UPS sucks today.

I've had a UPS business account for over 35 years. In the past year or so they've become just terrible. Any call you make to them will have a hold time of at least half an hour. Many of my calls have gone over an hour. Usually you'll get transferred at least once. Also, earlier this year they outsourced their billing services to a third party, requiring additional consent on their website, and billing calls are now answered by an overseas call center.

I had to call them several times a few months back. What triggered everything was a fraudulent shipment made using my UPS account. I thought that I got that straightened out after two calls lasting about 2.5 hours total.

I got another bill the next month for the same fraudulent shipment where even though my shipping costs had been refunded, UPS was charging me a "missing PLD fee" because the criminals who shipped using my account number did not create the shipment using my online account. So after another 1.5 hours or so, that got resolved too. (They don't seem to offer an option to prevent shipments from being initiated from anywhere other than the online account.)

While waiting on hold (both times), their pre-recorded on-hold content would urge me to user their webiste to resolve my issue, which I had already tried, and discovered that it was impossible.

I had to call them one more time the following month because they began charging me $20 per month for no apparent reason. Without first notifying me, they decided that all direct bill accounts would now be charged this monthly fee. I was able to update my account with a credit card on file to get them to stop doing this.

I would switch to FedEx, but their customer service is even worse. I closed my FedEx account 20 years ago, but I continued to receive spam from them for over 15 years with no way to opt out (because of the existing customer relationship that no longer existed).

> UPS business account

> What triggered everything was a fraudulent shipment made using my UPS account

If your business allows for it, set your account to "Deny Inbound Charges" at https://www.ups.com/vip/view

UPS is still probably the best domestically for ground shipping, FedEx is the best domestically for express parcels, and DHL is the best for inbound or outbound international without question.

Didn't UPS try to move away from union labor a few years ago after a strike? I wonder if this has anything to do with that.