Parcel not delivered, courier stonewalling, what can I do?

SRLA

Hi everyone,

Thought I'd get some opinions here on how best to proceed with this. A few weeks ago a family member sent me an international package (from the EU) via UPS. Now this contained perishables, so they paid a pretty penny for their faster shipping service, and they supposedly guaranteed 48h delivery. As you can guess from me starting this thread that didn't happen. On tracking the parcel online I can see it was actually shipped overnight and was in the UK the next day, then a week later there's a pick notice in their UK warehouse. It's been two weeks since then and nothing.

After jumping through all the hoops to finally get a person to talk to on the other side of the phone, they have nothing but bad excuses. Despite the fact they were contracted to deliver this in 48h they seem to think it's perfectly reasonable to tell me after several weeks that the package is "still in transit". They ask for the parcel number, and when given they won't accept it because it's not the right format (being the format they use in a different country). They ask for the details of the sender instead, and again "the system" won't accept it because the phone number or the post code doesn't have a UK format.

I've just about had it with their gross incompetence and at this point I'm thinking the parcel was lost, if not to say stolen. So the next step for me is to take them to civil court? Threaten to claim compensation? I'm sure the international aspect of it complicates things and they'll try to say it's the sender that needs to sort this on their end but I have proof that the package did arrive in the UK on time as expected and it's completely the UK side of the business that isn't doing its job.

elsien

If the family member paid for the courier, the contract is with them so they need to chase it regardless of where the package is at the moment. 

Aylesbury_Duck

^^ this.  It's your family member that has the contract with UPS, so any court action would have to be done by them.

IvanOpinion

You have no contract with UPS so you can't claim anything.
The likelihood of it having been stolen is very slim - that is silly!
There are many steps to be taken before your family member needs to consider litigation.  

Given the heavily publicised current delivery issues, it probably wasn't the best decision to send something perishable at the minute - irrespective of guarantees.  I am sure that 9 times out of 10 it will work but your family member seems to have got into the minority bracket.

Bradden

Were UPS aware that there were perishable goods? I thought that they came under Export Prohibited Articles and therefore UPS could not knowingly take them... but I may be wrong,