Okay, that’s maybe a bit of an exaggeration for a headline. But, honestly, “What has Brown done for you?” is too often “Failed to deliver a package but claimed that they tried anyway.” It’s happened to me more than once, and Kottke’s description of his Harry Potter delivery sounded waaaaay too familiar.
Maybe I’m lying about being home or maybe the person trying to deliver the package made an honest mistake, but it’s curious that a delivery attempt could have been made when the package was not even “OUT FOR DELIVERY”. Here’s what I think happened. I think UPS’s network was overwhelmed by Amazon’s Potter-volume in some parts of the country and they had no way to deliver all those packages. (The forums for the book at Amazon and Google Blog Search are full of similar complaints from others…warning, spoilers! UPS even offloaded some of the volume to the USPS for “last-mile” delivery.) So, UPS just marked all of those packages they had no intention of delivering as “oops, we missed you, you must have been out”.
It’s not that I think UPS is lazy or even inefficient. I just think they are not as efficient and no-sparrow-shall-fall as they claim to be — and when you make claims to the level of operative excellence that UPS does, you’d better be scrupulously honest and accurate about it.
Amazon ended up giving Kottke his guaranteed refund. Kudos, as they could have pointed at UPS’s delivery log and claimed it said he wasn’t home.