Kindness Ranch in Hartville, Wyoming, has long relied on speedy delivery, thanks to services like Amazon Prime and its partner UPS, to help with its mission to care for hundreds of rescue animals.
But those deliveries won’t be as speedy going forward for Kindness Ranch and others who live in remote areas of southeastern Wyoming.
Kindness Ranch Executive Director John Ramer told Cowboy State Daily he has recently discovered that United Parcel Service (UPS) is no longer making daily deliveries to the region.
“We watch tracking and shipping times because that’s how we gauge when we last ordered stuff,” Ramer said. “Suddenly we noticed it seemed like deliveries were being sparse.”
With a hundred or so animals at any given time, Kindness Ranch depends on timely deliveries of food and other supplies like medication to care for its rescues.
Ramer said UPS never mentioned the changes in service to him at all. He found out about it on the fly when a laptop suddenly quit working right before a trip he was taking to New York to get some dogs rescued from the West Bank.
UPS was contacted about its general delivery policy for southeast Wyoming, but said it would not comment on that without “specific tracking numbers.”
No Refunds, Plan Better
Ramer ordered a replacement laptop from Apple, then selected overnight shipping with Apple’s partner, UPS.
“They guaranteed delivery on Monday,” Ramer said.
Then he kept tabs on the tracking information a bit anxiously. He relaxed when he saw that the laptop arrived in Cheyenne on Saturday.
“I was like cool, it will be here Monday,” Ramer said. “I can get to the airport and hop on my flight.”
But Monday, Ramer waited around all day for the laptop to arrive, but it never did.
When he went back to check the tracking information again, it showed only the word “delayed.”
So, he went to the UPS website, and a little AI chat robot claimed that delivery had been attempted, but no one was home.
That made Ramer a little bit mad. He knew that wasn’t true. He’d been anxiously waiting all day at home for the laptop, and nobody had attempted to deliver it at all.
“I was like, ‘No you didn’t,’ and I called their 800 number,” Ramer said. “The guy was like, ‘Well, no, it will be delivered tomorrow.’”
Ramer told the guy he’d paid extra for overnight shipping, and was then put on hold.
“When the guy came back, he was like, ‘You’re not gonna like my answer,’” Ramer said. “And I was like, ‘Well, what is your answer?’”
Only then was Ramer told that UPS is now only delivering to the Hartville area where Kindness Ranch is located three days a week.
“Well, that’s news to me,” Ramer told the UPS customer service rep. “When did that happen?”
The man answered that there just weren’t enough parcels going to that area to justify daily deliveries.
Ramer pointed out that people are relying on UPS for medications and things like that, and urged the man to tell his bosses to reconsider that decision. Not to mention paying for overnight deliveries that they’re not getting overnight.
“The guy said he would pass it on up the chain to see what they could do,” Ramer said. “Which just means there’s nothing he can do, and he just wants to appease me.”
When Ramer asked about a refund on the shipping fees he’d paid for a premium delivery, he said UPS refused.
“They just told me to plan better,” Ramer said.
Not Just Kindness Ranch
Ramer had a chat with a couple other UPS drivers later on and learned he’s not the only one aggravated by the situation.
“There’s ranchers down the road who, you know, are sending in blood samples and whatnot that are supposed to be picked up and overnighted to labs,” Ramer said. “And they’re waiting for medications for their cattle.”
Despite that, Ramer said he was told UPS drivers aren’t being allowed to go out to the area, even if they happen to forget a package.
The situation is likely to get worse, too.
Ramer said he was also told that UPS is working on a shipping center in Guernsey for packages headed to his area. Once that happens, it means UPS will no longer be delivering directly to Kindness or any other ranch or home.
The situation has Ramer switching as many products as he can to Walmart, which uses FedEx and still does daily deliveries to the area.
Failing that, he tries for shipping through the U.S. Postal Service, if that’s an option — but with the Postal Service deciding to move most of Cheyenne’s mail processing to Denver and most of Casper’s mail processing to Billings, that may soon not be as timely as it once was.
Meanwhile, Ramer has tried to work his way up the food chain at UPS to complain to someone who is higher up.
So far, the only luck he’s had is going through Twitter, where he said the company has been a little more responsive than it is through other channels.
“I just wish that the advertised services were accurate,” Ramer said. “That’s my biggest complaint. It’s really, really frustrating, especially for getting an item for a business trip that I was counting on having timely before I had to fly to New York.”
Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.
