Well, I'll add my 2 bits here as well. I deal with UPS, FedEx, and DHL on a regular basis. FedEx is the most reliable I've found as well. UPS loses stuff all the time and they seem to be sort of dishonest about it fairly often. I've had the "According to our records we delivered it" crap from them on several occasions. On all UPS shipments I always make sure there is a signature required. I have found the majority of the issues with UPS are they have lost the package. This could mean it's on the truck and the driver marked it delivered or it was marked refused and sent back to their warehouse...there are several possibilities the least likely of which is they delivered it to the wrong address. They don't often deliver it to the wrong place they usually have it somewhere in their chain...where is always the big problem. Also UPS and DHL will beat the hell out of shipments. Stuff shipped through them often shows up looking like it's been stomped by a herd of elephants. I always ship important stuff FedEx.

My guess would be with UPS that they have your package somewhere and they have either lost it or decided not to deliver it because it is so horribly damaged (I've seen this plenty of times too). You would need to ask them to show you their tracking records and force them to go through it top to bottom front to back with you. Sometimes when they destroy a package they prefer to call it "lost"...which in reality it is.