wmartin@brl-tgr.ARPA (Will Martin ) (07/30/85)
There has been a discussion on net.flame about UPS delivery procedures and the practice of leaving packages without notification or signature-collection. I am expanding this to net.legal to gather legal opinions and comments. At least in this area (St. Louis, MO), UPS changed their procedures a year or two ago. Up until then, someone had to sign for a package for it to be delivered. If you were not at home, and there were no neighbors at home to accept it, they left a form -- you could sign the ticket on the form and leave that taped to your door, then they would leave the package and take the ticket the next time around. For some time, we just always left a couple of these tickets taped to our doorframe, and the UPS person would leave packages inside our storm door and take the ticket. This worked for everything but COD, of course. When their procedures changed, they no longer required a signature. So they just left the package behind the storm door, as before, but we didn't need to leave the tickets. I do not know if this change was nationwide, but it appears to be so from the network comments. I do not know if they have some provision for you to request that they do *not* leave the packages. I have never lost anything this way, and have had some expensive packages left, but I happen to live in a fairly good neigborhood, with the houses set back and up from the street with large porches, so it is not apparent from the street level that something is in the doorway. I can see that this would be quite hazardous in many other situations. It would be worthwhile to call your UPS office and find out if they have a method for designating your address as one not to deliver to, but to hold the package for pickup at their office and notify you of its arrival instead. I never wanted that myself; since I don't drive, and local UPS is way out in some industrial park somewhere, I would never be able to get anything. I do not believe that they have any obligation beyond getting the package to the front door of the address listed (if even that); I also do not know what the legal status of such delevered packages sitting on your doorstep is -- that is, if they are stolen, is it your own loss, or still the carrier's responsibility? Would this differ if you had formally notified them to *not* leave packages there? Any legal types out there have any input on this? Regards, Will