I only found out about the Amazon CollectPlus thing recently, and it’s solved all the delivery hassles for me. The regular delivery woman knows where to hide the packages (in my shed with the broken lock 
), but any other would try to deliver twice and then it would be up to me to pick them up at their depot 60 miles away. My stuff now gets delivered to the newsagent in my small village, and I pick it up from there. The shop is open 6am - 10pm, and I’m in there most days anyway. That’s not going to be the solution for everyone, but it’s an option, at least in the UK.
That’s exactly what they did for the OP every time he called.
I’ve had a few UPS packages listed as “delivered” when they were not, actually, delivered. In all cases they showed up the next day. I don’t know how that happens so often.
Your neighbors came and dropped them at your door.
Occasionally I will have a delivery problem with UPS and it is always something that I needed the day it was supposed to be delivered.
My apartment complex accepts packages for the tenants. Some temporary UPS drivers know this and just drop their entire load at the office instead of trying the individual apartments. Saves them loads of time and they can get home and get stoned early that day. Most of the time, I am sitting at home waiting for the package because I often have no where else to be. The biggest problem with this is that I have some limited mobility and when they leave the package there, I have to call and have a friend go pick it up and, if I didn’t know when it was supposed be delivered (I have the UPS auto notify option), I would never even know that it was delivered because I also don’t get a slip on the door.
I always yell at the customer service rep on the other end of the phone and s/he promises that the branch will call be back within x hours today, but they never do.
I have been going to rant about this for a long time. Thanks fusoya for starting this thread so my pathetic little rant has some place to go.
Bob
I have had a problem with Amazon packages being handed off from Fedex to the USPS. The problem is the mail carriers don’t have to knock on the door if the package won’t fit in the box- they just pull in my drive and honk their horns. I live on a state highway and hearing a horn isn’t that unusual and is unlikely to draw my attention. So, I check the mail later and find a slip saying I should drive the nine miles to the post office to pick up the package. One of the carriers said she would have left the package, but she didn’t really know if she was at the right place. Aren’t they supposed to know their routes?
It’s called something else in the States, but now I’ve forgotten what. “Vault”, maybe?
I don’t know how many “vaults” they have, but I’ve been ordering stuff to send to my kids in Seattle, and with every order I’ve been offered an option to have the item picked up. For the kid in Mukilteo (north of Seattle), there were 20 choices. Kid says he’s used them and it works fine.
I meant mail as in not UPS. The OP says Amazon told him they have no choice but to use UPS for the shipment. I’ve had other websites (I’m looking at you, Overstock.com and T-Mobile) tell me they have no control over how the item is sent, but last time I had to deal with Amazon, they resent through regular mail.
Amazon seems to want my business back, so they just contacted me by email letting me know that my treatment over the last week is not how they usually conduct business, and that for my inconvenience I have been issued a refund on my ENTIRE order (which includes the other $130 worth of stuff that did get delivered by Fedex/USPS on the second try).
The gesture is nice, but the whole reason I made the order in the first place is to GET this stuff (most of it, including the 2 pieces that never got delivered, were intended to be Christmas gifts), so I guess now I have to use this extra money to go to a local store to buy them instead?
Yup. Some aggravation on your end, but I say you came out good. In case you start grumbling while in the store because the whole point of shopping online was to not have to go anywhere, just remind yourself that Amazon’s picking up the check.
Fail.
In only six words. :rolleyes:
Those were nine words; which six were you objecting to?
I think it all depends on where you are. For me UPS from Amazon or anywhere works fairly well. I’ve not had a problem with UPS and fortunately for me, most of my stuff comes via UPS or USPS.
However, in the past few weeks I’ve had two shipments arrive by FedEx. Both were “not good.” The first had a destroyed box and destroyed contents. I had to ship it all back (UPS yay!) and reorder. Thankfully the second order came by UPS and was fine.
Second order was two big heavy boxes that got delivered 5 doors down from me. Thankfully the nice lady there called and told me about it. I did have to carry it myself down the street, but that was better than having to deal with FedEx.
