The UPS Store — Local services in New York

I hate to give one star to a business, but unfortunately, my experience has been that they overcharge, lie, and try to get every penny from you in "creative" ways.

I live in the neighborhood and have been in the store probably about 6-7 times in the last few months. Every time I have walked out of there feeling lied to, ripped off, and disappointed. There are so many examples - such as requiring me to buy a flimsy envelopes that won't protect important documents from wrinkling (for an extra $5 each!) and telling me I need to buy them because they don't use/supply UPS document envelopes. I have never heard of this at a UPS store and I have shipped from several stores in NYC and other cities.

Also, the rates are crazy to ship. There is an extra charge of $10 for who knows what. They will charge an arm and a leg to print something from a thumb drive, saying you need to use the computer (charging by the minute on top of the pages you print) instead of just inserting the thumb drive into the printer directly. They say that doesn't work, but I saw someone do it just fine.

There was also a situation where I was sending something to a government building upstate and including a self-addressed envelope for them to return a certificate back to me. The guy at the store was telling me he didn't want to put the shipping label directly on the envelope that was being included in the shipment (I was supposed to include a SASE) for whatever reason - again strange - and was telling me "oh just tell them ahead of time to look for the label here .... ) This one is hard to explain, but there was no way I was going to be able to reach someone at a gov't office in Albany to explain to them this random situation that I am sending a document and to look out for it (yeah right) and explain where the label is in the package and how it is not directly on the SASE I needed to include.

It wouldn't be so bad if they weren't lying straight to my face, but it seems to be the pattern, unfortunately. Normally I am ok with UPS stores, and in fact when I owned a small business I had a mailbox with one for probably 10-15 years or so. I gave this store several shots, but will be going back to FedEx down the street from now on.

Edit to add - the guy swore that the ($5) flimsy envelopes would be fine and that he's never heard of anyone saying it didn't prevent documents from wrinkling - and guess what - an important document came back to me wrinkled using that envelope. I have to send SASEs frequently and this is the only time in 5 years that one came back wrinkled. Of course it did - with no cardboard to keep it flat - it's not rocket science. Again, b/c they don't supply the usual UPS envelopes to ship overnight or 2 day and make you buy the...

My story is a very special story - one that is not just about doing business with The UPS Store in NYC after my NY Fashion Week - Timeless Beauty Fashion Show but it is about a beautiful human being who knew and felt the desperate need of another human being! We literally had minutes to spare in shipping our ALL 18 boxes back to home base before heading to the airport. We had worked online the the night before and in the morning to schedule a hotel pick up - going out to Target buying a scale to properly weigh and measure the boxes - we had made a spreadsheet - we were organized but the online system failed - to the very last minute - it was an absolute panic! BUT Zayn, once I called his UPS location, explaining my situation without a breath taken explaining - immediately put me at rest and under his wing - with his assuring words and voice - and he said to me, no worries Pat - I got you! AND HE DID! From start to finish, this gentleman came to my hotel personally picked up my 18 boxes brought them to UPS to be be processed and shipped back to my home base (all this being a UPS employee - and taking photos of his process along the way so I knew and was trusting of the process). When I say God came down on me - I am not kidding! And let me tell you how beautiful of an employee that UPS has on their blessed given hands! Thank you - Zayn from the bottom of my heart 💙 - you absolutely changed my world in that very stressful moment. Thank you UPS for hiring such an amazingly beautiful individual - Zayn 💥 - the best - you are blessed...

Edit: Kind of wish I read the reviews before coming here. There is a lot of similar stories between the suspicious number of positive ones but UPS locations don't normally have good ratings so I didn't think too hard about it.

Overcharging, nickle and diming, losing packages that never gets scanned out of NYC...turns out this is pretty common with them.

Original Review: Had two packages that needed to be given shipping labels.

We thought it would be simpler if we just did it on location, and when they heard we just wanted measurements to put into an app, where we will pay for a UPS label, they decided to charge us for the strenuous effort of using a scale, a ruler and a label printer.

After implying it would be less hassle and a similar cost if we just paid for the UPS label on-site rather than just the printing, we agreed only to have them quote $150 per package for something that was staying within US.

We then put the measurements into the shipping app to compare because that sounded far too high even on a standard day to find the exact same 3-day delivery was 1/3rd the cost online.

We switched back to our initial plan, obviously. We labelled everything and thought that would be the end of it.

My two packages were brought in together, but only one went out to delivery. We called in a few times, and despite there being no activity on the tracking for days they kept insisting they sent it off on a truck.

Package is lost now. Hum dum. An entire box of inventory just missing despite having never been scanned out...