Once again, UPS and Shapeways screwed me.

First, the shipment delivery was attempted during a time frame when I was at work, and that detested little yellow slip of paper was left on the floor of my porch (NOT stuck to the door at all) saying they would attempt again BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 2 PM AND 5 PM.

I made special arrangements to be at home at 2pm, only to get a notification on my phone that the item was delivered at 1:39pm. Left on the porch. 1:39 pm is well before 2 pm.

I rush home, to find no package anywhere. Luckily, I have security cameras that record everything, and upon a review of the video, (between 1:20pm to 2:20pm) I see the UPS truck driving by on the street in front of my house at 1:33:18 pm. Not stopping. There is no video of a driver on the front porch, the side porch, in the side yard, or in the back yard. There is no package, no nothing.

I call UPS, and go through their stupid "menu" three times before I get "Bill" who tells me that the SHIPPER must be the one to initiate the trace on the package. I contact Shapeways to inform them that their precious UPS has once again failed to deliver a package, and they tell me that I now have to wait 24 hours before they can or will initiate a trace.

As a result, I responded with a demand for an immediate and full refund, and will no longer do any business with Shapeways unless or until they have greater regard for the needs and requirements of paying clients. If their "customer service" cares so little about what clients need or want, then I certainly don't care about giving them any of my hard-earned money to pay for items that I do not get. There is no legitimate reason that Shapeways must limit their shipping options to only UPS, when there are at least three other services they can use. Unless, that is, someone somewhere is getting kickbacks from UPS.

I still do not have my package. I doubt I will ever see it.

I gave them another chance. They failed.

Sorry to hear about your unfortunate circumstance but I just have to :laughing: at your statements about Shapeways. They have the best customer service of any company I have ever dealt with and are willing to fix any problem that arises. I do agree that Shapeways should provide different shipping options, but I'm sure there are reasons why they use UPS. I would suspect that the amount of international shipping they do might come into play.

lancer525,

As requested, a refund has been issued for your lost order.

Please understand that the only reason a lost package claim wasn't immediately entered into the UPS system is due to the fact that they require a 24 hour period to lapse before their systems allow these claims. I've also sent you a second response to your earlier email.

Our apologies for any inconvenience this may have caused you.

Kind Regards,
Gary
Customer Service Team

Yes, Shapeways now has a production facility in New York, but a significant amount of production is still done in Eindhoven, NL

I sort of doubt that the United States Post Office offers daily pickup at an office in the Netherlands.

Yeah, but what about FedEx, and DHL? I'm perfectly fine with UPS and have had no problems with the many things I've had delivered by them, but I do hear people complain about them from time to time.

There are logistics involved that are above my head, but there are reasons we use UPS.

I completely agree with this, UPS "lost" one of my models, probably one of their employees stole it. I've also had them say a package was delivered when it was not. Fortunately I was able to get my money back but it's such a pain when you wait weeks for something and then end up not getting it. I really hope Shapeways takes its customers seriously when they ask for alternate shipping options.

Print bad-ass big catapult, chuck parcels across the border to those unruly Canadians ? (At least the packaging
should be sturdy enough for this, I suspect shapeways is actually a decoy for some heinous plan that revolves around
distribution of some gaseous substance...)

If I had not been on the ball with my last delivery, I feel that I may have been in the same situation.

I saw the UPS van pull out of our road (a private non-through-way) and called UPS, 20 minutes later the tracking was logged as a missed package even though I was told that the delivery could happen upto 7pm - my delivery turned up the next day.

Paul

OK, I also had one "miscarriage" where the parcel was originally delivered to a different business
somewhere across town. Guess this can happen with any parcel service - the only disconcerting thing
was that the UPS page listed my parcel as "delivered", stating only the (obviously unfamiliar) name
of the person who accepted it and no address. Things got sorted out even before UPS customer service
got back to me.
The situation appears to be far worse in Canada (but still I am not sure if we really need to have this topic
come up every other week in whatever forum the victim of the day chooses to vent his anger)

If a person feels the need to have their say about a situation that has been going on for a while, then let them have their say.

It is not alot different to the countless posts about bounding boxes, scale, file formats etc... etc... etc...

Anyone can use the search function on the forums and add to what has been said before, but sometimes a point that many people feel strongly about may need to be repeated over (and over and over) to maybe get the point across and hope that comeone caring will take up the case to find a solution.

Paul

I've had a lot of frustration with UPS .. so much so that I got tired of complaining about it. I guess if you get slapped in the face enough times, you take the next slap without a flinch.

But I did find the problem exponentially minimized when I got a post office box. I actually got my post office box at the UPS Store (which, by the way, is not run by UPS .. it just licenses out the name). I have to say that my experience with UPS store for use of the PO box and also for their printing services, has been really good.

I no longer have a box at the UPS store, simply because I wasn't using it as frequently due to a number of factors. So, I guess I'll have to hold my breath and hope that UPS does well by me on my next delivery *or* at least use it as a venting excuse to yell at a UPS clerk on the phone

-Whystler