I am soo sorry this has happened to you. I ship alot as well and I only use FedEx exclusively. I don't trust UPS and I definitely don't trust the post office. FedEx gets my stuff there early if not on time and everything is in the same condition it left. This is a hard lesson to learn... I something similar happened to me last October. I understand completely where you are coming from with going out and spending your time and money for a one time event and she didn't even receive like she was suppose to. I would say call and write until you get a higher up because those customer service people who answer the phone can't really help you,you need someone in charge and tell them that you will have all of your friends and family boycott for such lousy service and see what they say.

A well-worded letter to the top guy at UPS can't hurt. Give details, and tell him you will be taking your business elsewhere because of your total lack of faith in his company.

This may take a lot of time and energy, but I would start with the supervisor of that shipping facility, write a letter and ask for a response. If that response is not satisfactory, go to the area supervisor, so on and so forth, always sending a copy of the previous response, along with why this is not a satisfactory outcome. If the higher ups see that you have gone through the trouble of trying to resolve it before it gets to them, maybe you will get a better response. If anything maybe they will resolve it to your satisfaction just to get you off their a$$es. If it takes getting all the way to the CEO, then so be it. You may not get the outcome that you want, but this way you know that you took it as far as you could, and that all of the supervisors and higher ups know how unhappy you are and maybe they will be more careful to not let it happen again. this may be wishful thinking, but I think you may get a better response if you start lower than the CEO! I bet he gets lots of angry mail, but if yours has all this back-up too, maybe he would take a closer look! just my humble opinion!

This happened to me last year:

I was down south helping my mom through chemo-radiation and all the horrible things that go along with it. One of the things that was really critical for her recovery was getting her to eat.

The only thing I found that she really liked and could keep down was cottage cheese. There is a major brand that she has been buying for as long as I can remember so I made sure to get that one.

I opened the sealed container, spooned some out for her and went back in the kitchen when I heard her saying something and she sounded upset. She was pushing the food around on her plate and asking me to take it away. She kept saying Look Look!

Mixed in the cottage cheese was a pile of fingernail cuttings. No joke. The worst part? She had already put some of them in her mouth.

Without going into ghastly details, lets just say it was a long night because everytime she thought about it she was getting sick.

I scooped the fingernails back into the remainder of the cottage cheese and sealed everything, marked it and sent my dad in the next day to the store we bought it at.

To be fair (since we all know mistakes happen) I was waiting to see what the manager said before I contacted the company that made the cottage cheese. Unfortunately he brushed my dad aside, mumbling something about how sorry he was, put the stuff into a fridge and basically said go away.

At this point my brother told me to just let it go--that huge company isn't going to do anything about it.

One look at my mom and, no, I can't let it go.

As soon as my dad let me know what happened I emailed a letter to the customer service rep for the cottage cheese maker and let them know what had transpired step by step and then left the ball in their court.

The rep called me on the phone immediately and was very understanding, but offered nothing more than an apology since she was doubtful that what was in there was anything more than cottage cheese that may have hardened a bit. I was very angry because my mom was still sick from the episode and seeing as how she had been a loyal customer of theirs for as long as I can remember I figured they owed her more than a simple apology.

So I let her know that she should probably watch the news at 5:00 because my next call was to Channel 4. I was certain they would be very interested in this ugly story concerning the largest dairy distributor in the state.

Long story short--they changed their tune about face, retrieved the evidence from the manager the very same day and had it tested. Sure enough, my mom wasn't crazy, they were human fingernails. They ended up shutting the entire plant down to search for the source of the fingernails, implemented new safety and sanitary procedures so it wouldn't happen again and issued an official apology to my mom along with a pile of FREE coupons for all of their products for a whole year.

It doesn't erase what happened, but they did have to fix some things so it wouldn't happen to anyone else, which made us feel a little bit better.

OP--sorry to hijack the thread. If I was you I would at the very least want someone in authority to acknowledge the stress they had caused me by their employee's incompetence.