Missing Glowforge -- UPS investigation

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My Glowforge is AWOL!
Posting this in case it is useful for others, or to the Glowforge team as they work with UPS.

I’m an original (kickstarter) backer, and my Glowforge was scheduled to arrive around 1/8/18. Nice!

Saturday 1/6
Got a UPS sticker that said they would deliver the package to a UPS Access Point in my area typically the next day. Great - excited! I signed up for UPS My Choice, and set up SMS alerts.

Monday 1/8
No notifications, but we had a huge snowstorm, so I wasn’t surprised. I stopped in at the UPS Access Point, and they didn’t have it.

Tuesday 1/9 at 11pm Text message my package has been delivered to the Access Point.

Wednesday 1/10 I pick it up. It is the crumb tray package, not the Glowforge. No 2nd package. I have them double check - no 2nd package. That’s when I go online, and dig up the tracking page, and find tracking specific to that second package (the Glowforge).

Online, it is listed as having been delivered and signed for ON MONDAY 1/8 at 1:15pm at my house. I had set up my delivery as “Signature Required.” Received by: “MATTELSON”. My last name is Matheson, so one way or another it is meant to be that. However, my wife and I arrived home right around the same time as the supposed delivery time – definitely by 1:20 – and obviously there was no package there at that time. Nobody else there, and we were home the rest of the day.

Hard to imagine what happened exactly, but UPS is investigating. They said there should be GPS data for the location the package was delivered, which is great. They said they will be updating Glowforge with the results of their inquiry, and I will update this thread, in case it is useful to anyone else.

Of course I am sorely disappointed and aggravated, but it appears to be a UPS flub, and I can only hope the actual package gets to me eventually. After waiting for so long, I have no idea what will happen if it really is gone - if I would be able to get another at ‘founder’ cost, and on a reasonable timeline, etc.

Crossing my fingers, and hoping I’m the only one with this problem!
Best,
DM

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Grrrrrr…

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Good luck, and sorry to hear.

Not sure if this is a regional name, but our local news groups are calling people that steal packages from houses “porch pirates”. Hopefully someone just didn’t see the truck pull up to your house and call themselves your name. But your home 5 min later, and the forge is heavy , you would of noticed someone sauntering down the street with it.

Maybe the driver got lazy and signed for you…

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A driver signing for it to avoid having to come back later is a top theory (not to disparage any drivers out there). However, since I had set ‘signature required,’ and it is such a big box, it is really hard to imagine anyone doing that.

I’m wondering if the GPS data will just show that it has been delivered to the wrong location, and whoever got it didn’t bother contacting anyone.

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Best of luck! Such a snafu! :neutral_face:

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Thanks!

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Ouch! I hope it gets resolved quickly.

As you noted, it’s a big and heavy box, so it seems unlikely that they would sign for you and dump it rather than ringing the doorbell. At 79lbs, our UPS driver wouldn’t even take the big box out of the truck without first making sure that we answered the door. (Then again, we put a big sign on the front door that said, “UPS! We are home! Ring doorbell!”)

Then again, UPS has had their share of delivery issues. I’m still stunned by the one where they delivered a mattress by mistake: GlowForge or a mattress?

(With all of the damaged deliveries that people have mentioned in this forum, I really hope that GF is over-insuring the packages and turning a profit on UPS’s mistakes.)

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Which is not to be relied upon. I had a $2500 3D printer “delivered” by UPS when I was home and watching and waiting. No delivery.

They had “GPS proof” he stopped and delivered it.

We argued.

They held their ground. I wrote to UPS HQ and bitched.

They found it 3 houses down (we’re all one-acre lots so it wasn’t within the margin of error for GPS - there’s a 1000 feet of frontage there). That house had work being done on it so no one living at home. The contractors took the box and put it in a back room and it wasn’t until they finished that the homeowners noticed the box and that it wasn’t theirs or their address.

UPS then put me on some list to be shunned - every package needed to be picked up at the depot because I was a fraud/theft risk.

I went ballistic and contacted the home office again. It’d be different if things were routinely being stolen from our porch or something but this was the only missing thing in at least 3 years (and I’m an Amazon Prime junkie - I get a delivery at least every other day). This was their screw-up and them doubling down on the GPS evidence that they were at my house. They never considered they’d delivered it to someone else.

They rescinded my security hold after the CEO’s office got involved.

They’re not nice people when they’ve done something wrong.

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Yuck! Thanks for sharing your story. This is the sort of experience I am bracing myself for.

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Dr Krawetz, I just read your “Glowforge or a mattress” thread… So Glowforge sent you a replacement, eh. Did UPS run an investigation? Did you wait for the investigation to complete?

Thanks

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Wasn’t me. That was someone else who received the mattress.

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Ah, gotcha. Thanks

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Fortunately, I’ve only had this happen a couple of times with UPS. And, they’ve been quick to resolve the situation for me.

But, I’ve had it happen to me frequently with FedEx, and USPS when delivering packages–never when delivering mail; with neither organization doing anything to help. In fact, I have a package lost somewhere in the USPS system right now that they supposedly tried to deliver on Sunday (Amazon Prime package), but the system claims no one was home. Mysteriously, I received 3 other packages from Amazon Prime that same day, also through USPS.

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Yes. I mean - undoubtedly when delivering millions of packages per day, it will happen. My only hope is UPS resolves this cleanly.

Good to hear you have had good experiences with UPS resolving such situations. Thanks.

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Update: I have the Glowforge.
Last night, someone from a nearby street came to our house and said a giant box has been on their porch for a week. They had looked us up and called a number we don’t get messages for, and after not hearing back, eventually came to find our door.

It has been sitting outside for 8 days through rain and snow. It is amazing nobody grabbed it in the middle of the night. The box is in rough shape, was partially opened, and missing 2 of the 4 handle locks – but so far the machine appears to be fine. I have not successfully completed set up and connected with wifi yet, but I’m working through that.

Regarding UPS, here is what I know:
– Our address is 17 Dexterdale Road, and they delivered to 17 Summit Avenue. The houses are within 1000 feet of each other (ha, in the future, I’ll check all the #17s in the area).
– I had “Signature Required” set for the delivery, and according to the “Proof of Delivery,” there was a signature by “MATTELSON” (my name is Matheson). I can only imagine the delivery person signed to avoid having to bring it back later.

I’m quite disappointed with UPS on this, but relieved that the machine came, and appears to be unharmed.

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Wow. The UPS horror stories just keep piling up. I do hope that we only hear about the bad deliveries and the good ones far outnumber the bad.

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This one is probably an unusual circumstance. Seems the individual driver failed on 2 counts (wrong address, and probably worked-around the needed signature).

Glad to have it, and I’m sure the vast majority of machine shipping is going well. Seeing the glass tubes inside, it seems amazing to me the majority of them are arriving intact.

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Glad to hear that you got it, it works and you’re in business!

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Oh how wonderful that you found it, and even more wonderful of a neighbor! :grinning:

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Great!
Yeah I had a $350 Christmas gift delivered next door. The neighbor just figuring someone else in the household had ordered it signed for it without checking the name or address.
After UPS told me they had a signature for the delivery, I went next door and asked. The neighbor read my name and address on the package apologized and handed me the one Christmas gift I had bought for my wife.

The moral is if they say they have a signature for the delivery start asking your neighbors.

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