Until yesterday, I was one of those suckers who thought online tracking data actually meant something. So on Friday, when I checked UPS’s web site and found this:

Package Progress

I naively assumed that this was a mostly accurate representation of how my package had progressed. Silly me, I actually believed it meant that some facility in the U.S. had received the package’s billing information at 6:41 p.m. on July 12, 2007, that it had been scanned into the system at 8:51 p.m. EDT in West Chester, PA, that it had departed there for Laurel, MD at 9:54 p.m. at arrived at 12:26 a.m. the next morning, leaving for Richmond at 2:29 a.m. and arriving there at 5:37 a.m. Silliest of all, I even believed that “out for delivery” meant that someone had scanned my package one last time at 6:48 a.m. on July 13, placed it on a delivery truck, and sent it out for delivery later that day.

At about 6:00 p.m., my theory began to fall apart. Sure, it was possible that UPS just hadn’t made it here yet, but given their general track record in our area, that seemed unlikely. So I called UPS’s 800 number (1-800-PICK-UPS) to see what was going on. First I was informed by the uncommonly helpful voice mail system packages can be tracked online, and it really would be more thoughtful of me to check there rather than wasting any human agent’s precious time. The system also informed me that my package had arrived in Richmond and would be delivered that day, just as the web site had claimed. I finally got through to an agent; she too insisted that the package was definitely on the truck and would definitely be delivered that day, relatively late hour notwithstanding. By 7:45 I had lost all patience and called back, only to be informed that I could not register a complaint until after the driver had called them to note an “exception,” which presumably meant he couldn’t be busted for failing to do his job until after he called in to his superiors and said “yup, I failed to do my job.” She said someone would call me to follow up on Monday.

Of course, no one did call on Monday, so I finally called them. This time, they admitted they didn’t have all the data they needed to tell me what had happened to my package, so they referred the matter to a local office, who would call back within the hour, which they did. The local lady told me the package was on the truck and would be delivered by 3:00 p.m. EDT. Then she called back a half hour later to inform me that the driver didn’t have the package after all, and in fact, the package was last seen in Laurel and had not gone anywhere since. All the information after that was a complete fabrication. Presumably, some truck arrived there at 12:26 a.m., and presumably, some other UPS truck (or possibly the same one) left there for Richmond at 2:29, but any supposed connection between those trucks and my 10-pound package was nothing more than a wild guess. Apparently, this is S.O.P.; the lady from the local facility even had a P.C. name, which now escapes me, for the phony “scans” that aren’t, as opposed to the occasional “physical scans” that really do involve the item being scanned, but are coded the same way as the phony ones on their web site. She also informed me that inquiries on the national number are essentially worthless, as the people at the national call center only have access to the same bogus information you can pull from the web. Nice, huh?