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UPS has not kept up with the modern concept of B2C shipping (I'm in Canada, maybe it's different elsewhere). If I understand correctly, legacy shippers like the

UPS has not kept up with the modern concept of B2C shipping (I'm in Canada, maybe it's different elsewhere). If I understand correctly, legacy shippers like them and fedex have global networks and are well positioned to ship spoke to spoke if you can call it that. But they're getting their grass cut by the amazon centric couriers (ours is called intelecom) that focus on hub to home delivery. I've had nothing but problems with UPS actually delivering stuff to my house, and the idea of driving to an industrial park to pick up a package at a shipping center is a joke. I've had no problems with the amazon couriers. I assume this is on the back of the employees. And I support a model where I pay the true cost of delivering stuff, meaning appropriate pay for delivery workers. But I think the writing is on the wall for UPS and other legacy carriers, and a strike is only going to accelerate that. They've already lost the goodwill of the public. Most won't even notice if the rest of their business goes to the Amazon focused couriers. The problem is what it will do to the broader shipping networks. Presumably without ups, shipping will get even more expensive and have worse service for smaller businesses

danvoell 4y ago
I just had this entire argument in my head today before seeing this post. But swap ups for FedEx. Amazon has the de facto service and for some reason others haven’t even tried to replicate it. If anyone wants to reverse engineer the data matrix tracking code (think Amazon packages) side of things hit me up.
- vaidhy 4y ago
  I used to work at Amazon on transportation long time ago.. but that data matrix is not too complicated. From the last package I got, I see that the parcel got routed from BOI2 -> WA5 from the first QR code and from WA5 -> RNT9. I would guess the parcel originated from a warehouse in Boise, Idaho and moved to sort center WA5 (somewhere in washington.. I would guess Federal Way). Then it went from there to last mile delivery station RNT9 - I would guess Renton here and from there got delivered at my house. The QR codes are not the magic. The real magic are the systems that select routes (Why was WA5 was selected from BOI2) and how Amazon fills it truck for optimal utilization. There are so many processes you need to plan and execute flawlessly with a very temporary workforce. Replicating this needs a lot of cash, a lot of talent in system and process design, good local leadership, and insane focus on operational efficiency.
  - danvoell 4y ago
    I agree this isn’t a differentiator and or complex but could be used for common courtesy / digital tracking… why can’t FedEx/ups notify me when something was delivered…or give me a better delivery window than “tomorrow between 9am and 7pm”. I’m in an industrial complex with 8 other retail businesses and today a package which I didn’t know had shipped to me (or delivered) was left outside a door of mine next to public parking. This behavior is the norm at my location.
francislavoie 4y ago
Yep, this. I live downtown, and I don't have a car. The UPS location I would have to pick things up is a 15 minute drive away, outside of downtown, or like an hour+ with transit. It's just not viable for me. I have the same problem with Purolator, their physical location is way too inaccessible for me. Thankfully though I have a Canada Post location literally next door to my apartment, so when I need to do returns, it's usually pretty easy as long as it's done via Canada Post. Intelcom (gig-economy delivery used by Amazon from their fulfillment centers) was pretty bad when they first got started a few years ago, but it's smoothed out significantly since. The only problems I've seen is when they deliver to rural areas and the drivers aren't familiar with the dirt roads, they tend to give up trying to deliver pretty quickly. But their support via email has been okay.
- MonkeyMalarky 4y ago
  I have distinct memories of being a student in Ottawa and having to take the bus out to some industrial area by the airport to pick up a package once. It was the complete antithesis of customer service and convenience.
  - francislavoie 4y ago
    Yep. From Carleton to the Purolator near Hawthorne/Hunt Club. Nightmare. The bus decided to drive right past me and I had to sit on the ground in the hot sun for 45 minutes waiting for the next one, with my phone battery dead. I told myself never again.
- magicalhippo 4y ago
  > I live downtown, and I don't have a car. The UPS location I would have to pick things up is a 15 minute drive away [...] Here in Norway, UPS and FedEx have deals with local corner shops and similar. If I'm not at home they'll bring it there. I live on the outskirts, but I've not had to walk more than 15 minutes.
  - the_real_sparky 4y ago
    For a friendly (to UPS) payment of $5.99, UPS America will happily deliver your package to a nearby location. The worst part is that if you just want the package held at the hub in advance then it’s still $5.99 now, even though they didn’t have to actually deliver anything! It’s crazy. So just wait. I’m sure UPS Norway will soon be coming for your money too.
