If you go into your order details and click on the “track package” button for the order, if it is close to being delivered you’ll see a map with a dot showing where the driver is and how many stops away, as well as a dot showing where your package is being delivered.
Ditto on the BS about the delivery attempt. A month ago I had a package out for delivery I was highly anticipating. I was near the front door (in my living room doing stuff like housework or watching TV) for hours leading up to the 9 pm delivery deadline. No knock, no doorbell. There was no attempt to deliver, they clearly ran out of time and/or quit early that night. It did get dropped off the next day though.
Amazon Logistics (AZL) is indeed new and flaky. They are not delivering in all that many places, if I understand it correctly. I had a thread a while back about my problems with them.
They’ve gotten much better but they still have a long ways to go. One improvement is that some drivers now take a pic of the package at the delivery spot so there’s proof of where they put it. But a couple weeks ago the delivery message was “left in mailroom.” This is a house. We have no mailroom. Of course, there wasn’t a pic this time. Checking around found it in the mailbox. Egad. That’s illegal Amazon. Still had a package disappear en route and replacement had to be sent, too.
The map (and pic) thing is on the tracking page for me. The map only shows up once the van is in the area, maybe ~ hour out.
Predicting a delivery time and committing to one, have no return on investment, but come with a cost when they lose flexibility (truly advanced routing uses real-time data to be dynamic and flex/change as needed). Missing a window creates upset consumers who use more resources when they are unhappy.
So, be specific gets FedEx virtually nothing, removes route flexibility, and creates a number of upset people who drive up costs. Getting packages merely on the day they were promised satisfies the bulk of the people and allows good margins for routing, customer satisfaction, etc.
Keep in mind that FedEx is not one company, it’s a bunch of independently operated companies that sort of work together to get packages to places. FedEx Home Delivery is a subsidiary of FedEx Ground, but itself isn’t a single company. Rather, your package is going to be delivered by one of a dozen or so “independent contractors.” A guy at my wife’s church had his own business with maybe half a dozen trucks, he had to manage his own drivers and bid on contracts for delivery routes. And don’t quote me on this, but I’m fairly certain the same house can exist on several different routes, because sometimes he or one of his drivers would delivery to me, and sometimes it was someone else entirely.
So FedEx really might not know when your package is going to get there – they know that Joe’s Package Delivery Service, LLC has the contract to deliver to your house and they’ve handed over the package to him, and it’s up to that company to figure out the best way to get it there. They probably have a contractually obligated delivery time, say “by 8pm,” but the whole point is that they want to be hands off in letting Joe determine the most efficient way to run his fleet’s routes.
Interesting. I’m out in the distant suburbs and Amazon has just started using their own delivery service here instead of expedited post, which seems like an unlikely place to do it. At least, that’s how my last package was delivered. The driver didn’t even ring the doorbell, just left it on the front porch, and then a picture of it sitting in front of my door appeared on the tracking page as you describe. I have another package coming in a few days and I’ll see if the map thing happens for me.
Mine (I live in inner-suburban Dallas) is a crazy quilt. One delivery will get the photo, another will get the “Your package is X stops away!” and a third will get nothing- it’ll just show up without even having the doorbell rung or a knock.
And occasionally stuff will be listed as delivered, and we never see it, never hear a knock, etc…
And FedEx/UPS do the same thing: they dump packages for delivery to rural addresses into the US Postal system, for the mail carriers to deliver. Thus putting the costs onto the postal service, while keeping most of the income for themselves.
That hasn’t been my experience with UPS. I’m on a regular route, though; things may be different further out in the boonies.
FedEx, on the other hand…apart from overnight, that seems always to be delivery to my post office these days. This is actually an improvement over the days when they attempted delivery themselves and kept ending up in the wrong county, but it’s still significantly slower than USPS would have been from the get-go. (In fact, USPS is my preferred carrier: typically as fast or faster than UPS, delivery on Saturdays, and parcels end up either at the post office or in a locker rather than on my, or some random neighbor’s, porch.)
You wouldn’t ever see these packages, unless one was being delivered to your home. It’s not exactly accurate to say that UPS/FedEx are dumping packages onto the postal system in rural area. What happens is that UPS and FedEx have a hybrid service where the package is handled by UPS ( Surepost) or FedEx (Smartpost) from the shipper and is delivered to a USPS facility for final delivery to the recipient. Whether a package goes Smartpost/Surepost or regular FedEX/UPS is mostly up to the shipper* - the hybrid services are cheaper , because the last mile is the most expensive for UPS/FedEX, while USPS is “going there anyway” - there are lots of days when UPS or FedEx don’t come down my street, but the mail carrier is here six days a week.
