What is the cut-off time for UPS Next Day Air Saver?
Does UPS Next Day Air make you a priority?
How reliable is UPS Next Day Air Service?
Is there a cut off time for next day packages?
Air Cutoff Times Pickup vs. Drop Off
Next day air dropped off on Saturday not delivered till Tuesday
Daily Pickup and Cutoff Time
My local UPS Dropbox has a pickup time of 5:45pm. Would packages picked up that late be able to make next day delivery or would I need to find a place with an earlier pickup time? Next day saver if that matters.
I'm lucky to have two great UPS drivers. Neither has made an mistakes that affected a delivery as far as I know, and I see how hard they work. I ship a lot, mostly by taking items to my nearby UPS Store, but I also schedule pickups about once a week. The local UPS store is open until 7pm and has an air pickup at 5.30pm. When I'm late, I use my customer center (Boeing Field), and it looks like they just changed their air cutoff to 5:45pm, though until recently it was 6pm.
Yesterday I had a conversation with my driver who was concerned when I told him I had an air package. I had schedued a pickup from the current time 2:20pm to the default 6pm end-of-window. I schedule pickups through Pirate Ship as they charge a flat $4 for unlimited items compared with the much more expensive piece-based price on UPS.com with my account's rates. There is definitely an API call because sometimes in the afternoon my requests are rejected an unavailable even though it's before the hard cut-off times (3:30pm air/5:30pm ground). He arrived around 5:20pm, and I learned that when I have an air pickup he just takes it to the same UPS Store to meet the same driver by 5:30pm, so had already dropped off his air pickups. He told me that when I'm shipping Next Day Air, I should make sure I end my preferred pickup window at 5:15pm so if he doesn't get by earlier I will be the last pickup, and UPS can reject the pickup request if that isn't doable. I was surprised that UPS didn't reject/alter my pickup window automatically as I indicated it was an Air pickup.
Surprisingly, he said because I was shipping 2nd Day Air, the cutoff doesn't matter and they will meet the service commitment of 7pm on Friday, even if the shipment doesn't fly out until Thursday. And he was right, I see a Pickup Scan at 5:20pm yesterday, an Origin Scan at 8:07pm, and it arrived in Louisville at 1:43pm today. Now it shows a "Rescheduled Delivery" note but the ETA is Friday 7pm. This made me wonder, how is this rule implemented with respect to the cutoff times? For example, if it's after 5:45pm M-F and I need a package to get there in two days, which of these scenarios are true?
My driver applied a special notation when he scanned in my package to get it there on time, this wasn't automatic.
If I can get a package in a driver's hands that evening, the 7pm D+2 guarantee applies.
If I can get a package scanned at my UPS Store before it closes at 7pm, the 7pm D+2 guarantee applies.
If I can get a package scanned at the UPS Customer Center before it closes at 8pm, the 7pm D+2 guarantee applies.
If I can get the package scanned (if they even scan in packages) at a Shell Station that is a UPS Access Point before they close at 11:30pm, the 7pm D+2 guarantee applies.