mpsprd 4y ago
2C here: my wife has a small business selling exotic plants and the reverse path was always seamless with UPS. She did use a middleman (e-shipper), but 24h pickups at our (remote) home were mostly seamless. Most of the issues were internal to e-shipper messing up pickups.
wil421 4y ago
UPS is much better in my area of the US. The Amazon drivers are terrible and on par with laser ship. I would say about 20% or more of my Amazon packages come from UPS and about 40% or more from USPS. I’m not sure if I’ve had any laser ship packages from Amazon lately. I have never had UPS want me to pick up a package from a hub. The only times it happened is when I requested it.
- jen20 4y ago
  “Pick up from the far side of town because you weren’t home during working hours” is a story super familiar to those in the UK. I stopped ordering things because of it.
- grogenaut 4y ago
  for me it was worse pre pandemic. UPS will randomly pick an item as requires signature becaues it was e-ordered. So I've got to go to a pickup because they missed delivery. It's a lot faster than the delivery driver being missed. Post pandemic no one seems to care and the drivers sign for everything so I've had to go to the FC less often.
Scubabear68 4y ago
To me Amazon delivery people are a menace. I have seen them take out garbage cans and mailboxes in feats of horrible driving. They will park on dangerous blind curves. They will block small but important local roads. They hop out of their driver’s side of their vans right into traffic. I live in a small rural town and the Amazon delivery model endangers residents and our roads. Every town in my State (NJ) is on high alert that an Amazon warehouse is going to sneak into our neighborhood. I hope government wakes up to how screwed up and dangerous Amazon’s model really is.
- autoexec 4y ago
  > I hope government wakes up to how screwed up and dangerous Amazon’s model really is. The amazon model isn't to drive horribly and park badly. They just pay too little and try to insulate themselves from accountability by hiring contractors while overworking their drivers to the extent that they have to piss in bottles to get through a shift without being punished. Have you complained to anyone about the problem you've seen with drivers? Called the police? UPS, Fedex, and USPS can have the same problems when it comes to bad/overworked/inconsiderate drivers. Governments just have to do better at holding companies accountable for the behavior of the drivers working on their behalf.
  - Scubabear68 4y ago
    We are a town of around 6,900 people over 30 square miles. There is an army of Amazon vans invading our town. Our local officials and police have no capacity to deal with this. UPS, USPS and FedEx drivers do not show this level of dysfunction. There are issues, but they are isolated. With Amazon, I fully expect nearly every driver to be a menace.
    - cameldrv 4y ago
      They have the capacity, they just don't have the laws to do the job. If Amazon is effectively forcing their drivers to disobey the law, the solution is simple: have escalating fines for violating the law. The fines for most petty violations are based on the idea that the violation was most likely a mistake or an exceptional circumstance. If the violation is deemed to be just a cost of doing business, make the cost of doing business higher. If Amazon needs to routinely violate the law in order to operate, let them negotiate with the city to come up with a safe and reasonable plan. Otherwise, the city should make it unaffordable to routinely violate the law.
humaniania 4y ago
UPS has a good union. It is usually the same driver on the same route and they know what they're doing. I don't know what happened with FedEx and their union but it always seems to be a different driver who is not confident. For residential service anyway. Amazon pits multiple local 3rd party carriers against each other in a race to the bottom in both quality of service and labor quality of life. Really shameful behavior by Bezos IMHO.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  As I understand, FedEx Express are FedEx employees and paid properly. FedEx ground is “independent contractors” who are poorly paid. I do not understand the logic behind devaluing the FedEx brand like that, especially since a FedEx express driver will not pickup a FedEx ground package and vice versa. They expect customers to keep track of this?
  - cperciva 4y ago
    I don't think it's just the drivers -- my understanding is that FedEx Ground is outsourced on a city by city basis.
Fordec 4y ago
Intelcom is totally undercutting them for sure. If I get an Intelcom email, I know it's showing up on time as stated. Meanwhile, if it's UPS, well I'm still waiting on a package at I ordered 2 months ago coming from the US a 2.5 hour drive away. It has been chilling in Pennsylvania for the majority of that period which was supposed to arrive today after contacting support yet has been pushed out another week two hours after the described delivery window today.
maxerickson 4y ago
