Complaint Review: United Parcel Service - Atlanta Georgia

My husband has used UPS for shipment from his home business for about a year and a half. Invoices arrived weekly. Invoices are not postmarked and often arrived after the due date. Upon receipt, invoices were immediately scheduled for payment the next business day through our bank's online bill payment service whereby checks are cut by the bank and mailed to UPS. THis provides a tracking mechanism not possible via mailing personal checks.

Numerous problems arose over this period. Several payments were never processed; these were clearly lost by UPS as over a four year period no other bill payments for any other payee have failed to process. In spite of providing proof to UPS that the payments were sent by my bank, they chose to issue collection notices each time this occurred. It was quite a hassle and expense to cancel these payments and re-issue them.

Payments were often misapplied to the wrong invoice. Again, UPS was quick to send out collection notices requiring us to provide proof time and time again that the invoices had been paid. I went so far as to fax and mail spreadsheets of the detailed payment information (when processed, when cleared) to the billing department in attempts to reconcile their accounting mess. No action was taken and no response was received. Several times I requested UPS send me an accounting of invoice postings. They never did so.

I finally wrote a letter to Calvin Darden, Senior Vice President of U.S. Operations and provided evidence of all of the accounting mistakes, erroneous collection notices, and outstanding issues. This was in May of 2002 and I never received a response. The problems continued.

I filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau of Atlanta in October of 2002. I received a response in February of 2003 whereby UPS chose to blame the customer for its accounting mess. UPS stated that the customer should send checks with the tear-off invoice. This should not be necessary since all of the bill payments through my bank had the invoice number included in the memo field. Payments made through the bill payer service have a legal "sent" date whereby personal checks mailed do not; considering their accounting practices, I would never consider mailing checks to UPS.

UPS did not rectify any of the outstanding issues in their response. Along with the response from UPS, the Better Business Bureau stated they had "closed" the complaint. This was prior to giving me the opportunity to dispute the response and did not consider that none of the clearly numbered requests/issues were addressed. This was also prior to UPS sending a promised listing of payment postings as was promised in the response; UPS never sent the listing.

I never believed it before, but do now: In some Better Business Bureau offices, all a member (UPS is a member) has to do is respond to a complaint, they don't have to correct the problem or take any action. I never had this experience with any other BBB office, but have had it twice with Atlanta's BBB. I wanted to report these "resolutions" to the national BBB office, but there is no clear contact on their website.

During the three-plus month period it took for UPS to respond to the BBB, collection notices stopped and all payments cleared the bank. Immediately after the BBB response we received another collection notice on a payments that had long cleared (8/02) and proof has now been provided 5 times.

I just got off the phone earlier with one of these collection people (OSI Collection). He spoke to me like I was scum and threatened me with credit damage; we have perfect credit, so I'm not used to dealing with these agencies. I called UPS customer service to request that OSI back off and for UPS to inform me what I needed to do to clar this up. Immediately upon telling the agent my account number, I was routed right back to OSI.

We've done everything in my power to resolve these issues. UPS is non-responsive and clearly doesn't care about its customers. Some of the collection notices I have received included amounts with due dates after the notice date. This is a highly unethical company who uses bullying tactics on customers rather than resolve its internal issues. Even the Better Business Bureau website states that UPS has a high volume of complaints for a business of its type.

I am now going to file a complaint with the Attorney General's Office in order to get things resolved. I am also hoping that this has happened to enough people that they will eventually pursue class action against UPS.

By the way, upon receipt of the egregious BBB response, we no longer do business with UPS. We should have dropped them MUCH sooner.

Lori

Phoenix, Arizona
U.S.A.

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STOP! ..before you think about using the Better Business Bureau (BBB)... CLICK HERE to see how other consumers were victimized by the BBB's false or misleading information. Don't be fooled! It has been reported, when there are thousands of complaints and other investigations underway by authorities, the BBB has no choice but to finally give an UNsatisfactory rating to a BBB member business that is paying the BBB big membership fees every year. When a business is reported that is NOT a BBB member, BBB files WILL more likely show an UNsatisfactory rating, then reportedly shake down that company to become a member of the BBB. One positive thing about the BBB is, either way, if a business has an unsatisfactory rating with the BBB, you can be sure, the business is bad. But what about all those BBB member businesses that had complaints filed against them? Consumers never get to hear about them. What about the BBB advertising to the public? Is this a false and misleading perception they are giving about consumer confidence when dealing with a business? Click here to understand more of what consumers and business alike are saying about the BBB. You decide. ..Remember. The BBB membership is not earned, its paid for!