No, you get their “dick the little guy” rate. Go to www.ups.com, and get a rate quote for a 50 pount package from 44001 to 90210, no UPS account, and try the different pickup options. You’ll get a rate between $44.96 and $49.97. They have actually improved - until about 6 months ago, taking the package to their customer counter was way more expensive than calling them and asking for a pickup.
Unless you are a high-quantity shipper and have a great deal with UPS (or know somebody that does, so you can ship on their account), I can’t understand why anybody would use UPS.
The U.S. Postal Service is a government-owned corporation, like the Tennessee Valley Authority. It is self-sufficient and not-for-profit, but it is subject to the regulation of the federal government, such as its postal rates.
The postal service has a government mandated monopoly on delivering regular (non-expedited) letters.
I don’t use FedEx very often for personal matters. It’s rather expensive and I rarely send something that has to get there within a certain deadline.
I have had a lot of trouble with United Parcel Service. So far as I am concerned, if you work during the day, you are screwed when it comes to a U.P.S. delivery. Their customer service for getting you a package when you weren’t home the first time they tried to deliver is crappy. They require a two-day lead time in order to route it to another address (say, your office instead of home) and in this age of wireless communication, they apparently have no way of finding out where their delivery trucks to get you an e.t.a. on your delivery. They also need a two-day lead time to hold it at their central office, which is always way out in the middle of bum-fuck-nowhere and is open only until 7 p.m. and not on weekends. How is a working man supposed to pick up a package, for fuck’s sake?
Whenever someone is deliver something to me, I insist on Postal Service, because if I’m not home, I can always walk the two blocks to my local post office and pick it up on a Saturday morning.
My only experience in any difference between the lot of them is the following:
The post man (USPS) has a hard time deciding that Smith at 25 Oak St is a different person/address than Jones at 25 Maple St. (where Maple St. is a loop off of Oak St., names changed to protect the innocent)
The UPS guy is a former USPS delivery man. Same problems.
The Fex-Ex guy somehow knows how to read, and doesn’t deliver my packages to my neighbor’s address.
I can tell you that my neighbor didn’t really appreciate having to bring over 2000 rounds of ammunition in clearly marked boxes. But since I bring his stuff to him, he must have felt that it was only right to do the same for me.
If youi live in Memphis, anywhere near the flight paths, it is not hard to believe that every package goes through there. Yesterday morning as I sat outside, one FedEx plane after the other was coming in for a landing. I had never seen this before and could not figure out how that fit into the schedule. Mostly the flights I’ve seen were the late evening arrivals. I’ve heard that the take-offs in the early morning are even more impressive, but I probably will never know for sure.
Anecdotes really mean very little. I can tell you that FedEx was unable to deliver a package to me in downtown DC even though the adress was clearly marked on the door and I emailed the sender the photo of the street sign and the door right next to it. Fedex kept screwing around and finally the package was returned to the sender and sent by other means.
According to a rep I asked, they charge a 10% premium over the standard UPS counter rates. Of course, now you pay for your packaging.
For a better UPS rate, sign up at my.ups.com and print your shipping label yourself. Then you can bring it to a UPS customer counter (NOT the UPS store, unfortunately), or schedule a next-day pickup for $2.00 (if you do it online).
UPS only charges $2.00 for a next-day pickup ($4.00 for same day on air shipments). Last time I checked, Fedex wanted $10 for a pickup (I don’t ship enough to have a regularly scheduled pickup). Once you take that into account, the pricing advantage goes to UPS. If Fedex has changed this policy, please let me know.
Last time I used it, the pickup charge for Fedex was about $2. The actual charge isn’t specified on the web site, so you’ll have to call them up and ask. But even an $8 difference in pickup charges is less than the $14 to $19 difference on the example 50 pound package.
Well, that covers just about all of Memphis… (Espically the mid-town and U of Memphis area.)
I can normally tell when it’s a FedEx plane coming in, as opposed to a passenger jet, because of the noise. (FedEx is normally flying in large cargo jets: it seems most of the passenger traffic I see going in and out of the airport are the mid to small sized jets.)
But, as mentioned before, one of the main differences is who will deliver to PO Boxes and who won’t. When I have a PO Box, I prefer my packages go to there where it’ll stay behind a counter until I pick it up, as opposed to sitting on my doorstop where anyone can walk by and grab it.
Service really depends on the area: I’ve been in places where the local drivers for UPS couldn’t find their arse with a GPS and a platoon of Marines, I’ve been in places where FedEx couldn’t find their nose (so they could pick it) without the help of a local Army base, and I’ve been in places where the USPS is like a giant black hole: if you’re lucky, your mail will use it as a gravity sling-shot to get to where it’s going. If not… well… But I’ve also had drivers from all three places who did their best to place the boxes where they were protected from the elements, and away from casual view of the street, and who always had a ready smile and a polite wave.
I work across the street from an airport and live in a flight path about a mile away (so the planes are just loud enough that when watching TV I have to pause it (shamelss TiVo plug)). Anyways, there is a FedEx hub connected to it so there’s plenty of large planes coming in and out. The funny thing is, I always know a FedEx jet when I hear it to, the ones I always notice are little prop planes that come in at a really strange angle. It must just be for overnight/rush deliveries.
This is no longer the case… I dropped an internet-shipped pre-paid package at a UPS Store tonight and the smiling counter staff lady gleefully accepted it without demanding payment. I drop off packages about twice a month at a UPS Store.
I was referring to the
**Then you can bring it to a UPS customer counter (NOT the UPS store, unfortunately), or schedule a next-day pickup for $2.00 (if you do it online). **
part only.
Actually, one day at work in Chicago I got a phone call from some lawyers in Massachusetts. Without going into details, they were very very very concerned we get some information in a very timely manner. I gave them the delivery address. They said thank you.
Cargo and non-airline planes without paying passengers can and sometimes do come in at a much steeper angle than passenger jets.
As an example, the standard descent angle for a passenger jet is about 3 degrees and the descent at roughtly 500 feet per minute (or so I recall - if that’s off I’m sure a “real” pilot will be along shortly to correct me). When out flying on my own, though I have come in as steep as 30 degrees, and in a considerably faster descent than 500 feet per minute through part of the approach. The reasons are various - simulated engine out training, spacing and timing considerations at an airport, the design of the airplane (some ultralights have a normal approach considerably steeper than more convential planes), situations where I want to keep adequate altitude above hostile terrain in case of engine trouble, or (I must confess) sometimes I just don’t judge the approach as well as I’d like. Without “civilian” passengers and their screams of terror/outrage I am much more inclined to take a steep approach.
I’m having trouble picturing it, Broomstick - do you know of any photos that show that kind of descent? (I’m not doubting you in the least; just wondering what it looks like.)
Not true. UPS and FedEx deliver to non-PO mailboxes, like a Mailboxes Etc. (now the UPS Store, but I’ve had no problems getting my few FedEx things there), which is part of the reason I pay for my MBE box instead of a PO Box.
(Espically the mid-town and U of Memphis area.)