i pronounce it "oops"

Forgot to mention: My new DVD burner arrived from NewEgg. I installed it and it works - which is all I ever ask from anything. 🙂

What was weird is that UPS decided to leave the package in front of my apartment door - in plain sight. Anyone, and I mean anyone, could have walked away with it, but fortunately that didn't happen.

I called UPS and asked about this. Years ago I was a driver delivery helper during a Christmas season and the official/unofficial "out of sight, out of mind" policy was to never leave packages in plain sight. If there was no way to deliver a package where it could be seen by the customer and not by the public, you left a note on the door to have said customer pick the package up at a hub.

This has changed.

The rep I spoke with said that as of January 2007, it's now up to the discretion of the driver whether he or she wants to do the leave-a-note thing or not, and could leave a package with no signature and in plain sight.

The UPS rep she could enter my address in the database as a "signature required no matter what" delivery address - so I said yeah, do that.

Very interesting.

I understand that UPS could save a few bucks with this new "driver discretion" thing, but that's a short term gain, long term loss as I'm quite certain a few packages are going to get lost (by theft) this way.

Note to UPS: Your deliveries are great, but seriously.. ditch that driver-discretion thing on the signatures. That has "bad idea" written all over it.