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Interesting article, thanks for that. An anecdotal addition, but FedEx SmartPost can be incredibly annoying depending on how well the local PO works. In some
by enobrev 12y ago
Interesting article, thanks for that.
An anecdotal addition, but FedEx SmartPost can be incredibly annoying depending on how well the local PO works. In some instances, FedEx tracking would mark a package as "delivered" when it was just dropped it off at the local post office. When I was living in Brooklyn, this basically meant I was going to get a pink slip on my mail box within the next 3 days (even though I work from home, they NEVER rang the bell). And since, apparently, none of the local carriers were delivering packages in the neighborhood, this meant I was going to have to wait in a line of disgruntled neighbors with pink slips dangling from clenched fists for at least half an hour and often twice that.
Because of this, I would generally avoid FedEx when it was an option. I believe UPS does this as well with some category of their service, but I haven't dealt with it in my own experience.
I don't mean to say that all of USPS is broken. I'm generally impressed by the system as a whole. When I was living in Seattle, the service was superb, and now that I'm in Chicago, it's somewhere in between. I'm just saying that the service isn't necessarily consistent, and has, in the past, led me to find other options.
- fibonachos 12y agoSmartPost is a risky proposition for online sellers like the one I work for. Feedback is important, and a couple negatives at the top of [popular review site] can hurt for a while. Looking at ours, there are some legitimate screw ups in there, but 4 out of 5 negatives are slow shipping complaints, all of which can be attributed to the local PO sitting on the package for 2-3 days before sending it out for delivery.
- amputect 12y agoAgreed. Heck, I cancelled my Amazon Prime subscription because of SmartPost. I don't do that much shopping online anyway, and the free two-day shipping was consistently actually 3-5 day shipping.
- lobster_johnson 12y agoBrooklyn resident here, USPS itself also does that, and it's worse: They will pretend to deliver and mark the tracking status as "delivery attempted, customer not home". It has happened on numerous occasions that I have been home the entire day, and it's obvious that they never came by. I used to live in Norway, where the exact same thing went on: Anything sent from the US via USPS would show as "delivery attempted", but it was the same thing. So my theory is that this is code for "dumped directly at the PO". (Here in NYC I have never once received a delivery slip from the USPS. Which is frustrating, because it means you have to remember to check the tracking status every now and then to see if you should go to the post office.)