Rant on shipping

[fried1765]

How many packages do you get pre week/month?
Myself I may go weeks without getting any certainly less then 20/yr.

We are all very different.
Between UPS, FedEx, and USPS, I can get 20 per month ....personal stuff!

 

[user.69169]

Dey wore demselves out & exhaust all resources delivering mail in ballots in envelopes dat required folding ballot to get in envelope. In effort to help vote counters de PostOffice found a way to deliver ballots never been folded. Dat ate plenty budget.

Been around a while, and I'm pretty sure all comes down to carrier wanting to do job and Postmaster making him do de job. Truth is de employees get paid pretty good for de skill dey sell.

Today de informed delivery screen tells me dey backed up due to seasonal peak and lack of employees due to de COVID.
Next excuse be how dey tied up getting Vaccine to stick in yer arm.
Wonder how many day a year dey get paid fer bein sick?

Worked whole lot better when Post Office answered to Congressman.

 

[Diggin It]

Big Lots is doing something a little different (not that they have much most people would mail order). Website orders placed for in store pick up get an additional 10% off any other coupons or discounts as an incentive to avoid shipping items.

 

[Oaktree]

I'm not sure, but I think the "hub deliveries" are not free.

FedEx offers delivery to hubs or locations such as Walgreens and Dollar General. I have used it when a signature is required and I may not expect to be home.

Well, I picked up my hub-shipped order today...arrived 3 days before it was predicted to. In this case it was UPS shipped to a locker inside a Rite Aid store.
Couldn't have been easier. They emailed me a 6 digit code #, entered it in and one of the lockers automatically opened. No extra charges, in fact it was $1 less than it would have been to ship to my house (well, the order was over $25 so shipping was "free", but Amazon shows the ship price at checkout, and it was $1 less than what it would have been for home delivery). I'd use this service again.

 

[fried1765]

Well, I picked up my hub-shipped order today...arrived 3 days before it was predicted to. In this case it was UPS shipped to a locker inside a Rite Aid store.
Couldn't have been easier. They emailed me a 6 digit code #, entered it in and one of the lockers automatically opened. No extra charges, in fact it was $1 less than it would have been to ship to my house (well, the order was over $25 so shipping was "free", but Amazon shows the ship price at checkout, and it was $1 less than what it would have been for home delivery). I'd use this service again.

Sounds like a workable plan.

 

[Doofy]

No Problems at all this year because we didn't order a single thing. Everyone received Gift Certificates so they can choose their own gifts this year and get something they can actually use. The year has been such a dud and disappointment this is a good time to rethink and reboot for the new year. Getting out of debt in the process is a bonus too.

 

[Jstpssng]

It's nothing new, things have always gotten lost in the mail. When I was self employed I gave one company a really good rate for property line maintenance because I could work it around my schedule, and if I turned a bill in on Tuesday AM I would see the check on Friday. Usually...
One Friday it didn't show up, and I desperately needed the money because I was leaving town the following week on another project. It took two weeks to travel 20 miles... the autoscanner read a "0" as a "6" and it did a loop out around MossRoad's town.

 

[aczlan]

If you believe that a cost cutting measure by USPS who has been losing billions of dollars a year is a deliberate attempt to delay the mail then so be it. Everyone knows that junk mail rates are much lower than first class mail rates and aren't delivered as fast by USPS for that reason. When USPS warns states that sending out ballots by junk mail rates in order for the states to save money, may slow the deliveries and possibly not be delivered in time, this is not deliberate slowing of the mail by USPS, it is deliberate slowing of the mail by the participating states that wish to mail ballots the cheapest and slowest way.

Read carefully unbiased reports such as What’s really going wrong at USPS. to determine if there really was a deliberate attempt to slow down mail by USPS or whether it was a conscious cost cutting method to cut down the billions the postal service is losing each year by merely delaying some mail from 2 day deliveries to 3 day deliveries.

Exactly, run fewer (expensive and high maintenance) mail sorting machines regionally instead of one in every facility, yep it will slow down local mail by a day, but it saves a chunk of money and makes things much more efficient.

Aaron Z

 

[tallyho8]

I started a mail order business 38 years ago which I turned into an online business a little over 20 years ago. In the first 10 years I mailed about 6000 small packages and never had one lost in the mail. In the next 10 years I mailed about 12000 and had about 5 lost in the mail. In the next 10 years I mailed about 18000 and had about 20 lost. In the last 8 years I have mailed over 26000 and had about 20 total lost in the first 7 years and over 40 lost this year alone. They are mailed First Class with tracking or Priority Mail. Today I got notice that my first Priority Mail package was lost in 38 years.

