Josh Rimer was left stunned after he received an automated email from UPS that said it had discarded all the items in a package he was having delivered.
The package was being delivered from his parent’s home in Alberta, and it contained five framed photos and one poster that he had when he was a teenager. Rimer was excitedly waiting to put up the nostalgic artwork in his new Vancouver home.
“[My parents] had been holding on to this stuff for me for over 20 years, and I finally had my own place with a wall to put it up,” Rimer said.
“It never dawned on me that I wouldn’t get it.”
Rimer said that UPS emailed him a few days before the package was discarded to share that it had been damaged during transit and that they were assessing the situation. What rubbed salt in the wound was the fact it was an automated email.
“There’s no way that they’re just going to be, like, just in two sentences, ‘it’s been damaged and we’ve destroyed it. Take care,’” he said.
“It was so shocking. I honestly couldn’t believe it.”
When Rimer called and asked for the package to be sent no matter what state it was in, he was devastated to find out that UPS deemed that “all merchandise was not recoverable” and had subsequently destroyed it.
Josh Rimer/Submitted
“They got rid of it. They didn’t take any pictures. There’s absolutely no proof,” said Rimer. “I don’t know how all of the artwork could have possibly been destroyed, but they said it’s not at all their fault.”
After following up with the postal company to try to understand what happened, Rimer claimed that UPS took “zero responsibility” because they said it was an issue by the sender.
“They said that it wasn’t packaged properly,” he shared. “You’d have to drop it off a high rise into the ocean, like, what could you have possibly done to destroy all the artwork inside the box?”
Rimer shared that his mother is a professional artist who has packaged multiple items before without issues.
“They’re saying that because it wasn’t packaged to their required specifications, it is my mother’s fault for the way she packaged it that everything inside could be damaged. So their driver takes no fault because the way he handled it is the way they handle all their packages.”
Rimer said that he could not file a complaint through their claims policy because they had deemed it as the sender’s responsibility. He was considering the possibility of hiring lawyers to resolve his situation but acknowledged the difficulty and expense it would take to bring the case forward.
“It’s a huge company with, I’m sure, more lawyers than people I actually know in real life,” he said. “I could look at hiring a lawyer, spend thousands of dollars, possibly. Maybe it goes on for years, and then I don’t even know what I can get out of it because it’s sentimental value.”
When Rimer tried to escalate his situation beyond the customer service representatives, he claimed he was only offered the comfort that they would review their claims policy.
“I just don’t think this company should be able to get away with doing this to people,” Rimer said.
Daily Hive reached out to UPS and they have told us they are “working proactively with the customer to resolve this issue.”