UPS snafu urges customers to phone Child Abuse Hotline

It all started when I arrived home at lunch time and found a "visit notification" from UPS in my mailbox. Apparently, UPS rang the bell minutes before and got no response, so they did what they should, and left me with a piece of paper. I grabbed the UPS notice, and phoned the toll-free number included at the bottom: 0-800-2222-2877. A voice greeted me - in Spanish of course - "usted se ha comunicado con la red de asistencia del abuso y maltrato infantil," which, translated to the Queen's English means, "You have reached the child abuse and neglect assistance network..." Oops!

Mini-UPS delivery truck in Argentina

I immediately thought was I must have dialled the wrong number. So, I repeated the exercise... with the same results. I went to the UPS Argentina web page to find the contact information and phoned the company's non-free number... indeed I was connected to UPS.

UPS Argentina visit notification leaflet

When I asked the UPSlady, "are you aware that the phone number in the visit notification leaflets is wrong?" I was told that UPS Argentina was apparently aware of such ugly fact, and the UPSwoman seemed a bit embarrased by the nature of the number included. "Yes, a child abuse report hotline," I noted, and she agreed it was indeed unfortunate, adding, "someone included an extra 'two', our number is 0-800-222-2877, and the leaflet includes an extra two digit, as 0-800-2222-2877".

Close-up of the misprinted phone number

I phoned the Child Abuse hotline - with the extra two - and INQuired if they were aware of the mix-up. The young lady confirmed it. "Yes, we're aware," she confessed. "People phone here and want to speak to UPS.

"We get those calls all the time..." she added. Just imagine the reaction if someone does an internal PABX calls audit and finds out a certain manager repeatedly phoning a child abuse support hotline, when in fact he was trying to reach UPS.

At least the company's web page doesn't lead to a child abuse web site

I have always had good - not spectacular, just good - experiences with UPS, with the only incidents being receiving shipments sent with the option "free domicile" and then UPS showing up and expecting me to pay for some unspecified charges - a matter always cleared up in a matter of days after communication by the sender to UPS USA, with all charges later billed to the sender as expected. No broken packages here, ever. I personally think FedEX and UPS are the only two reliable international couriers worth using down here for door-to-door bill-to-sender service.

Yet, it seems that this time, someone at UPS might have decided that letting employees continue distributing leaflets with the wrong number and annoying a public service hotline in the process with dozens of mis-dialled calls was much easier than scrapping the misprinted leaflets and distributing a new, corrected batch to its employees. Otherwise, the leaflet with the wrong number would have never reached me. Come on UPS, you can fix this. Isn't this sort of SNAFU the kind of bad publicity that corporations often fear?. µ

See also
Google Directory: UPS complaints
A Canadian not happy with UPS