The UPSocalypse may be here. (Read if you are using UPS)

[ilikehockeyjerseys]

UPS does not seem to be allowing pickups. As we all can assume, they are likely at capacity. 

I place my pickups for the night before. I placed a pickup last night. I had a delivery coming in this morning from UPS. When the driver arrived, he informed me that he never received a notification for my pickup. He told me that they are no longer doing pickups. I asked whether drop spots were still accepting parcels, his response, "I'm not supposed to tell you that they are".

He is my regular UPS guy (both my regular UPS and Canada Post guys are great, so I'm lucky). He took my pickups as a courtesy, even know he wasn't supposed to. 

After checking my e-mails, I noticed that I did receive confirmation for my pickup request, but my request was never scheduled. When it is scheduled, you will usually receive an e-mail that says something like "You have a pickup today". 

I went and looked at the pickup website, and it seems they have disabled pickup requests. You can fill out the information, but you receive an error that is not resolvable. I assume this is their way of preventing additional pickups. 

I did reach out to UPS customer service to see if there is any way to ensure you can still receive pickups, so I'll update if I have any useful information. I plan to edit my handling time later depending on what I find out.

This might be a YMMV situation. If you have any outstanding packages, and accessing a drop spot isn't too out of your way, it might be a good idea to drop them off ASAP in case more individual drop spots begin refusing shipments (which some people have reported already). My local drop spot is still accepting packages, so I am not trying to alarm anybody. It may just be pickups that are affected, and it is possible that it is area specific. 

[ilikehockeyjerseys]

They now added this to the pickup request page. 

With the benefit of hindsight, they should have probably raised the price on their pickups to lower demand. It's way too easy to justify spending $1 on a pickup, even for a single order. 

[chicweb]

Been a few days without sales, so I cannot tell, but last time I dropped was saturday. I noticed a message in  the tracking page on eBay.

"This package may be delayed due to shipping carrier service disruptions.". It did not show that for any other of my packages with UPS. And this one was for Montreal, near a distribution center I hit when sending items. The customer received it today.

So, not too much delayed, but it might be an indication that UPS is overwhelmed with deliveries right now.

Your post is alarming. I might have to contact my dropoff location to make sure they still accept packages.

[ilikehockeyjerseys]

I don't think you need to be alarmed about drop spots not accepting packages if you live in a major city that has multiple options. The part about drop spots being at capacity is hearsay. For what it is worth, I did call my local drop spot and received a fairly confident indication that they will be able to continue to accept packages.

I do think that you need to be vigilante and have backup plans for any outgoing packages that you don't want cancelled. Look at the other Chit Chats thread. 

Everything right now is just about getting through the next three weeks. After Christmas and boxing day, volume for carriers will go down even with Canada Post not operating. 

[ilikehockeyjerseys]

Another note, it appears that you can still book pickups for UPS Standard International. You cannot book domestic standard pickups. Domestic standard is the service offered for eBay labels. 

So if you have orders to the USA or elsewhere printed on eBay, apparently they will pick them up. I am just going by the pickup form, so it is possible that if you make a pickup it will never be assigned. 

[ilikehockeyjerseys]

Purolator and UPS have paused shipments from some courier companies as they try to work through a deluge of deliveries brought on by the Canada Post strike, creating even bigger backlogs at the height of the holiday shipping season.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/business/purolator-ups-pause-shipments-from-couriers-amid-canada-post-strike-...

_____

The two couriers mentioned are eShipper and Shiptime. 

You can still submit shipments with regular UPS labels (such as those printed on eBay). 

With that said, it seems possible that if they have already started turning business away (via blocking couriers and pausing pickups), that we could see them refuse all domestic shipments if it is getting bad enough that they have to institute these provisions.

[marnotom!]

I think I've mentioned elsewhere that the UPS Access Point in my small town is listed as "temporarily closed" on the UPS website.  It's a small location based out of a gas station and my town's a bit out of the way so it may be as much an issue of maximizing resources as it is one of the Access Point being inadequate to handle a significant increase in addtional inbound/outbound packages.

