an early New Year's gathering...

I'm off to celebrate New Year's Wild Mercy style... with friends, food, laughter and Munchkin. Due to various illnesses and travel plans, it's been entirely too long since Wild Mercy has had a chance to just get together and hang out, so I'm looking forward to an afternoon of catching up with everyone.

We're gathering early this year so that we can all be off the road again before the crazies come out (and so that harperjen and Phil can put Maddie to bed at a reasonable hour), so I'll probably be home and online again before midnight.

But just in case I'm not... Happy New Year's to all my friends... and may 2008 be a distinct improvement over 2007!

have I mentioned...

...how badly I hate UPS?

On Dec. 20th, I sent a Next Day Air Saver package with two gift cards in it from my office in Indy to my sister's office in Manhattan. When the mailroom entered the address into the system, they got the zip code wrong by one digit, but everything else was right.

On the 21st, the tracking info said that the address had been corrected and delivery rescheduled. Okay... i can live with that.

Nothing more happened. I called late in the day to see what was up, and they still had the zip code listed as the wrong one. I gave them the correct one. They said they'd get it delivered. On the 24th, the next time the tracking info was updated, there were two notes... one that a correct company or receiver name was needed (even though both were clearly listed in the confirmation email that I got when the package was shipped) and then one that "the receiver is on a holiday" (they weren't) and that delivery would be attempted when the receiver returned.

Okay, so at that point it became obvious that my niece wasn't going to actually get her present on Christmas Day. On the 26th, I called and they read me the correct information, except the zip code, which I had them fix (again). Promised that it would be delivered by 3 p.m. Info was updated to include my sister's phone number in case they still couldn't find the office (which, being a business on 5th Ave., isn't exactly hard to find, even _with_ an incorrect zip code).

Note that at no point since the 21st had the package itself ever been scanned. 3 p.m. came and went... no package. I called UPS again. They promised to have somebody from the local package center call me within the hour. They didn't (still haven't, in fact). I called again on the 27th. Updated the information again to hopefully correct the still-incorrect zip code. At that point it got entered in the system as a "request for delivery to an alternate address" (WTF??) and delated again. By this point, we were at the weekend. Since I hadn't paid for Saturday delivery, and even though the package at that point was a week overdue, they wouldn't schedule it for delivery on Saturday.

Fast forward to tonight, when I checked the tracking once again. Lookie! It says they've delivered it and it was signed for by "Kostos". Unfortunately, they said it was delivered at noon, and my sister was at work 'til mid-afternoon, and there is no "Kostos" at her place of employment.

So I guess I get to go have gift cards cancelled and reissued tomorrow, hopefully before some random stranger starts using them.

Hate UPS. Hate them hate them hate them.