Everyday Randomness

I finally got through to UPS. Seems like if you mention filing a police report and contacting the attorney general they’re finally willing to talk to you!

Once I started explaining the situation to the woman she was all ears. Of course she claimed it’s the driver that’s at fault. I said ok I could see that if it were just ONE driver, but so far I’ve seen TWO drivers do it.

She pulled the “can’t turn around in the driveway” card. I said would you like me to take a picture of my extremely large driveway? Yeah that’s the one that I’ve parked a total of 13 cars in at once, and we could have probably squeezed a few more in. Yeah, I’ve had house parties. I know these things.

After we got all that out of the way, I explained about where I live, the way the roads are, the problems we have with traffic on this road, and the fact that you can’t see what’s on the other side of that curve until you’re coming out of the curve.

That didn’t phase her.

When I mentioned the huge drop off on the other side of the road, that hit the spot. She forwarded the complaint to the regional office, and within 10 minutes UPS called me back asking for a ton of information. They wanted to know the truck numbers. I couldn’t give them that, but I gladly gave them a detailed description of both drivers.

Then I said three nasty words.

No
Left
Turn

What? Both driveways are on the left side of the road? Why didn’t I say so! The man who called me back must have been looking at records and pulling up maps because he asked if the drivers could stop at the used car dealership that was showing near my house. I said the dealership is next door to my house…and it’s a left turn.

I was just about cracking up on the phone at this point. By the end of the phone call I had them agreeing that no drivers should be parking in the blind curve, and it’s quite obvious they can’t pull over on the right hand side of the road. They’ll just have to pull in our driveways.

Jenn 1 UPS 0!

I’m expecting a package that’s showing a delivery date for tomorrow, so we’ll just see how that goes. I’ll have my camera ready for them!

For those of you who don’t know at the end of January UPS announced they would be cutting left turns out of driver’s mapped routes in order to save gas by eliminated 28.5 million miles driven by UPS trucks.

The first time I heard this I laughed thinking it was totally bogus, so I did what I always do. I ran home and looked it up. Sure as shit it’s the truth.

Now, up until about a month ago I’ve raved about the fact that UPS is actually good in our area. I hate having things sent here via USPS because I’ve personally witnessed the mail lady stand in my driveway and toss my packages towards my front porch. One of them happened to be very breakable, and of course that’s exactly what happened.

UPS has never given me problems, and the driver on our route is an extremely nice man. He always checks to see if I’m home before leaving any deliveries. If I am he’ll bring it to the front porch for me or even inside my house if it’s heavy. If I’m not home he’ll walk down my long driveway and around the back of my house to put the package out of sight, then he’ll slip a note under my front door to let me know it’s there.

Last month my feelings changed drastically. About a week after I found out about the “no left turns” I started noticing the driver parking in the middle of the road. It wasn’t our normal driver, and he was delivering something to my Grandparent’s house, so I thought maybe he just doesn’t know if he can turn around in their driveway because it was the day we got snow. There wasn’t any traffic on the roads, so no biggie.

A few weeks later I saw the same guy do it again, and that kind of pissed me off because we live on a very dangerous road. Here was this huge UPS truck parked in the middle of the lane in a blind curve!

Then yesterday I got a delivery from UPS. This time it was my normal guy, and he didn’t park in the blind curve, but he still parked in the middle of the road right in front of my house. When you come around the blind curve you would have about 3 seconds to see the truck and react before hitting it. Then you’ve got a steep embankment across the road from my house, and at least one vehicle is sure to roll down it. I’ve seen it happen plenty of times.

We’ve got a huge driveway and plenty of room to turn around, so screw how much gas UPS thinks they’re saving. How is it good to safe gas if you’re creating a DANGEROUS situation? Making a left turn into my driveway, then circling around to pull out of the driveway is nothing compared to what’s going to happen when someone comes around that curve with a UPS truck parked in the middle of the lane!

This morning I decided I was going to call UPS to file a complaint, but guess what! It’s virtually impossible to get through to anyone for a complaint! There’s no option with the 1-800 #. There isn’t even a “general questions” or similar. I finally had to go through the option to check tracking before I got a human on the phone, and even then I was told they didn’t know how to contact for complaints.

So UPS, here’s my complaint. You’re going to be in hot shit when you’re getting sued because someone rear ended a truck sitting in the middle of the road in a blind curve! I guess you really don’t care do you considering in South Carolina all rear end accidents are the fault of the driver who hits you!