Do You Have To Pay For UPS My Choice?(+All The Perks Listed)

UPS My Choice is an optional program that you can sign up for with UPS. It gives you a far higher level of control over your packages and how you want them delivered, from delaying deliveries to laying out the delivery method.

UPS My Choice is now free, though it once cost $40 on an annual basis before it was reduced to $19.99 in November of 2020. After that, UPS was losing so much money that they redirected UPS My Choice as a free option to draw in more customers. 

That means you get to benefit from a nice little feature-heavy product that UPS used to deem worthy of an annual $40 price tag. There are a lot of benefits to like as well, even though FedEx and USPS also offer something similar.

What Is Included With UPS My Choice?

UPS My choice is a feature-loaded product that allows you to more fully customize your package and mail delivery. You get more options than you ever had before including delivery to other homes to a UPS “Access Point.”

  • Get an estimated delivery time
  • Confirmation delivery window
  • Authorization for shipment release
  • Deliver the package to a neighbor
  • Deliver the package to UPS Access Point
  • Delivery notification alerts
  • Change of day delivery
  • Delivery instructions
  • Hold for pick up or will call
  • Delivery planner

So long as you have your tracking number, you can access any one of these features or all of them at your leisure, as many times as you want throughout the day. You can request and receive an estimated delivery time window and it’s nearly instantaneous, as you ask for it.

You have the authority to release a shipment to or from your place of business or residence. You can also line up instructions to deliver your package to the neighbor’s house, in the event that you trust them and you will be out of town or otherwise indisposed.

UPS Access Points are similar to the new Amazon pick-up locations. It’s a locker that is usually situated at a major business. Show up and present your verification and you can open your locker to obtain your package.

You can get the full range of delivery alerts, including when it departs and arrives at each transit point along the way. If necessary—or you don’t want it sent to a neighbor’s house, you can change the date of delivery to one that’s more convenient to you.

This includes delivery instructions. You can map out how you want your package delivered. For instance, if you need the delivery driver to enter through the garage door and lay your package on the spare tire above the toolbox, that’s exactly what you get.

You can also arrange for your delivery to be held at a UPS office where you can either come to pick it up or call later to authorize them to continue the transit.

In other words, with UPS My Choice, you certainly get a lot of choices at your disposal.

Is UPS My Choice Worth It?

Without UPS My Choice, you have very little in the way of authority in terms of where, when, and how your package is delivered. It is definitely worth getting since it is free and provides you with quite a number of perks.

You won’t get alerts as it moves about the country and, while you can enter the tracking number on the website, you won’t get much more than pick-up and drop-off information.

You won’t be able to make any last-minute changes to your delivery, especially if you discover—and this happens a lot more often than you would think—that the package you’re receiving requires a signature by someone in the home that’s older than 18.

In short, you’ll miss out on a lot of different features that give you the kind of control that you want over your mail and package deliveries. That’s not to mention the most important reason that you should sign up—it’s free.

Asking whether or not it’s worth it is like asking if free breakfast food and delivery from an outstanding restaurant is worth it. It’s definitely worth it because it’s a scenario where you have everything to gain and nothing to lose.

How Do You Sign Up For UPS My Choice?

Sign-up is fairly simple. Like most memberships—even the free ones—you visit the UPS My Choice web page.

  • Select Sign Up
  • Create a User ID
  • Create a unique Password
  • Fill out your Name and Address
  • Verify your account via Email Verification

That’s all you have to do and since membership is free, you won’t have to waste any time filling out payment information. Once you verify your email, you’re free to start utilizing all of the features discussed above.

Where Do You Go To Manage Your UPS My Choice?

UPS doesn’t exactly point the finger to tell you which direction to go next—one can only assume that they assume that you know—but all you have to do is go to the primary UPS.com website.

Once you log in, go to the tracking information page by selecting Track Package or Track My Package. Once you’re there, enter your tracking number, and all of the options that are now available to you through UPS My Choice will pop up, along with your tracking info.

UPS My Choice is not its own, separate entity. Once you sign up for it, it’s basically just integrated into the things that you normally do when you track a package, with the exception that you will notice a lot more options.

Those options include everything listed above that is part of the UPS My Choice product and almost—if not all of them—all will be available once you enter your tracking information so that you can decide what happens next.

All Things Considered

For a free program, UPS My Choice is a pretty robust, informative, and handy product to have within the UPS delivery ecosystem. You get to be in full control of where, when, and how you’re package is delivered.

That’s a handy thing to have, especially if you’re one to exceedingly over getting your package to you and on time. You really don’t have anything to lose for signing up, even if you don’t use UPS all that much. You never know.