[ilikehockeyjerseys]

I'm at a point where I am prepared for the possibility that carriers may stop accepting domestic packages entirely for a period of time. 

I suspect that if some combination of UPS, Purolator, and Fedex stopped accepting domestic shipments for even a short period of time, Stallion and Chit Chats would get quickly overrun.

[teenytrinkets]

I made two online purchases with Shoppers Drug Mart on black Friday and they were both shipped Dec. 4 with UPS. Shoppers UPS orders are usually picked up same day/ next day with UPS (as recently as a few days before that) but these two are STILL sitting. Not picked up after 5 days! I thought the UPS suspension was with 3rd party couriers, not directly with the retailer?

[ecgt]

Printed off a UPS Standard label for a package from Halifax to Oshawa today and the tracking says "Arrives Thu, Jan 23 - Wed, Jan 29." All of the labels we printed off last week from Halifax to other cities had expected arrival listed for only a few days. Anyone else encounter this today?

[ilikehockeyjerseys]

On the eBay tracking page?

This is eBay doing you a solid. They are extending expected delivery dates because of the Canada Post strike. I haven't checked any of my UPS listings, but odds are they are doing that for UPS as well since the domestic system seems to be completely collapsing under the demand.

I have a large (non-eBay) shipment to go through UPS, and I called multiple stores before dropping off and only a single store answered the phone. One answered and hung up right away (lol). They are likely getting swamped by requests and demands from people because fo the pickups being cancelled. I am mentally prepared that domestic standard could be done this week. If the major carriers like UPS stop accepting domestic packages, I can't imagine that Chit Chats or Stallion would be far behind. 

(Key word being domestic, international is still accepted for pickups, and should still be accepted if they pause domestic shipments.)

[ecgt]

It said the arrival by Jan. 29 when we purchased the eBay label and the tracking on the eBay tracking page is what we quoted above. We were also thinking that this is a proactive move by eBay to help manage customer expectations. Hope that when the tracking updates on the UPS website that it shows the usual delivery times.

We haven't had issues with the UPS drop off location we have been using during the past few weeks, but we are concerned that UPS may suspend Domestic Standard too. If that happens we're going to put everything on Time Away.

[reallynicestamps]

@ilikehockeyjerseys 

Thank you for your calm and cautious posts.

All too often, we see a poster come screaming and swearing about something a single  clerk in  their local postal outlet has said, and reporting it as Post Office policy.

These events also emphasize how much of Canada's shipping is done by Canada Post. They've been sloganeering for a few years that they carry more than any other shipper in Canada, and this is evidence that the private couriers can't cope, at any price.

[john_koenig99]

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@reallynicestamps wrote:

These events also emphasize how much of Canada's shipping is done by Canada Post. They've been sloganeering for a few years that they carry more than any other shipper in Canada, and this is evidence that the private couriers can't cope, at any price.

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I don't think that's true. It's the seasonal effect, plus possibly UPS. FedEx and others reacting too slow, as they thought that the strike was going to be over in two weeks, tops. 

I said it before, and I say it again: It's time for CP to either change completely their business model, or go the way of the dodo. Simple as that. 

[marnotom!]

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@teenytrinkets wrote:

I made two online purchases with Shoppers Drug Mart on black Friday and they were both shipped Dec. 4 with UPS. Shoppers UPS orders are usually picked up same day/ next day with UPS (as recently as a few days before that) but these two are STILL sitting. Not picked up after 5 days! I thought the UPS suspension was with 3rd party couriers, not directly with the retailer?

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Do you know for sure that UPS is doing the pick-up from Shoppers/Pharmaprix, @teenytrinkets?  I'm wondering if a subcontractor might be responsible for that.

[ilikehockeyjerseys]

You eBay expected delivery date is completely divorced from the actual expected delivery date with a tracked service.