Is there something that could be particular to your situation with UPS? I've not had to go pick up a package in basically ever, in a low population county in the US. I remember 20+ years ago my brother and I went and drove to get something, but I think it was Fedex. As far as online shipping, vendors seem to split between UPS and USPS for me. There's a Fedex distribution center like 6 miles away, so not sure why they don't seem to be in the mix.
- thewebcount 4y ago
  I think it’s even more granular than that. I’m in Los Angeles and we have pretty good UPS delivery where I am. Not perfect, but not too bad. But a few weeks ago, Staples sent us the wrong item, and instead sent us like 25 pounds of industrial soap that was clearly intended for an office to our home, and didn’t send us something they were supposed to. So we contacted them, they sent us a UPS label, I printed it out, went to the UPS website and told them to pick it up. It was pre-paid, and they agreed to pick it up between 9:30AM and 5:00PM that day. But they never did. So I figured they’d come the next day. Nope. So I called and they said it had been picked up. I had to explain that, no, I was looking at it right now. It’s definitely still in my home. So they set up pickup for the next day and said, “But we’re going to have to charge you for it.” I said, “Well, I’m not the one paying for it, Staples is, so go nuts.” They never showed up. In the end, I drove to the local Staples (not the one it was supposed to be sent to), which also does UPS shipping and just had them take it for UPS. So where I am delivery is pretty good, but pickup is complete trash. I think it’s just the luck of the draw and the number of packages they have to deliver on a given day vs. the number of drivers available.
- michaelt 4y ago
  > I've not had to go pick up a package in basically ever, Back In The Day, couriers treated every parcel as if it contained a high-end laptop worth several weeks' wages - it either gets signed for by someone in the right building or it goes back to the depot. And if you want to collect from the depot, you'd better have government-issued photo ID matching the name on the package. Leaving such a valuable item just sitting on someone's porch? Without a signature? Unthinkable! And as the deliveries were conducted 9-5 Monday-Friday, if you were in work those hours every parcel would end up at the depot, no matter how many redelivery attempts they made. Of course in the modern age, where a courier knows they might be delivering a $2 tube of toothpaste instead of a $2000 laptop, things are different.
silisili 4y ago
In my area at least, a lot of DHL and Fedex packages get delivered via USPS. It's pretty smart for them, let USPS handle the last mile. I wonder if UPS does this anywhere...
- Operyl 4y ago
  It's a shipping tier, SurePost. https://www.ups.com/us/en/support/shipping-support/shipping-costs-rates/surepost-rates.page https://www.ups.com/us/en/support/shipping-support/shipping-...
  - silisili 4y ago
    Thanks!
  - wrycoder 4y ago
    Yeah, and my post office BOX is not in the same town as my residence. So, UPS transfers to USPS, which has no way of notifying me. And, it only happens sometimes - it’s unpredictable. Very annoying, especially since the UPS truck goes past my door every day.
    - lp0_on_fire 4y ago
      That's by design - SurePost is a last mile USPS delivery service. You get slightly cheaper/ faster service than the traditional USPS methods (because UPS essentially consolidates and forwards the packages to the delivering post office / hub, skipping many of the sort steps a traditional USPS package would take. If you want a brown UPS truck to deliver your package you have to choose one of their "regular" service, like Ground or one of the air services.
      - wrycoder 4y ago
        Take "fulfilled by Amazon". Most of the time they ship by USS brown truck and the package arrives at my door. But, sometimes they use SurePost. My point is that I don't know which ahead of time. It's unpredictable. Or, take some coffee roasters. I suspect they are going to use SurePost, so I give my address as my PO Box. Their system rejects PO Boxes. So, I use my street address. The package gets transferred to USPS and ends up at a post office in the wrong town, since I don't have a mailbox at my residence. The USPS won't let me create a mail forwarding address in my residence town, since "I don't have a mail delivery address there", Catch-22. In addition, SurePost claims to accept PO Box addresses, but the vendor's software doesn't know that. And, I don't have a way to tell the SurePost system what my postal address is. Same deal with the Fedex equivalent.
newZWhoDis 4y ago
Makes sense, your experience mirrors my own almost perfectly. UPS is union, so none of this is surprising or unexpected.
dec0dedab0de 4y ago
UPS is the only one that does a decent job delivering to my house. The tracking is always accurate, and they leave it on the porch. If it's raining they cover it. They're the best. FedEx always drives on my neighbors lawn(we don't have curbs) and leaves stuff on the lawn uncovered Amazon will say the package is delivered before it is, and they ignore my requests to leave it on the porch more than half of the time. USPS has broken 3 trashcan lids in the last 4 years, and insists on giving me junk mail.
- nerdponx 4y ago
