Technology

FedEx is amazingly bad

FedEx has straight up forged my signature before

I've gone to just having stuff delivered to a place for pick up. It's just so mush easier in the long run. As a bonus it forces to actually walk around my neighborhood.

FedEx is terrible in my area

FedEx is terrible in everyone's area.

The big thing is unlike UPS, they use a lot of contractors for delivery, and well, you get what you pay for.

In France you can have it delivered to a post office. To pick it up you’ll need to show a state id card as proof.

In Germany you have to show your ID card to get it, at least in theory.

At least in my area, theft really isn't a thing. I don't know anyone on my street who has had a package stolen, and I've ordered TVs, phones, consoles, etc, all of which could be pawned pretty easily.

So the security around these things really should take area into account. A densely populated area like NYC or SF would probably need more strict protections than a place like mine.

If it’s a phone I wouldn’t want it left on my porch. But literally anything else? Leave it there. I don’t want to go out of my way to pick up a USB cable that was ordered online.

Many areas in the u.s. are spread out pretty far. If the office isn't open when I get off of work then I can't pick it up. There's a lot of post offices, even small towns have one, so that's not such a big deal. Amazon, FedEx, and UPS offices are few and far between. I couldn't even tell you where I found pick up one of their packages in my area.

With varying degrees of success, you can create accounts with the delivery companies & specify what you want done with your pkg. Deliver to any address you like, or hold at facility or an access point. This is your best option, to dig a little deeper, take some time & really take control of how you want your deliveries. As best you can. 🙂

With most US residential pkgs, it is left because it's easy & economical. A third to half of the time, it's cheap bullshit. Theft or loss is often not a big enough problem to warrant not delivering the first time.

Calling every person that doesnt receive their pkg in person is patently ridiculous. Full-time drivers have anywhere from 130 stops to 300+ stops. Let's say 2/3 don't accept the pkg in person (it's more than 2/3); that is 86-200+ phone calls or 86-200+ stops' worth of pkgs, per driver, to be recycled back through facility.

The first time most residential pkgs are attempted delivery, the shipping company makes like 5-10¢ on that pkg. Say it goes back to facility, to be delivered tomorrow, as you said. That very low value pkg, to be recycled back into the system & taking up space, to be processed & put on a truck for delivery the next day, to be delivered for basically no profit/breakeven. Awesome 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻. Let's say 2nd attempt is unsuccessful, and we can't just leave the package on the doorstep when the person isn't home because that's such an obviously stupid thing to do. Driver starts swearing, sticks another notice on the door, 5+ people handle the pkg again...you know the deal...and the 3rd day it is delivered at a loss or, if failed, is held at facility for customer pickup. The company has lost money, and on some cheap foreign-made t-shirts from Kohl's, no less.

In short: they're doing the best they can, every single day, by the numbers. 🙂 Looking at the big picture, it works pretty well! Except for Amazon, they suck, but everybody keeps giving them money so basically they can fail up forever until that changes.

Hope this sheds some light on how logistics work behind the scenes. Leave some snacks, drinks out for your delivery drivers! The real-life Santas!

Because if the delivery requires you to sign for it, the delivery driver will just walk up to your house and slap a “we missed you” sticker on your door and get right back in his truck without even attempting to deliver it. If they even bother getting out of the truck at all that is.

We don’t have enough PTO time to take entire days off from work just so we can be home for a delivery that doesn’t show up over and over.

How do you get anything delivered if you have a job?

I'll tell you why. Time.

I used to live two hours away from a UPS delivery hub. it could take weeks for me to get a delivery from UPS after I was supposed to get it.

they used to not deliver packages unless you were there. I missed the first delivery, the next two times they never showed up and said they did.

over two months later I finally had to drive two hours to the distribution hub and claim my package.

I had no option of who to ship my package with. that was entirely left up to the seller.

I now live 15 minutes away from the same distribution hub and it STILL takes a month extra to get my packages.

this is why I tell every delivery service to just leave it at the door.

our options suck, sellers refuse to use USPS because we have a corrupt bitch running it that's running it into the ground, and I just don't have the time to wait 3-4 times the shipping length for products I bought.

Why do package delivery companies in the United States seem to just leave the package on the doorstep when the person isn't home. That seems like such an obviously stupid thing to do.

Because no one forces them to.

In Germany they give it to your neighbor. Kinda drives me crazy, especially for security hardware

It used to be that they would not leave packages unattended at a residence, they would leave a note on the door about an attempted delivery. I suppose with the rise of online shopping things had to change. I don't see American delivery companies bothering with trying to contact you/retrying deliveries, they just want to get out as many packages as possible... and there is a LOT they have to deliver in a day.

You do have a lot of choices in how you want your items delivered depending on the delivery company. Most of the have apps/websites where you can choose to have them hold the package, or deliver it to a specific location on property. By default packages will be left at the door.

Personally I have never had a problem with porch pirates, and if a package is expensive or important I will have the delivery company hold it and pick it up there.

The seller can mandate a signature. I've had to sign for valuables like laptops, phones and ammo. (That last one was to prove I'm American.)

Well — Amazon has made package delivery such a common thing that few people would have the time to be around during package delivery hours because they are at work. Few people can go home from work just to wait for a package.

Really? Where at? Every phone delivery I’ve gotten via UPS does a ding, dong, dash (and sometimes not even ringing the bell). No I don’t have a release signed.

I have to either redirect it to UPS store (hard to do since it’s overnighted and I don’t want to pay an additional fee), or make sure I’m monitoring my camera for motion alerts all day.

That is why apple is sending iPhone using UPS, I guess..