The best way to think about it is that the eBay expected delivery date is for two purposes:

-Marketing (Sets expectations for the buyer. A faster promised date might lead to more purchases, but can lead to buyers being upset if the item doesn't arrive.)

-eBay Buyer Protection (It sets the date that the buyer can open an Item Not Received request by if the item does not arrive.

In normal times, it is based on the advertised time frame from the carrier for the service, but it is not the same as the actual expected delivery date that the carrier will give you as a package moves through the system. 

The above is why you are seeing such ridiculous delivery dates. eBay is now giving people a wider delivery window in order to give buyers realistic expectations, and to protect sellers from INRs as our entire parcel system slowly collapses. It doesn't specifically mean UPS has told them packages won't arrive until January. 

As far as my situation goes, the packages I had to drop off were substantial in size and volume, meant for a different selling platform. I do have some smaller eBay packages as well. But the reason I called ahead was because I had to pay for an Uber XL to get them there (and sweet talk the driver into putting down his backseats to fit them all), and I didn't want to waste an hour of my time (and money) getting them there and then finding out that they wouldn't take them. I have read about some local branches instituting limits, and I'd rather Uber to one that is slightly farther and know there won't be an issue than show up and not have them taken. For a handful of normal sized eBay packages, I wouldn't bother calling.

[ilikehockeyjerseys]

I think the primary issue is that nobody had any concrete indication of what was going to happen and how long Canada Post would be out for. Everybody in business that paid attention knew a strike was coming, but UPS or Fedex could not expand their capacity on such short notice because if the strike never happened or only lasted a short period of time, they would have been screwed.

Maybe UPS, Fedex, and Purolator should have worked together to make a contingency plan where all three companies for lack of a better term merged during the strike, at least for things like pickup and last mile. I don't know how viable that would have been, but the idea being that if I send something UPS maybe it gets picked up or delivered by Fedex or Purolator. I get they are all competing with each other, but this is a clear situation where there is so much extra business to go around that none of them would have lost out and the added efficiency might have allowed them to handle this better. 

[ilikehockeyjerseys]

They are not picking up anything that is domestic standard, even from large clients. This is what I have heard. 

Your orders are likely still sitting at the Shoppers store, or if Shoppers ships from a warehouse, they are sitting at the warehouse. Lots of businesses have scheduled pickups, and if they do any domestic standard sitting in line to be picked up is being left at the business. UPS drivers cannot take it. 

Drop spots are the only way to get anything to UPS that is domestic standard. They will pick up international standard, and they will pick up the higher categories of domestic like Express. 

[ecgt]

Once our package started scanning yesterday, eBay's system updated to the usual expected delivery dates. We believe that what you are saying here is effectively what happened. We hadn't printed off a UPS label in a few days before the one we mention above. As such, it is likely that eBay changed something over the weekend for the sake of protecting sellers, as you suggest.

Still curious as to whether or not anyone else has printed off a UPS Standard label with the delivery date extended to the end of January over the past couple of days.

[ilikehockeyjerseys]

Another update, UPS took my domestic standard stuff today.

I was told via the UPS Twitter account that if I signed up for on-route pickup, they would take my Domestic Standard (Canadian) packages. After I signed up, I was told by a CSR on the phone that wasn't correct and that they wouldn't take domestic standard, even for those with a UPS subscription. It turns out that it is in fact correct and they will pickup Domestic Standard with a subcription.

YMMV, because it is possible that maybe my UPS guy wasn't supposed to take them, but he seems convinced he is okay to take them since I am not paying for a pickup subscription. He said he is allowed to take "up to 40". 

https://www.ups.com/ca/en/business-solutions/pickup-dropoff-options/daily-on-route-pickup.page

Honestly, I don't even know what they are charging me, but for the rest of the month there is no way whatever they charge isn't worth it for the hassle of not having to go to the UPS store. I have terrible timing because I just dropped off six 20 KG boxes yesterday using an Uber XL! (don't worry, I tipped...)