  > Amazon will say the package is delivered before it is, and they ignore my requests to leave it on the porch more than half of the time. As far as I can tell, this is an outright fraud they are committing against their own delivery metrics. It's such a ubiquitous problem with Amazon specifically and no other carrier that it can't be just an accidental oopsie. I wouldn't be surprised if they get sued for it in 2023. That or it's individual actors within the shipment centers doing it to prevent getting fired, in which case I have a lot more sympathy for them even if it makes it hard to know where your package actually is.
  - thatguy0900 4y ago
    It is completely accepted, to. Amazon won't deal with support tickets about missing items at all until a day or two has passed because they know the driver has probably just marked it early. It's crazy that they don't seem to care.
    - nerdponx 4y ago
      Exactly. It's so embedded in the design of their system that it can't just be a known numbers-gaming scenario perpetrated by drivers and delivery center managers to try to avoid dropping below some performance target. Hence my belief that the first scenario is more probable, that it's an outright fraud perpetrated by upper management.
  - mrguyorama 4y ago
    I once bought something to be delivered by fedex in about 10 days. Two days later they sent me an email that Good News Everyone, your package will be there tomorrow! It then sat in the next state over for 7 days, and showed up at the original estimate. They went out of their way to lie to my face about delivery time.
alsetmusic 4y ago
> And I support a model where I pay the true cost of delivering stuff, meaning appropriate pay for delivery workers. So do I. Unfortunately, this is a cost not everyone can shoulder, so we won’t see anything like this happen. I heard a good quote about capitalism adjusting for endless efficiency, recently. Maybe someone knows the saying. It essentially means we’ll never go backward on cost.
anikom15 4y ago
B2C isn’t a modern concept. USPS has done it for over a hundred years. People used to order things from catalogs. Does Canada have a national postal service that delivers parcels?
hef19898 4y ago
Amazon built its own last mile delivery network, and the air freight middle mile in the US (also I wasn't even remotely involved in that), for one simple reason: growth. Up until a few years ago, Amazon happily relied on existing carriers. And then Amazon's growth, together with eCommerce growth in general, required massive investment by said carriers. Amazon did some matgs (over simplifying), and came to the conclusion, that for the amount it would have to invest into increased third party carrier capacity it can built in house capacity. And the risk is negligible, since internal networks will handle only so much of the volume. UPS, FedEx, DHL and company are perfrctly able to do last mile deliveries. Some are better in some regions than others. Back the day, Amazon Germany was DHLs biggest global customer. So yes, existon carriers will feel if all their business goes to Amazon logistics. Which it won't, because of risk diversification, and a ton of other reasons.
- denton-scratch 4y ago
  Is an "existon" an anti-tachyon?
  - hef19898 4y ago
    More specificaly, a depolarized one. They are quite rare I am told!
7speter 4y ago
I wouldn't go as far to even say Amazon delivery people are in competition with UPS and Fedex delivery. Amazon's couriers (as you call them, and it seems like a good designation), practically work the last mile for Amazon, from the Hub, to a given customer's address. I imagine UPS, USPS (here in the states) and Fedex are still handling much of the deliveries and shipments to Amazon's hubs in the first place?
mabbo 4y ago
> the amazon centric couriers (ours is called intelecom) that focus on hub to home delivery. This is complex and a slightly unfair comparison. Amazon packages all come from a few central locations- the fulfillment centers. That network has spokes- Sort Centers and Air Hubs. But Amazon has optimized that in most cities, the item you're ordering is typically in a warehouse near you. The bigger the city, the more likely. From those few locations they can do rapid sorting and send packages to the last mile delivery stations. UPS and FedEx have to pick up from everywhere. That gives them a "first mile" problem that Amazon doesn't have.
jamincan 4y ago
I deal with logistics at the small company I work for, and deal with UPS all the time and am actually thrilled with them. Good rates certainly help, but the customer service (at least for business customers) has been far better than Fedex, for example. We get the same driver every day as well, which helps a lot too. We don't really deal with Amazon couriers in a business sense, but I find them a nightmare to deal with personally. Since I don't know ahead of time how it will be shipped, I can't make intelligent choices about where to ship to. If I ship home, it shows up during the day with a legacy courier; if I ship it to my work, it ends up with one of those Amazon couriers that just toss the packages at the front of the building in the middle of the night or on weekends. Neither option is great, and it's a major factor in me using Amazon less now.

