USPS doesn’t suck but that may be because I live in an apartment so they can leave packages in a lockbox on-premises and leave the key in the mail box. Other services don’t have that option so they either leave it on my front door unattended or make me drive to their pickup location. Okay, once in the 12 years I’ve lived here, they left it in the apartment office.
I prefer UPS over DHL and FedEx Ground because the drivers are just more professional. DHL and FedEx use contractor-managed routes and the drivers are often underpaid, inexperienced, and surly. The general ding on DHL is that they’re the best at worldwide logistics but really cheap out on end delivery (at least in the US).
I ordered the new iPhone and was able to track it on the UPS site from ZhengZhou in China. But then I was in the shower on Friday a week ago when the driver knocked on my door. They have an option of redirecting packages to UPS-approved “access points”. In my case, the closest one is a CVS store nearby. So within an hour of it being dropped off on Saturday November 7 at the CVS store (in admittedly a sketchy neighborhood), I was in the store to pick it up. They couldn’t find it and suggested that sometimes the package really isn’t dropped off even when the UPS website says it is. So I checked on Sunday, and then Monday and Tuesday. The CVS store employees never were able to find it. So on Monday night I initiated a claim on the UPS website, which triggered an investigation and on Wednesday I received email from Apple that they were sending a replacement phone. So I don’t know what happened. It’s possible that someone at the CVS store saw a package that may have been obviously a brand-new iPhone and decided to steal it. I don’t know. Given that UPS apparently informed Apple of the missing phone, I assume Apple is able to trace the phone and can locate it if anyone ever tries to use it.
The good news, I suppose, is that the whole experience was relatively painless for me; Apple took care of sending a replacement phone without me having to push them to do so.
About a decade ago (maybe closer to 2 decades), the off-shift work at UPS paid an extra $1.00 per hour. I believe that is fairly common at many places in fact.
In four years of living in my apartment building, I had one package go missing that I think was actually stolen, as opposed to not actually been delivered in the first place. I got the stuff replaced without a fuss anyway. I’m sure the thief was quite disappointed with canned soy “meat,” a couple of pairs of yoga socks, and vitamins. Nothing was ever stolen again. But I have gotten other people’s stuff, and emails that stuff was delivered when I was home the entire time, and I checked as soon as I got the email, and there was nothing there, so I’m pretty sure the stuff was misdelivered.
So I get kinda steamed when stuff gets delivered to the office (which, since COVID, is not happening), because I’m pretty sure the reason is that the driver had several packages for the complex, and didn’t want to go to each unit separately, so just dumped them all on the office stuff. That meant that frequently, I didn’t get stuff until the next day, and sometimes I had to cut it close to being late to work, to get to the office after it opened.
The thing about USPS, is that I have a regular carrier, who I tip every New Year’s, and that ensures that I get treated well. For example, if I have a package that won’t fit int the lockers, it gets brought to my apartment, rather that a slip left in my box, and the package taken back to the office. I don’t have regular people with the other carriers I can develop a relationship with. I do have a note on my door that says “UPS/FedEx/AMZ Please leave packages” (It’s below the one that says “I do not want to convert to your religion” in English and Spanish, which totally works); they still leave notes that say I have to go somewhere and pick up the package. This is how I know they totally dumped a whole bunch of stuff at one location, and THEN took the notes around to the apartments.
OP, did your parcel arrive?
Yes, it arrived yesterday, and the driver even actually rang the doorbell, although he didn’t ask me to sign for it. The package was supposed to be signed for, but I think in the age of Covid just seeing a person come out to pick up the package has to be enough.
So my original complaint wasn’t even that there was a one-day delay, but that they made up some stupid weather excuse for it. The package spent three days in San Pablo, and the last day, the day it was supposed to be delivered to me, it spent in Oakland. I supposed they didn’t want to say “We didn’t move your package as fast as we might have, but you’ll get it a day later,” because they think it would generate complaints. Truth will out, though, UPS, and lying is no solution.
For what it’s worth, package delivery is a network service like air travel. A major disruption to any part of the network can create delays in every part of the network, because it’s all interconnected. So it may not have been raining directly on your local distribution hub, but that hub may have been buried under a backlog from something that happened somewhere else.
Curse you, that’s entirely too reasonable.
I will say this much more: citing weather problems in a delivery area that doesn’t have any is useless, as we end up guessing what is really meant. If they have genuine problems, I think it would be better to say something more like “network disruptions due to _____ have resulted in delivery delays in this area.” You can fill in the blank with whatever it is. I know they want to be as vague as possible as a CYA move, but I’d much rather they didn’t.
For what it’s worth, I have seen this exact verbiage used for deliveries. For example, something like “winter storms in the Midwest may cause delays”. So it’s definitely something that the shipping industry does. Maybe they don’t bother if it’s just one storm happening in one area for a day that only affects a small number of deliveries; they may only use that kind of notification for major weather conditions affecting a large part of their network.
DHL once lost a shipment to my company. It was 20 foot long aluminum extrusion. How the hell do you lose something 20 feet long?
21 foot hole?
I’m guessing they couldn’t fit the thing through a door and left it there.
I’m just wondering why my Amazon deliveries, to apt 152, so frequently wind up at 252 or even 251. If it was just laziness, you’d think it would be more likely that I, on the ground floor, would get packages rightfully destined for the upstairs neighbors and not the other way around.
Thankfully, all three of the upstairs apartments are inhabited by nice people who will bring me misdeliveries. Still, they shouldn’t need to deal with doing that part of the delivery driver’s job for them.
I live on xxx E 2nd St. in my town and xxx W 2nd St, xxx E 2nd Ave, and xxx W 2nd Ave are all within the same square mile. I’ve gotten my Amazon packages at their address and theirs at mine often enough, I opt for the Amazon locker – a half-mile away – if it’ll fit.
Once I got a package left for zzz [some name] Ave. – nothing matched, not even the zip code and it was a name, not a number for the street. I have no idea why the driver picked me to drop it off at. It was less than a mile away so I drove it over and left it inside their screen door after nobody answered.
Once UPS dropped off a package for [Company Name][My address] for which I hold them blameless. I recognized the company’s name from driving around the area, looked their number up and called them. About ten minutes later, a guy showed up with a pick-up and as we were toting the package to it – it was pretty heavy – I commented, “Dunno how my address wound up on it.”
“It’s a return from a customer; she’s an idiot.”
I see this in town after town, city after city. What the hell were those city planners thinking when they were naming streets?
Well, E and W are obvious but in this town all the “Avenues” are south of main street, and the “Streets” are north. There are plenty of named streets in between the numbered ones, especially as you get further out from the original center of the city.
FedEx is worse. Spoken from a shipping manager of a few years.
Is that like saying I’d rather be garroted than flayed alive?
Or their trucks are 19 feet, and loading it diagonally wasn’t an option. May have taken too much space that way.