I guess you have to figure out who the competent drivers are in your area and stick with that.
Agree with that. I’m on a first-name basis with my UPS and USPS drivers and almost never have a problem with them. They even go (only a little, but it counts) bit out of their way to make sure my package isn’t easily accessible from the street.
A few random comments:
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of course Amazon controls who they ship with–they just don’t care what the customer wants. They ship whoever will ship it cheapest for your particular route. I wish they’d let us choose the carrier and pay extra if we want.
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FedEx, UPS and others often send their parcels on the “last mile” through USPS since it’s sometimes much cheaper to just mail them rather than sending out a truck to one address. They do this ALOT, in fact. That can make tracking, or figuring out who screwed up, harder.
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USPS is more likely to get the last mile delivery right because the mail carrier does every address on the same route every day and knows the addresses better.
When I had an issue with amazon they had originally sent it USPS. USPS tracking said it was delivered when it had not been. I went into the post office and gave them all the info. They looked in their office and could not find said package. They said to wait a few days. I waited and went back. They still didn’t have the box. They said wait a few more days. Rinse and repeat a couple more times.
Two weeks later, it was only a game so not that big a deal, I went back to the post office and they still had no idea. So I went home and called amazon. They said they would resend it and I asked if they would use UPS as I never had a problem with them at that address.
The lady on the phone said she could not pick the carrier because a computer program did the picking. It would figure out the cheapest and fastest route and send it with whichever carrier fit the bill.
The game showed up in my mailbox a couple days later.
Did they say it was delivered to your home or office? USPS uses a pretty advanced scanning system to track packages and addresses. Is it possible the package was stolen before you got home?
BTW, watch out for your packages, especially this time of year. I know a guy who once caught a thief on camera taking a package that had been delivered just minutes before. The thief was apparently following the delivery truck around and swiping stuff off front porches during a weekday. (The recipient was home and was expecting a signature delivery but the idiot delivery guy just dropped it off.)
Yep. It’s too bad they don’t have some kind of override option where customers can choose a carrier and pay the difference if they want.
I’m not actually sure any of the big three shippers is necessarily dramatically different in general. I think instead a lot of it depends on the individuals that work for those companies and whether the guys who work your route are good / bad. Around here, I generally have very good luck with USPS and UPS delivery to my home. FedEx is always dicey. I used to build my own PCs and had ordered a full set of components + case and etc off Newegg a few years ago. I was doing something in my kitchen, which has a door to the outside in it that has panes of glass basically the full length of the door. This is the door most delivery persons come to when making deliveries to my home.
Anyway, just on pure luck I turn around and see the FedEx guy affixing a “missed delivery” note to my door. So he obviously hadn’t knocked / rung since I had been in that room for the past ten minutes. I open it up and essentially ignore what he was trying and ask if he has my package. He sort of grumbles “yeah, but you need to help me carry them, there are a lot of them and several are heavy.” The only one close to heavy would have been the computer case package which was genuinely heavy, but the rest were things like a video card, motherboard etc–light electronics. I didn’t mind at all to help him, but it’s also weird a guy paid to carry stuff insisted I had to help him to get my packages.
What I’ve noticed too is owning/running a business, deliveries to the office are always preferable to home delivery. You also tend to develop a relationship, I personally know our regular UPS, FedEx and USPS guy who come to the office. Because of that anytime there is an issue I just ask them about it, and they seem far more empowered to figure out what’s going on and fix it than the people you call on the phone.
If Amazon wants to continue having a good customer service reputation, they need to allow customers to choose what carrier to use, or at least choose what carrier(s) NOT to use.
My UPS/Fedex experience: UPS usually shows up between 11AM and 2PM, they are pleasant and predictable. It is usually the same driver. Fedex shows up whenever, from 8AM to 6 or 7PM, sometimes they are in a FedEx truck sometimes in a plain white rental van or Penske rental. Different drivers all the time. Fedex always leaves the packages at the wrong building too.