United Parcel Service
Industrials
56
out of 100. Number 166 of 512, counting from the worst.
Where United Parcel Service does well
- Data retention 3 of 15. Few problems found.
- The UPS Privacy Notice offers an opt-out of the sale/sharing of personal information and of targeted advertising (interactive opt-out request form on ups.com).
- UPS states it does not use sensitive personal information in ways that would trigger the California right to limit use/disclosure.
- The arbitration clause keeps a small-claims-court carve-out, holds arbitration in your county of residence, and makes UPS pay any AAA fees above what a court filing would cost for non-frivolous complaints.
- UPS offers a money-back guarantee of shipping charges when it misses committed delivery times on eligible services, with claims accepted in writing or by phone within 15 days.
If you use UPS's online shipping tools or apps, you can't sue UPS in court and you can't join or start a class action — almost all disputes go to one-on-one private arbitration, including disputes that already existed before these terms.
The fine print
6 clauses and findings from the draft archive, dated 1 October 2026. The plain English comes first; the small print is the company's own words. None of these has been checked yet.
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If you use UPS's online shipping tools or apps, you can't sue UPS in court and you can't join or start a class action — almost all disputes go to one-on-one private arbitration, including disputes that already existed before these terms. No opt-out is offered.
'Except as to disputes that qualify for state courts of limited jurisdiction... You and UPS agree that any controversy or claim, whether at law or equity, arising out of or related to this Agreement... regardless of the date of accrual of such dispute, shall be resolved in its entirety by individual (not classwide nor collective) binding arbitration... You and UPS each waives the right to trial by jury. You and UPS further waive the ability to participate in a class, mass, consolidated or combined action or arbitration.'
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Any dispute you have with UPS is not just private — it's secret. You can't talk about it publicly, so patterns of complaints never come to light.
'UPS and You agree that the filing of arbitration, the arbitration proceeding, any documents exchanged or produced during the arbitration proceeding, any briefs or other documents prepared for the arbitration, and the arbitral award shall all be kept fully confidential and shall not be disclosed to any other party.'
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When you hand UPS personal data (including the name and address on every package you ship), UPS can share it worldwide — with affiliates, franchisees, joint-marketing partners, government agencies, and others — use it for targeted advertising and marketing, and move it to countries with weaker data-protection laws.
'Without limiting UPS's ability to collect, use, process, or disclose personal information as permitted by applicable law, You agree that UPS and other UPS Parties worldwide (i) may collect, use, process, or disclose personal information provided by You for purposes... that include... communicating with You to provide... offers, promotions, products, and services; providing advertising that may be tailored to Your interests; ...performing data analyses... and (ii) may transfer personal information provided by You to countries other than the country where the Shipment is tendered for service.'
UPS Technology Agreement v10072022, §12.10 Data Practices (verbatim mirror at )
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UPS writes into its shipping contract that it has no obligation to act in good faith or deal fairly with you, and can exercise any discretionary power for any reason it wants.
'The parties disavow and waive any obligations of good faith and/or fair dealing, whether implied by law or otherwise... UPS has the sole and unilateral authority to choose how to exercise its discretion, judgment or any other right and may do so for any reason it chooses, without limitation.'
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UPS can change its tools, services, discounts, or the deal itself at any time, for any reason, without being liable to you — even just by posting a notice on its website.
'UPS may update, alter, modify or supplement any or all of the UPS Materials and/or UPS Technology at any time.' / 'UPS may, at any time and in its sole and unlimited discretion, terminate, modify, suspend, extend or discontinue all or part of the Services, Incentives, or this Agreement without liability to Customer or any third party, either by notice posted at www.ups.com, notice provided directly to Customer, or notice otherwise reasonable under the circumstances.'
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My Choice Premium auto-renews, and at renewal UPS can charge you the higher of the old price or whatever the current price is — so even a promo price doesn't protect you next year. You must cancel before the term ends to avoid the charge.
'Your UPS My Choice® membership will automatically renew at the end of your current term. Upon renewal, you will be charged the greater of $19.99 or the then-current annual membership fees, plus applicable taxes. To avoid being charged for a renewed membership, you must cancel before the end of your current term. To cancel call 1-800-PICK-UPS® or visit: Manage My Memberships.'
How these were found
ups.com blocks automated fetching (Akamai 403 Access Denied on tariff.page, privacy-notice.page, website-terms-of-use, and CMM_US.pdf on 2026-10-01). Sources used: (1) verbatim mirror of the official UPS Technology Agreement (Version UTA 10072022) hosted at content.mycarriertms.com/legal-documents/ups-technology-agreement.pdf, identified via web search; it cross-references its official ups.com URLs (assets/resources/media/en_US/UTA.pdf) in its own text; (2) the UPS Tariff/Terms and Conditions of Service quoted verbatim inside Holl v. UPS, Case 3:16-cv-05856 (N.D. Cal.), via truthinadvertising.org's copy of the complaint, which reproduces Tariff §55 and the 'disavow and waive good faith' language — wording reflects the Tariff edition filed in 2016 and may differ from the current edition; (3) the US UPS Privacy Notice via search-engine crawl snippets of the official ups.com privacy-notice page; (4) the UPS My Choice Premium auto-renewal fine print as quoted from ups.com offer terms in Slickdeals coverage of the Oct 2025 offer. No opt-out-of-arbitration language was found anywhere in the Technology Agreement (searched 'opt-out' — zero matches). Scores are editorial judgment based on these sources only.
These notes come from the original draft and are not independent verification.