The UPS Store was trying to “have some fun” with a tweet over the weekend, but earned backlash from a wide swath of Twitter users after suggesting stores shred letters to Santa.
The shipping and printing franchise tweeted on Sunday, “If your child addresses a letter to the North Pole, you can leave it with us. We do shredding.”
{mosads}A spokeswoman for the UPS Store said the tweet was never intended to put Christmas in a negative light.
“Our voice and our personality on Twitter really tries to bring some fun and get some attention,” UPS Store spokeswoman Tracy Spahr told The Hill. “Our intention was to have some fun but it was taken in a negative way. To be sensitive to our customers we decided to remove it.”
The tweet was deleted on Monday.
However, a number of Twitter users had already compared the UPS Store to Scrooge from “A Christmas Carol” or the Grinch, or suggested they would look to other services for sending future holiday mail.
“I sure hope someone hijacked @TheUPSStore twitter account..if not, pretty pathetic marketing below..won’t get my business,” tweeted former cable news anchor Greta Van Susteren.
“Bah humbug,” tweeted multiple users.
Others joked that an intern probably got fired over the tweet or pointed to the U.S. Postal Service’s letters from Santa mail program as an alternative.