- Chris Hubbard in Salt Lake City received misdelivered UPS packages repeatedly.
- UPS's AI autocorrection feature is blamed for the address error and frequent misdeliveries.
- UPS promised to correct the issue after KSL intervened on Hubbard's behalf.
SALT LAKE CITY — Imagine coming home to find heavy boxes stacked on your porch; boxes that should have been delivered to someone else. That's the situation Chris Hubbard finds himself in and he says he can't get the misdelivered packages to stop.
"This is the gift that keeps on giving," Hubbard said.
Every few weeks for the past six months, Hubbard has come home to find that UPS has delivered piles of boxes that aren't even addressed to him.
"I called up UPS – they don't make it easy," he said. "I found a 1-800 number. I spent almost an hour on hold."
With each delivery, Hubbard eventually persuades UPS to retrieve the boxes. But he's sick of the recurring headache.
"Each box is 31 to 35 pounds," he said.
"What's inside these boxes?" KSL's Matt Gephardt asked.
"Hundreds and hundreds of plastic bags," he answered.
The boxes are packed full of bags used by Amazon at its return Kiosks. Hubbard thinks he knows what's going on.
It's inside the Whole Foods store at 1131 Wilmington Avenue, where Amazon has a kiosk. But the shipping labels on the deliveries he receives read 1331 Wilmington Ave. — an address that doesn't exist in Salt Lake.
An honest mistake, somebody fat-fingered a "3" instead of a "1" – and Hubbard isn't mad about that.
He's upset that UPS won't fix the blunder. Then, on his last call to UPS, came the last straw.
"What they've told me is UPS has implemented a new AI address autocorrection feature, and they can't override it," he said. "And it's hallucinating a completely different address."
UPS can't override its own system?
Hubbard decided to call Gephardt to see if we could put an end to those hallucinations.
The KSL Investigators reached out to UPS on his behalf, not through customer service, but through the corporate public relations team.
A spokesperson told me they couldn't go into details for privacy reasons, but said UPS will "ensure packages are delivered to the correct location going forward."
"I need UPS to assure me that they've fixed the problem," Hubbard had told me.
And indeed, he said after we contacted UPS, he received an apologetic call from their executive office.
Hopefully, that'll put an end to the stacks of heavy boxes showing up on his front porch.
Gephardt has reported on mapping programs that have taken drivers to an AI-autocorrected address that turned out to be wrong. Most of these apps, at the consumer level, have a way for you to report errors to update the system.
If UPS has delivered someone else's package to your home, they want you to contact them at 1-800-PICK-UPS. They'll arrange for a driver to pick it up.
What you cannot do is keep a package that's been misdelivered to your home. Holding on to someone else's package will land you in legal trouble with the federal government.
