New UPS policy: divert packages to Access Point after first failed delivery

Like I say, whenever I call to yell at UPS I’m informed that it’s always at the driver’s discretion. There’s no way for a consumer to exercise an iota of control over that discretion, apparently short of physically intercepting them at time of delivery. Hell, I can’t even get them to let me talk to the local UPS facility, much less the driver that actually has my route.

Also, FWIW, I had problems with UPS not delivering packages back when I lived in the basement of a house, too. There’s apparently a standard UPS policy asking the drivers to get a signature for apartment deliveries (although this is, say it with me, at the driver’s discretion), and that’s made the problem much worse, but I used to get them deciding not to leave a package because I had “moved”. You would think that the fact that I am requesting a delivery to that address might clue them in that no, I had not (and you would CERTAINLY think that my calling to yell at UPS and make them redeliver would clue them in), but nope. I should say that this was typically during periods where we were between renters for the upstairs part of the house so it’s not like they were making it up from whole cloth, but still. Blegh.

Does there not exist a service from any of these major companies that allows you to receive notifications when your package is nearing your house?

DPD, which is one of the larger courier firms in the UK, give a one hour window shortly before delivery. And a lot of the specialist delivery services (eg Ocado, Amazon Prime Now) do realtime tracking. Not that they’re any better at actually hitting the windows than the others.