danvoell 4y ago

I just had this entire argument in my head today before seeing this post. But swap ups for FedEx. Amazon has the de facto service and for some reason others haven’t even tried to replicate it. If anyone wants to reverse engineer the data matrix tracking code (think Amazon packages) side of things hit me up.

vaidhy 4y ago
I used to work at Amazon on transportation long time ago.. but that data matrix is not too complicated. From the last package I got, I see that the parcel got routed from BOI2 -> WA5 from the first QR code and from WA5 -> RNT9. I would guess the parcel originated from a warehouse in Boise, Idaho and moved to sort center WA5 (somewhere in washington.. I would guess Federal Way). Then it went from there to last mile delivery station RNT9 - I would guess Renton here and from there got delivered at my house. The QR codes are not the magic. The real magic are the systems that select routes (Why was WA5 was selected from BOI2) and how Amazon fills it truck for optimal utilization. There are so many processes you need to plan and execute flawlessly with a very temporary workforce. Replicating this needs a lot of cash, a lot of talent in system and process design, good local leadership, and insane focus on operational efficiency.
- danvoell 4y ago
  I agree this isn’t a differentiator and or complex but could be used for common courtesy / digital tracking… why can’t FedEx/ups notify me when something was delivered…or give me a better delivery window than “tomorrow between 9am and 7pm”. I’m in an industrial complex with 8 other retail businesses and today a package which I didn’t know had shipped to me (or delivered) was left outside a door of mine next to public parking. This behavior is the norm at my location.

francislavoie 4y ago

Yep, this. I live downtown, and I don't have a car. The UPS location I would have to pick things up is a 15 minute drive away, outside of downtown, or like an hour+ with transit. It's just not viable for me. I have the same problem with Purolator, their physical location is way too inaccessible for me. Thankfully though I have a Canada Post location literally next door to my apartment, so when I need to do returns, it's usually pretty easy as long as it's done via Canada Post. Intelcom (gig-economy delivery used by Amazon from their fulfillment centers) was pretty bad when they first got started a few years ago, but it's smoothed out significantly since. The only problems I've seen is when they deliver to rural areas and the drivers aren't familiar with the dirt roads, they tend to give up trying to deliver pretty quickly. But their support via email has been okay.

MonkeyMalarky 4y ago
I have distinct memories of being a student in Ottawa and having to take the bus out to some industrial area by the airport to pick up a package once. It was the complete antithesis of customer service and convenience.
- francislavoie 4y ago
  Yep. From Carleton to the Purolator near Hawthorne/Hunt Club. Nightmare. The bus decided to drive right past me and I had to sit on the ground in the hot sun for 45 minutes waiting for the next one, with my phone battery dead. I told myself never again.
magicalhippo 4y ago
> I live downtown, and I don't have a car. The UPS location I would have to pick things up is a 15 minute drive away [...] Here in Norway, UPS and FedEx have deals with local corner shops and similar. If I'm not at home they'll bring it there. I live on the outskirts, but I've not had to walk more than 15 minutes.
- the_real_sparky 4y ago
  For a friendly (to UPS) payment of $5.99, UPS America will happily deliver your package to a nearby location. The worst part is that if you just want the package held at the hub in advance then it’s still $5.99 now, even though they didn’t have to actually deliver anything! It’s crazy. So just wait. I’m sure UPS Norway will soon be coming for your money too.

mpsprd 4y ago

2C here: my wife has a small business selling exotic plants and the reverse path was always seamless with UPS. She did use a middleman (e-shipper), but 24h pickups at our (remote) home were mostly seamless. Most of the issues were internal to e-shipper messing up pickups.