*Mostly because UPS /FedEX may hold on to the package and deliver it if you’re also getting one via their traditional service.
Do they actually do this with their regular packages, as opposed to their “SmartPost” and “SurePost” services where the sender explicitly chooses delivery by the USPS?
I can’t speak for others, obviously, but I personally wouldn’t agree with that. I would rather have them (i) give me a reasonably narrow time window (say, two hours) and then deliver with a slight delay (say, half an hour), than (ii) give me a vague indication (“Your package will arrive by 8pm”) and keep that promise. Option (i) allows me to take time off my schedule to stay at home and wait for delivery. There might be a delay, but it would be only two and a half hours that I’d have to stay at home waiting. Under option (ii), I’d be sitting at home all day (or at least fear that this is what I’d end up doing when I read the announcement).
I obviously can’t speak for others either, but I don’t think I’ve ever stayed at home to wait for a package from UPS/FedEx/USPS and I certainly don’t stay at home waiting for every package- if I did, I’d be taking a day off from work every other week.
I was expecting a package last night. I don’t know whether to blame the driver or the company but they lied and claimed they attempted to deliver. No door tag because they didn’t show up. At least for residential shipments, I much prefer UPS. I don’t care to bother to sit on hold complaining so I changed the delivery instructions to bitch.
I was assuming he mean that UPS and FedEx simply don’t support some set of addresses and the consumer must use USPS. Because UPS/FedEx have taken the most profitable business, USPS is left supporting a high cost set of addresses because they are required to.
Another aspect of the Amazon vs. the delivery services is that Amazon views its business as a 7-day a week thing. Sat. and Sun. are just normal days for them.
It took a special contract to get Sun. deliveries with USPS. And that means $.
So with AZL we get packages every day of the week, no big deal.
Amazon is also getting remarkably better at next day delivery. Something much harder and more expensive to do with an outside service. (And for some items and some cash you can get same day delivery.)
Myself, I notice the psychological effect of knowing “Hey, I can get this tomorrow, even if it’s a Sunday, and save myself a trip to a store.” So we’re ordering more from them. Something I seriously doubt is a surprise to Amazon.
My most recent tale of shipping “woe”: A package was expected Thursday via UPS (an Amazon seller doing their own shipping). It was listed as out for delivery by 8pm at 9am. And at 8:30pm. Rescheduled the next day. Finally got it.
If they can’t even deliver on the same day as the “out for delivery” message, then delivering within a couple-hour window isn’t going to be easy, or cheap.
It’s because they’re FedEx. Where I used to live was a corner lot where the numbered address had a locked gate and a long walk to the front door. USPS and UPS quickly learned to stop around the corner where the kitchen door and carport were – i.e. the entrance we used all the time. The UPS driver had enough deliveries he’d learned to stop and tap his horn at which point we’d happily trot out for the package so he didn’t even have to leave the truck.
Not the fucking FedEx drivers. They would either drop the package five feet over the fence or leave a sticky note on the gate which blew away half of the time. The final straw was when, note in hand, I arrived at the FedEx depot three minutes before closing only to find the door already locked. There was a guy still behind the counter presumably finishing his paperwork so I rattled the door and pointed at my watch. He shrugged, and walked into the back.
I emailed the customer service department giving the details and stating that if a company offered only FedEx as a shipping option, I would inform them I would buy the goods from someone else instead. Never received a reply.
I know about those, but what I’ve been getting lately is USPS tracking numbers that just return something like “waiting for delivery partner” for three days, then the package arrives at my post office. It probably is Smartpost or the like, but it’s not as transparent as it used to be.
FedEx do occasionally do their own deliveries, though: I had to scour the neighborhood not long ago for a package that was supposed to go to my brother’s doorstep.
Now, it could be that UPS and FedEx are “dumping” deliveries for RR addresses (are there any of those left?) out of necessity: in those cases all they’d have is a post office. They used not to accept those addresses at all, but maybe that’s changed.
Well, the Amazon package I was expecting arrived very early yesterday morning so I never had a chance to see if the map thing worked regarding notice of imminent arrival. But it does confirm that even out here in the boonies, Amazon is now consistently using its own service. And once again, the package was just left on the front porch, with no doorbell ring that I was aware of, and a picture posted to the tracking page as before.
And incidentally, in terms of setting expectations as previously discussed, Amazon has always provided a pessimistic delivery estimate and always delivered at least a few days earlier than predicted. I’m sure that’s intentional.
This is a house. We have no mailroom. Of course, there wasn’t a pic this time. Checking around found it in the mailbox. Egad. That’s illegal Amazon. Still had a package disappear en route and replacement had to be sent, too.