With the recent news that the U.S. Postal Service is now re-routing all mail to distribution centers – and postmarking them at the distribution center, rather than at the drop-off point at the post office – I’m worried.
See, I’m still a person who likes to mail checks and money orders. I also pay many of my bills through an electronic check that is produced from my credit union. And if we’re going by the postmark as a date of service, I could see my mail re-routed for days – and possibly incur late fees and late charges and late everything else. And this also impacts my taxes, and it also impacts my choice of voting by mail, should I wish to use that option.
In other words, Donald Trump keeps finding new ways to fuck me over.
Case in point. One of my recent purchases involved an item that came from Hong Kong. I didn’t know it came from Hong Kong, but I sure found out afterwards. Because over the Christmas holidays, UPS sent me a tariff bill for $15. Yep. Remember that thing where Donald Trump said that other countries would pay tariffs? Yeah, I believe that the day Mexico puts down a deposit on a border wall. Meh.
What made the situation worse was that the bill took a week to arrive from UPS to my house – it actually arrived on December 31. And payment was due for the tariff on January 3, or else I would be liable for late fees and penalties.
I called UPS. They were closed for the holidays.
January 1. New Year’s Day. I went online and paid the bill. Then I received an electronic message that the bill would be credited within two business days. In other words, even though I paid this mysterious $15 tariff on the first possible chance I could, I was still looking at the possibility of late fees and penalties.
Friday morning, January 2. I called UPS again. Was on hold for 45 minutes. That’s short for them. Finally, after fighting through hold times and phone jail, I reached a human. I gave him the invoice number and confirmed that, yes indeed, the bill was paid in full.
I then asked if there was a different way to receive alerts regarding any future tariffs or charges, because apparently snail mail is apparently not slow enough these days. “Can you at least give me an option to sign up for email alerts or phone text alerts or something?”
After ten minutes, I was directed to another UPS outlet. Who then directed me to a third UPS outlet. And you can guess what happened. Outlet #3 directed me back to Outlet #1. As far as they were concerned, UPS not only wanted to snag me on not paying a tariff, they wanted to do so in a way that would prevent me from legally paying it as soon as possible.
Well, I mean, this is UPS. UPS is called Big Brown, because their truck colors are the same as the way they treat their customers. Like shit.
But UPS isn’t the only culprit here. I also need to discuss this issue with the United States Postal Service.
Because if I have to send my artworks to competitions that are outside my driving distance, and these artworks miss deadlines because my package got rerouted 3,000 miles away … I’m not going to be a happy camper.
But blaming USPS is another blog post in and of itself. These mysterious “tariff bills” and slow-walk late notice seem to be a way for UPS to get some money off of getting some money.
And I’m not happy with that.
Not one bit.
Chuck The Writer 
Tariffs aside, I have nothing but good things to say about UPS – 3 days tops for domestic package delivery, from all corners.
IMHO they run circles around the sad USPS, which has been an absolute mess for years. Seems the more money you throw at it, the quicker it disappears down the toilet. And I agree; theirs is a whole ‘nother story.
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