wil421 4y ago

UPS is much better in my area of the US. The Amazon drivers are terrible and on par with laser ship. I would say about 20% or more of my Amazon packages come from UPS and about 40% or more from USPS. I’m not sure if I’ve had any laser ship packages from Amazon lately. I have never had UPS want me to pick up a package from a hub. The only times it happened is when I requested it.

jen20 4y ago
“Pick up from the far side of town because you weren’t home during working hours” is a story super familiar to those in the UK. I stopped ordering things because of it.
grogenaut 4y ago
for me it was worse pre pandemic. UPS will randomly pick an item as requires signature becaues it was e-ordered. So I've got to go to a pickup because they missed delivery. It's a lot faster than the delivery driver being missed. Post pandemic no one seems to care and the drivers sign for everything so I've had to go to the FC less often.

Scubabear68 4y ago

To me Amazon delivery people are a menace. I have seen them take out garbage cans and mailboxes in feats of horrible driving. They will park on dangerous blind curves. They will block small but important local roads. They hop out of their driver’s side of their vans right into traffic. I live in a small rural town and the Amazon delivery model endangers residents and our roads. Every town in my State (NJ) is on high alert that an Amazon warehouse is going to sneak into our neighborhood. I hope government wakes up to how screwed up and dangerous Amazon’s model really is.

autoexec 4y ago
> I hope government wakes up to how screwed up and dangerous Amazon’s model really is. The amazon model isn't to drive horribly and park badly. They just pay too little and try to insulate themselves from accountability by hiring contractors while overworking their drivers to the extent that they have to piss in bottles to get through a shift without being punished. Have you complained to anyone about the problem you've seen with drivers? Called the police? UPS, Fedex, and USPS can have the same problems when it comes to bad/overworked/inconsiderate drivers. Governments just have to do better at holding companies accountable for the behavior of the drivers working on their behalf.
- Scubabear68 4y ago
  We are a town of around 6,900 people over 30 square miles. There is an army of Amazon vans invading our town. Our local officials and police have no capacity to deal with this. UPS, USPS and FedEx drivers do not show this level of dysfunction. There are issues, but they are isolated. With Amazon, I fully expect nearly every driver to be a menace.
  - cameldrv 4y ago
    They have the capacity, they just don't have the laws to do the job. If Amazon is effectively forcing their drivers to disobey the law, the solution is simple: have escalating fines for violating the law. The fines for most petty violations are based on the idea that the violation was most likely a mistake or an exceptional circumstance. If the violation is deemed to be just a cost of doing business, make the cost of doing business higher. If Amazon needs to routinely violate the law in order to operate, let them negotiate with the city to come up with a safe and reasonable plan. Otherwise, the city should make it unaffordable to routinely violate the law.

humaniania 4y ago

UPS has a good union. It is usually the same driver on the same route and they know what they're doing. I don't know what happened with FedEx and their union but it always seems to be a different driver who is not confident. For residential service anyway. Amazon pits multiple local 3rd party carriers against each other in a race to the bottom in both quality of service and labor quality of life. Really shameful behavior by Bezos IMHO.

lotsofpulp 4y ago
As I understand, FedEx Express are FedEx employees and paid properly. FedEx ground is “independent contractors” who are poorly paid. I do not understand the logic behind devaluing the FedEx brand like that, especially since a FedEx express driver will not pickup a FedEx ground package and vice versa. They expect customers to keep track of this?
- cperciva 4y ago
  I don't think it's just the drivers -- my understanding is that FedEx Ground is outsourced on a city by city basis.

Fordec 4y ago

Intelcom is totally undercutting them for sure. If I get an Intelcom email, I know it's showing up on time as stated. Meanwhile, if it's UPS, well I'm still waiting on a package at I ordered 2 months ago coming from the US a 2.5 hour drive away. It has been chilling in Pennsylvania for the majority of that period which was supposed to arrive today after contacting support yet has been pushed out another week two hours after the described delivery window today.

maxerickson 4y ago

Is there something that could be particular to your situation with UPS? I've not had to go pick up a package in basically ever, in a low population county in the US. I remember 20+ years ago my brother and I went and drove to get something, but I think it was Fedex. As far as online shipping, vendors seem to split between UPS and USPS for me. There's a Fedex distribution center like 6 miles away, so not sure why they don't seem to be in the mix.

