Bad Business

I had hoped to begin the day writing my daily post and leaning toward something meaningful or poetic or even inspirational. But every once in a while, the bills and the business pile up and you gotta deal with it. So I bit the bullet and garnered the patience and courage to deal with maddening voice mails, 25 option answering machines, phone numbers (of course) no longer in service. In fact, only got through to one— UPS. 

 

I keep getting bills from them without any indication of what exactly I’m being billed for. I do business with a storage facility that sends boxes of my books to book dealers, so that’s mostly why UPS has my number, so to speak. But then there are these charges without any indication of what I’m being charged for or who is charging me for sending a box. And then comes a late fee. And then another. 

 

So lo and behold, I got a hold of a live human being who listened patiently to my complaints and after much confusion, finally answered my question. The $25 charge is because I paid the last bill with a check and the additional $5 is a service charge for charging me for writing a check. WHAT?!!!! And then, insult to injury, the $7.95 late fee is because I didn’t send the check in time. 

 

And here’s the catch. Every time I did send the check to pay for this fee for sending a check, it generated another $30 fee— like a hall of mirrors, the charges would continue without me ever knowing that I was being penalized. Aaargh!!!! 

So this woman kindly offered to handle this last charge over the phone with my debit card (because had I paid that “last-time-I’m -ever- paying- this-fee with another check, I would have been charged another $30). And then suggested that in the future, I follow the ACH Remittance Instructions in tiny print on the corner of the bill to be able to pay directly through my bank.

 

So that’s today’s message, summarized succinctly: UPS sucks!!

 

PS Real Acronym for UPS? Un-Professional Scam