brings up questions about how true that story is.

https://twitter.com/MikkiHEL/status/1550091369431064576

Here's another thing from a current UPS employee. The text is in Finnish, but here's what the messages say:

"Hey,
Anybody who brings back a "missed" has to do overtime until 18:15. Jere's orders."

A "missed" is a package that couldn't be delivered.

Again for my American audience, it's not legal in Finland to just order overtime. You can't just say "you gotta do OT." Can't do it.

The second message says "Can anybody help out? The ones with "misseds" don't need to reply." (The implication being for them the OT's mandatory.)

Again, I have not confirmed this person's identity or that they work at UPS, but I have no reason to doubt it.

They go on to say, "The situation here is shitty. Management accuses drivers of underperforming, but there are simply too many deliveries."

There's much more media attention in the works over this debacle and I think at this point, surely somebody at UPS must be like "if only we hadn't lied to that one mouthy asshole, we wouldn't be in this mess."

Which is true. But, I mean, this had to happen sooner or later...

This was just so entirely self-inflicted. They could've nipped this in the bud so many times. Just look at this utterly ridiculous mammoth of a thread and imagine all the opportunities for de-escalation.

Nope. Just not a thing they do.

Probably a lesson in there somewhere.

Okay. I'm almost done for the day, but one more thing from somebody working at UPS, and this is a whopper. Like, hold on to your hats, this is where shit gets downright Dickensian.

They say: "The warehouse building itself is around 50 years old and covered in mold. Water leaks in through the walls, and rats are running across the floor and chewing holes into the packages."

"During winter, when it's -20 degrees [Celsius] outside, it's almost the same temperature inside when we're working in there during the pre-dawn hours. The problem is that all the decisions are made elsewhere (in Sweden/Denmark) or even further away."

"That's why resolving issues takes forever, and might not happen. Last Independence Day [Dec. 6] it was -20. I took a 5 to 10 minute break to warm up every hour, and the Swedish/Danish bosses were visiting, and they started questioning whether these breaks were legally required."

"The scheduling pressures are impossible. For example, you're supposed to empty all trucks and freight crates, so you get exactly what you had on that video. Our volume has nearly doubled in the last 5 to 10 years, but the warehouse and the conveyor are still the same."

"All they have done is add some more drivers and handlers."

I am not surprised that so many of these people are speaking up, this sounds completely untenable.

Anyhoo, I'm gonna sign off for a while, because I have some friends coming over and all of this is eating up enormous chunks of my life right now.

It's important stuff and I feel for the customers and UPS workers who are having an awful time, but daddy needs a little break now.