thewebcount 4y ago
I think it’s even more granular than that. I’m in Los Angeles and we have pretty good UPS delivery where I am. Not perfect, but not too bad. But a few weeks ago, Staples sent us the wrong item, and instead sent us like 25 pounds of industrial soap that was clearly intended for an office to our home, and didn’t send us something they were supposed to. So we contacted them, they sent us a UPS label, I printed it out, went to the UPS website and told them to pick it up. It was pre-paid, and they agreed to pick it up between 9:30AM and 5:00PM that day. But they never did. So I figured they’d come the next day. Nope. So I called and they said it had been picked up. I had to explain that, no, I was looking at it right now. It’s definitely still in my home. So they set up pickup for the next day and said, “But we’re going to have to charge you for it.” I said, “Well, I’m not the one paying for it, Staples is, so go nuts.” They never showed up. In the end, I drove to the local Staples (not the one it was supposed to be sent to), which also does UPS shipping and just had them take it for UPS. So where I am delivery is pretty good, but pickup is complete trash. I think it’s just the luck of the draw and the number of packages they have to deliver on a given day vs. the number of drivers available.
michaelt 4y ago
> I've not had to go pick up a package in basically ever, Back In The Day, couriers treated every parcel as if it contained a high-end laptop worth several weeks' wages - it either gets signed for by someone in the right building or it goes back to the depot. And if you want to collect from the depot, you'd better have government-issued photo ID matching the name on the package. Leaving such a valuable item just sitting on someone's porch? Without a signature? Unthinkable! And as the deliveries were conducted 9-5 Monday-Friday, if you were in work those hours every parcel would end up at the depot, no matter how many redelivery attempts they made. Of course in the modern age, where a courier knows they might be delivering a $2 tube of toothpaste instead of a $2000 laptop, things are different.

silisili 4y ago

In my area at least, a lot of DHL and Fedex packages get delivered via USPS. It's pretty smart for them, let USPS handle the last mile. I wonder if UPS does this anywhere...

Operyl 4y ago
It's a shipping tier, SurePost. https://www.ups.com/us/en/support/shipping-support/shipping-costs-rates/surepost-rates.page https://www.ups.com/us/en/support/shipping-support/shipping-...
- silisili 4y ago
  Thanks!
- wrycoder 4y ago
  Yeah, and my post office BOX is not in the same town as my residence. So, UPS transfers to USPS, which has no way of notifying me. And, it only happens sometimes - it’s unpredictable. Very annoying, especially since the UPS truck goes past my door every day.
  - lp0_on_fire 4y ago
    That's by design - SurePost is a last mile USPS delivery service. You get slightly cheaper/ faster service than the traditional USPS methods (because UPS essentially consolidates and forwards the packages to the delivering post office / hub, skipping many of the sort steps a traditional USPS package would take. If you want a brown UPS truck to deliver your package you have to choose one of their "regular" service, like Ground or one of the air services.
    - wrycoder 4y ago
      Take "fulfilled by Amazon". Most of the time they ship by USS brown truck and the package arrives at my door. But, sometimes they use SurePost. My point is that I don't know which ahead of time. It's unpredictable. Or, take some coffee roasters. I suspect they are going to use SurePost, so I give my address as my PO Box. Their system rejects PO Boxes. So, I use my street address. The package gets transferred to USPS and ends up at a post office in the wrong town, since I don't have a mailbox at my residence. The USPS won't let me create a mail forwarding address in my residence town, since "I don't have a mail delivery address there", Catch-22. In addition, SurePost claims to accept PO Box addresses, but the vendor's software doesn't know that. And, I don't have a way to tell the SurePost system what my postal address is. Same deal with the Fedex equivalent.

newZWhoDis 4y ago

Makes sense, your experience mirrors my own almost perfectly. UPS is union, so none of this is surprising or unexpected.

dec0dedab0de 4y ago

UPS is the only one that does a decent job delivering to my house. The tracking is always accurate, and they leave it on the porch. If it's raining they cover it. They're the best. FedEx always drives on my neighbors lawn(we don't have curbs) and leaves stuff on the lawn uncovered Amazon will say the package is delivered before it is, and they ignore my requests to leave it on the porch more than half of the time. USPS has broken 3 trashcan lids in the last 4 years, and insists on giving me junk mail.

