The overwhelming majority of Amazon’s shipments come from their huge facility in Fernley, Nevada - about 25 miles east of Reno, which is essentially at the Nevada-California border.
If it’s a recent occurence, you might also consider that the Reno area has had a huge amount of snow over the last couple weeks. When there are weather issues, the trucks run slower and pkgs usually end up getting delivered on the far side of the 7-10 day window.
No weather issues, small volume of pkgs means you’ll probly get it sooner. Not too much more complicated than that, really.
Oh, it’s def. you. I get mine before I even order them!
What?
Major Update: I had a package sent from CA via USPS on the 17th arrive yesterday (19th) so obviously its in the realm of the possible. Wait, this isn’t major.
As others have mentioned, it’s to UPS’s advantage to get the package to you as quickly as possible, regardless of what you paid. The less time it is in their system, the less it costs them. If they can move packages through their system more quickly, they pay less in warehouse space, maintenance costs, personnel, etc. There is less possibility that the package will be accidentally damaged. There are fewer phone calls and inquiries on their website checking on the status of the package. Of course, that’s only true up to a certain point. At some point, it becomes less efficient to make the packages move more quickly. So you have to pay more for overnight or guaranteed 2nd day shipping.
So, if the estimated shipping time is 5-8 days, you can infer that UPS expects that with the system operating at normal efficiency, it will take 5 days. There might be some delays, but barring a major catastrophe, they’re confident that they can get it to you in within 8 days. But if there’s space on the super-fast truck or plane, they might as well fill it up. So your “regular shipping” package might end up being treated as a priority package by fortuitous circumstance.
It makes absolutely no sense for UPS to deliver on the last possible day as a ploy to get you to buy premium service. Sure, they could hold on to it, planning to deliver it on the 8th day, but why would they? As I said, it would cost them more to hold packages. And if a minor problem occurs–a truck breaks down, several drivers are out with the flu–then they either have to scramble (and probably pay overtime) to get it to you on the 8th day, or deliver it late. And they really don’t want to deliver it late. So they might as well get it delivered to you as soon as it’s feasible. If it’s delivered, it’s out of their hair, and they don’t have to worry about it any more.
I’ve left out the issue of customer satisfaction. It goes without saying that the customers want their packages as soon as possible. Even if UPS was trying to differentiate between the regular and premium service, would the benefits of that outweigh the benefits of keeping customers happy by giving them their packages ASAP? I’d think not, but there could be confounding factors there. For example, let’s say a customer is used to getting his regular-rate packages from Amazon in 2 days, even though his stated range was 3-5 days. So the guy orders something that he needs in 2 days, but pays regular rate, expecting to get it in 2 days as usual, but it ends up taking 3 days. Will the guy be mad that it was “late?” Would his dissatisfaction, unreasonable though it may be, be enough to outweigh the benefits that UPS had accrued by delivering his packages early all along?
The OP gives another example of how UPS delivering as fast as they can can inadvertently lead to dissatisfaction. Since he was used to getting everything in 2 days, he thought paying for guaranteed 2-day delivery was “a waste,” and he sees the on-time deliveries that he is getting as “late” and/or a ploy to get people to pay for the expedited shipping.
Therefore, I could maybe see if they tried not to deliver it to you before the first possible delivery date in order to differentiate between the regular and premium service, and to avoid setting up unrealistic expectations. But they don’t need to consistently deliver on the last day to do that. Any possible advantage of holding on to the package until then is far outweighed by the disadvantages.
So, to the OP: I’d highly recommend looking up the shipping history online to see where the delays are. UPS has no incentive at all to get you the package on the last day. Just the opposite. It’s possible that they are having some kind of systemic problem that they’re trying to fix. I suspect that’s what’s happening. Maybe your packages are getting hung up at some point, and then they’re scrambling to get them to you by the last day. Your own UPS guy is more likely to give you an answer than the customer service drone. If you do find out, please let us know.
I’m with the OP… over a period of about 8 years of ordering stuff on-line, UPS Ground has quite consistently taken exactly a week(5 business days) to get to either my old place in Houston, or here in Dallas regardless of whether it was shipped from Washington, Maine or Oklahoma.
I’ve watched the tracking things, and they either don’t update them very often, or they DO sit on the dock for a couple of days. There’s no reason I can think of why a package from Minneapolis wouldn’t end up in Dallas inside of 5 business days.
To stir the pot a little, USPS and FedEX have consistenly come in under their expected max delivery days. If they say 3-5 days, they’re almost always getting it there in 3, not 5.
All I can guess is that UPS Ground truly means “ground”, and even if there’s a plane slot open, they only ship it by truck on some fixed schedule.
The more I think about it, the more confused I get. UPS Ground is a day-definite service. When you send a package via UPS Ground, it is guaranteed to get there by the end of the day on a specified day. For packages leaving Dallas and going to, say, Fort Worth or Longview, the specified guaranteed date would be the following day. Leaving Dallas and going to Oklahoma, the guaranteed date would be either the following day or the day after that. Going to California or New York, it would be guaranteed in either 5 or 6 business days. They give you an exact date and guarantee that it will be there by then. I’ve never, ever been given a range of delivery dates by UPS. Now, a company from which I buy something might get a definite date from UPS and give me a range of dates, but UPS themselves do not give ranges when you send the package.
They might give ranges for quotes, now that I think about it, but not when the package is actually being shipped.
racinchikki I think what they do is give a range for a package to typically get from A to B, but when you actually send a package they fix a date within that range based on current conditions.
For the most part I’m with the people that are saying if you pay for 7-10 days then don’t complain if it doesn’t show up until day 10.
On the other hand I’ve seen some rather… odd things over the years with UPS shipments. The one that stands out in my mind is a couple of years ago when I ordered a used computer from a company in CA (I’m in PA).
[ul]
[li]Day 1: I got the tracking number and check online and see it’s in a depo in CA[/li][li]Day 3: I check to see if it’s started the cross country trip only to see that it’s still in the same depo. No biggie. They still have 4-7 days[/li][li]Day 5: I see that on day 4 it was checked out of the depo only to be checked back in at the same depo on day 5 (took it for a drive?)[/li][li]Day 6: Checked out of the depo again and sent out to IL[/li][li]Day 7: Checked out of the IL depo and sent back to CA (???)[/li][li]Day 8: Checked out of the CA depo and rushed madly to PA[/li][li]Day 9: Still sitting in the PA depo[/li][li]Day 10: Finally gets to me.[/li][/ul]
Now I did get the package in one piece and on time but the day trip in CA then the over nighter to IL still strikes me as stupid.
Leave it to me to screw up Amazon’s warehousing and delivery system. :smack:
A two-item order I placed on Wednesday is being shipped from two locations, neither of which is Fernley. One box will be coming from Grand Forks, North Dakota and the other from Campbellsville, Kentucky.
So let me get this straight, you pay for cheap shipping, you get a will-be-delivered-by date, it gets delivered by that date, and they’re a bunch of fuckwads for this?
Use the regular US mail. Wile E Coyote does that- they pick up his order and deliver his merchandise all in under 10 seconds!