Graduate student Nicole Lobo moved back to the US in late August after a year in the UK, shipping 10 boxes of possessions back home to Philadelphia that she expected to arrive within a few days.
Six weeks later, she is still waiting for the shipment - and fears it is lost, destroyed by UPS as the company struggles to handle a flood of packages facing new customs and tariff rules.
It's been horrific, says the 28-year-old, who was notified last month that her boxes would be disposed of, leaving her to make frantic phone calls and send emails to try to head off the outcome.
It's an ordeal facing many UPS customers since the Trump administration in late August stopped allowing parcels worth less than $800 to enter the US without inspection, taxes or tariffs.
The decision abruptly made an estimated 4 million packages each day subject to new, more onerous processing and documentation rules.
As the influx leads to longer processing times and higher, sometimes unexpected, costs across the industry, some customers of UPS like Nicole, say they fear their packages have been lost in the backlog.
It's beyond comprehension to me, says Janani Mohan, a 29-year-old engineer living in Michigan, who has also spent hours on hold and sent repeated emails since a tracking alert listed a box sent by her parents in India as set for disposal.
The parcel held her wedding dress, which had also been worn by her mother, an heirloom sari from her grandmother and wedding photos, among other items.
I literally cried to them on the phone, she says. Everything in there is very close to my heart.
Oregon-based Mizuba Tea Co, which has used UPS for more than a decade to import matcha from Japan, has five shipments together worth more than $100,000 held up in processing.
The firm has received conflicting alerts about their status, including some saying the items were set for disposal.
My whole team is basically on scan watch, says Lauren Purvis, who runs the business with her family and is now starting to worry about running out of inventory if the limbo continues.
Importers typically have 10 days after goods enter the US to submit documentation about the goods, pay tariffs and other fees, allowing the package to go to its recipient.
But the Trump administration's rapid changes to tariff rules have made it increasingly difficult to meet customs deadlines requirements, say shipping companies like FedEx and UPS, which offer customs services and often act as importers of record.
For example, businesses are now responsible for paying tariffs on any steel or aluminium contained in a product, and in many cases vouching for its country of origin - information that many businesses, let alone their shipping companies, do not know.
Because of changes to US import regulations, we are seeing many packages that are unable to clear customs due to missing or incomplete information about the shipment required for customs clearance, a UPS spokeswoman said.
While acknowledging longer shipping times, the company said it was still successfully clearing more than 90% of international packages within a day of arrival.