nerdponx 4y ago
> Amazon will say the package is delivered before it is, and they ignore my requests to leave it on the porch more than half of the time. As far as I can tell, this is an outright fraud they are committing against their own delivery metrics. It's such a ubiquitous problem with Amazon specifically and no other carrier that it can't be just an accidental oopsie. I wouldn't be surprised if they get sued for it in 2023. That or it's individual actors within the shipment centers doing it to prevent getting fired, in which case I have a lot more sympathy for them even if it makes it hard to know where your package actually is.
- thatguy0900 4y ago
  It is completely accepted, to. Amazon won't deal with support tickets about missing items at all until a day or two has passed because they know the driver has probably just marked it early. It's crazy that they don't seem to care.
  - nerdponx 4y ago
    Exactly. It's so embedded in the design of their system that it can't just be a known numbers-gaming scenario perpetrated by drivers and delivery center managers to try to avoid dropping below some performance target. Hence my belief that the first scenario is more probable, that it's an outright fraud perpetrated by upper management.
- mrguyorama 4y ago
  I once bought something to be delivered by fedex in about 10 days. Two days later they sent me an email that Good News Everyone, your package will be there tomorrow! It then sat in the next state over for 7 days, and showed up at the original estimate. They went out of their way to lie to my face about delivery time.

alsetmusic 4y ago

> And I support a model where I pay the true cost of delivering stuff, meaning appropriate pay for delivery workers. So do I. Unfortunately, this is a cost not everyone can shoulder, so we won’t see anything like this happen. I heard a good quote about capitalism adjusting for endless efficiency, recently. Maybe someone knows the saying. It essentially means we’ll never go backward on cost.

anikom15 4y ago

B2C isn’t a modern concept. USPS has done it for over a hundred years. People used to order things from catalogs. Does Canada have a national postal service that delivers parcels?

hef19898 4y ago

Amazon built its own last mile delivery network, and the air freight middle mile in the US (also I wasn't even remotely involved in that), for one simple reason: growth. Up until a few years ago, Amazon happily relied on existing carriers. And then Amazon's growth, together with eCommerce growth in general, required massive investment by said carriers. Amazon did some matgs (over simplifying), and came to the conclusion, that for the amount it would have to invest into increased third party carrier capacity it can built in house capacity. And the risk is negligible, since internal networks will handle only so much of the volume. UPS, FedEx, DHL and company are perfrctly able to do last mile deliveries. Some are better in some regions than others. Back the day, Amazon Germany was DHLs biggest global customer. So yes, existon carriers will feel if all their business goes to Amazon logistics. Which it won't, because of risk diversification, and a ton of other reasons.

denton-scratch 4y ago
Is an "existon" an anti-tachyon?
- hef19898 4y ago
  More specificaly, a depolarized one. They are quite rare I am told!

7speter 4y ago

I wouldn't go as far to even say Amazon delivery people are in competition with UPS and Fedex delivery. Amazon's couriers (as you call them, and it seems like a good designation), practically work the last mile for Amazon, from the Hub, to a given customer's address. I imagine UPS, USPS (here in the states) and Fedex are still handling much of the deliveries and shipments to Amazon's hubs in the first place?

mabbo 4y ago

> the amazon centric couriers (ours is called intelecom) that focus on hub to home delivery. This is complex and a slightly unfair comparison. Amazon packages all come from a few central locations- the fulfillment centers. That network has spokes- Sort Centers and Air Hubs. But Amazon has optimized that in most cities, the item you're ordering is typically in a warehouse near you. The bigger the city, the more likely. From those few locations they can do rapid sorting and send packages to the last mile delivery stations. UPS and FedEx have to pick up from everywhere. That gives them a "first mile" problem that Amazon doesn't have.

jamincan 4y ago

I deal with logistics at the small company I work for, and deal with UPS all the time and am actually thrilled with them. Good rates certainly help, but the customer service (at least for business customers) has been far better than Fedex, for example. We get the same driver every day as well, which helps a lot too. We don't really deal with Amazon couriers in a business sense, but I find them a nightmare to deal with personally. Since I don't know ahead of time how it will be shipped, I can't make intelligent choices about where to ship to. If I ship home, it shows up during the day with a legacy courier; if I ship it to my work, it ends up with one of those Amazon couriers that just toss the packages at the front of the building in the middle of the night or on weekends. Neither option is great, and it's a major factor in me using Amazon less now.