In an extreme case of the “no good deed goes unpunished” rule, I bought a rather expensive painting for my wife as a Christmas present. We just visited good friends in Florida and the wife of that couple is quite the artist. So I had K select one of her paintings as a gift, and we decided it would go best in the Kentucky house. I figured I’d just ship it from a UPS store in Florida to KY…and that’s where the punishment started.

First, the packing and shipping. The painting is large, a 3 feet by 4 feet unframed canvas. It’s mounted on a wooden frame, so that thing that happens in the movies where they roll a painting canvas up and stick it in a tube wasn’t possible (that would have been easier, in retrospect). But at the UPS store I procured a large enough box ($80) and some packing material. They informed me that they could pack the painting in the box for about $250 or I could do it myself, but I could NOT pack it inside their store. Easy decision, I bought some tape and acquired some bubble wrap from UPS (another $20). I packed the thing carefully, secured the box and took it back to the store to be shipped.

It’s only 17 pounds, and the shipping cost turned out to be $570! Their first bid was $1800, for a guaranteed delivery in a couple of days. I took the bargain option of $570 giving me a delivery date of sometime in 5-7 days. I shipped it to my daughter’s home, as I would not be in KY within the 5-7 days. Mission more or less accomplished, and the package was on its way.

Now roll forward to today, exactly seven days after I shipped it. For days I’ve tried to get shipping/delivery updates from the UPS website, with zero luck. No tracking info until today, when I see that it’s out for delivery. That’s good, but…the UPS website also tells me that “signature is required”. Not good, because I can’t guarantee that anyone will be home at the exact time of delivery.

So I try the UPS website to change that “signature required” flag. Absolutely no way to do so – their website has a lot of circular logic in it. It looks nice, but functionally it’s shit. I try their chatbot for help, and it’s worse than useless. No luck. I try getting a live human on chat, finally get one, but they’re also useless – can’t help with any of my options. I try calling in for phone assistance, and once again, no luck. First I can’t get an agent. Then a couple of hours later, I manage to get a live agent on the phone and they tell me that (1) they can’t change that delivery flag, even though it’s MY package and my money that sent it, and (2) that the UPS store that sent it (in Florida) is actually the sender and only they can change the delivery terms.

Sooooo….I call the Florida store and talk to the same person who created the shipping label and accepted the package for shipment. He was incredulous that I would think that he could change anything about the delivery at this stage, and informed me that UPS would try three times to deliver based on the apparently immutable terms of delivery (delivery terms are apparently on the same level as laws of physics), and if unsuccessful they would send the package back to origin (Florida) and charge me another $570 for that courtesy.

I don’t really know what I should learn from this experience. It’s as if I got shoved into a Kafka story, and any move I make is thwarted by some obscure rule and no matter what I try, it’s going to cost money and my original good intent is being laughed at by UPS trolls. Maybe there will be a happy-ish ending to this tale, but along the way I’ve learned that UPS is a stock I should short. Their idea of customer service is punishment.