Love Letter to UPS

Dear UPS,

5 of the 15 Pittsburgh apartments in which I have lived have been on the 2nd or 3rd floor with no working doorbell.  Since no one wants to put up with my neuroses, I live alone.  I've worked a 9-5 job most of my adult life, and have never owned a car.  This situation - which isn't that uncommon - poses several problems with regard to UPS service.

In some cases, you allow my neighbor (any neighbor in my whole multi-unit apartment building) to sign for my item.  This would be great if I had control over which items my neighbors can be trusted with and which items they cannot.  My $60 computer desk?  Okay.  My $2,000 computer?  NOT Okay.  See how that works?

In other cases, you refuse to allow anyone but me to sign for my item.  Assuming that I am gainfully employed, I'm never going to be home on a weekday to sign for my package.  When I called you guys about this, I was told that I could pick up my item in person... at a location in a different zip code.

I could totally do that... if I owned a car.  In fact, if I owned a car, I would have just bought my item at the store.  The fact that I'm having my item shipped to an inner-city address where parking is a giant pain in the ass should tell you something.

And let's not kid ourselves.  Even if I were home when you came by with my desk, I wouldn't know about it.  I'm pretty sure your drivers don't even bother to try my broken doorbell.  I've seen you assholes stand at the entrance of an apartment building and knock... as if someone is going to hear you.

I even took a day off of work once to receive a package.  You know what?  I waited all day long and nothing.  Then I checked at the door, and sure enough there was another little yellow sticky-note flapping in the wind like a finger-waving child yelling, "neener, neener, neener!"

I even had a working doorbell once.  Your driver rang it.  I got downstairs, and he was gone.  Like a 6th grader playing ding-dong-dash, that bastard was gone faster than I could get down three flights of stairs.  Someone clearly neglected to tell him that he cannot just knock twice, stick a sticker on the door, and call it a "delivery attempt".

Some suggestions:

1.  Um.  Require your drivers to carry cell phones.  Then, give me the option to have them call me.  My pizza delivery guy knows that he has to call my cell if he wants to deliver my pizza.  I know you bitches can do it, too.

2.  Give me an open-ended "delivery instructions" field on your website.  There, I would tell you the important things such as a.) my doorbell doesn't work b.) I won't be home this Friday and c.) call my cell to get me to come open the effing door.

3.  Don't charge me to change the delivery date.  Yeah, it's just $4.00.  But it's a tad absurd to charge me for telling you when I'm most likely to be home.  Do you really prefer that your drivers drive around all day to empty houses?  Or does it make more fucking sense to let me tell you when I'll be home?  WTF?

I'm glad you guys love logistics.  Now, let's try common sense.