An interesting series of events took place recently with United Parcel Service (UPS).
I arrived home from work the other day to discover a package sitting in a flower bed near my back door. It had a UPS-generated address label, made out to our address, but using my wife’s maiden name (which she has not used since the 90′s).
I took the package inside and we opened it up. To our surprise, the package contained several bottles of prescripion medications. I recognized some of them to be blood thinner, blood pressure and cholesterol medicines. We also noticed that the patient’s name on the containers were not my wifes, but rather someone else with a different first name and the same last name as my wife’s maiden name.
We then got to looking closer at the mailing label. We peeled it back and discovered an original mailing label that was addressed to the same person who’s name was on the prescription bottles. Her address was different than ours, and was located in a city some 60 miles from where we lived.
We couldn’t imagine why UPS would take it upon themselves to cover up the original mailing label and generate a new one, for a person with a different first name and address, and in a different city. I called the prescription company who shipped the package, and they too were at a loss as to why this might happen.
The prescription company thanked me, and said they would send their patient out a new package immediatey, and I assured them I would send the package back.
A few days later guess who shows up at our door? You guessed it. UPS…with yet another package for the same poor lady, again with the original mailing label – showing a different person at a different address – covered up with a new UPS label changing the recepient to my wife’s maiden name at our address.
I explained the whole story to the driver and he indicated he would return the package to the shipper.
The next day I took the 1st package to my local UPS Store to have it returned (I hadn’t been in a hurry to drop it off, since the pharmacy was sending out a new package to the patient).
I handed the package to the clerk behind the counter and explained the problem, and that it needed to be returned to the sender. He looked at the label and said, “I can’t take this, if I scan the label into the system it will just come back to you.”
By this point I was frustrated and quipped, “At this point I don’t care if you throw it in the trash. It’s not my problem, and it wasn’t my screw-up. Do what you want with it” and I walked out.
So yeah Brown, I got something you can do for me…
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