With everyone having items shipped to their homes instead of traveling to stores because of the virus, all the shippers are completely swamped and unable to hire enough trained workers making losses and slow deliveries reach record highs. I just wish I had invested a lot of my savings in UPS or FEDEX stocks back in January. I would sell the stock now at more than twice what I paid for it before the bottom drops out when everyone gets the vaccine.

 

[ultrarunner]

Porch Pirates are huge here... a real problem with very low risk.

They often just follow the UPS, USPS, Amazon, Track, etc...

I have work from home neighbor averaging 5 deliveries weekdays and several on Sunday...

They went away Saturday night returning Sunday and had 4 deliveries I put in their garage

 

[goeduck]

We get probably 5 or 6 a week, way up due to COVID and buying all but groceries on line. No porch pirates here, driveway is too long and we are too remote.

Today we got a package delivered by a UPS or Fedex driver (I forget which) in a sedan. Later a box from Amazon delivered after dark. I always keep the area between the house and shop clear so that it is easier for the drivers to turn around. I think that improves my deliveries since they know they can get in and out easy, plus I keep my dogs fenced.

These days the delivery truck screens probably show my house as having a truck turn around (my adjacent 2 neighbors do not).

 

[Oaktree]

Exactly, run fewer (expensive and high maintenance) mail sorting machines regionally instead of one in every facility, yep it will slow down local mail by a day, but it saves a chunk of money and makes things much more efficient.

Actually, the USPS has used regional sorting hubs for quite some time now. All mail, even to local addresses goes to a hub about 100 mi away...the only exception is mail dropped into the "local" slot at the actual post office.
Agreed that the USPS is still very inefficient, unfortunately there isn't much that can be done within it's existing charter. Congress would need to act to allow the changes that are necessary to move forward, and that's not likely to happen anytime soon. Witness the ruckus anytime the postmaster general even suggests closing a small branch.

With everyone having items shipped to their homes instead of traveling to stores because of the virus, all the shippers are completely swamped and unable to hire enough trained workers making losses and slow deliveries reach record highs. I just wish I had invested a lot of my savings in UPS or FEDEX stocks back in January. I would sell the stock now at more than twice what I paid for it before the bottom drops out when everyone gets the vaccine.

Remains to be seen what happens once the covid situation is under control. On line shopping is here to stay, brick and mortar stores have been on the decline for years now. While Amazon, Fedex, etc. stocks may not see the same gains moving forward that they've seen this year my guess is that there won't be a collapse in their values either.

Porch Pirates are huge here... a real problem with very low risk.

Not a big problem here. Glad I don't live in the city.

 

[fried1765]

Porch Pirates are huge here... a real problem with very low risk.

They often just follow the UPS, USPS, Amazon, Track, etc...

I have work from home neighbor averaging 5 deliveries weekdays and several on Sunday...

They went away Saturday night returning Sunday and had 4 deliveries I put in their garage

East Oakland or..... East Africa?

 

[goeduck]

Another feature of Amazon that I like is that I can sign on and go to my orders and it lists all of the recent ones along with date of delivery or status of undelivered orders.

 

[JethroB]

Another feature of Amazon that I like is that I can sign on and go to my orders and it lists all of the recent ones along with date of delivery or status of undelivered orders.

Amazon really has the online order & delivery systems others should aspire to. Can create multiple shopping/wish lists also for spouse, groceries, tractor, etc. I get twice a day deliveries via Amazon vans and can follow the van on a map as it makes its way to my house.

 

[California]

Amazon really has the online order & delivery systems others should aspire to.

Yes! Bezos understands how to use latest technology in every part of his operation.

We are getting groceries delivered by Instacart. Their user interface is so slow and clunky that it isn't any different from what we had to deal with 40 years ago with remote Mainframe access - each keystroke takes several seconds to appear on the screen. That's ludicrously bad for 2020. Ebay and other giant databases had that aspect figured out 20 years ago.

 

[ultrarunner]

East Oakland or..... East Africa?

East Oakland but really a problem SF Bay Area... with so many deliveries 7 days a week there is always something left at the door.

 

[Jstpssng]

Another feature of Amazon that I like is that I can sign on and go to my orders and it lists all of the recent ones along with date of delivery or status of undelivered orders.

I can do that with my LLBean account going back ten years, and could do the same with Cabelas until recently. It's handy for things like boots, when I find a pair that I like I can go back to an old order and get the same thing again.

 

[LouNY]

I can do that with my LLBean account going back ten years, and could do the same with Cabelas until recently. It's handy for things like boots, when I find a pair that I like I can go back to an old order and get the same thing again.

Also Rock Auto

 

[Alan W.]

We use to have the same fedex driver in a fedex stepvan but now its always a different one in a small fedex van. One day we even had two different fedex deliveries from two different drivers.
UPS is always the same fella. Told him to have a merry Christmas the other day. He said that I sounded like I wouldnt see him again. When he delivered the next day I simply said see ya tomorrow.
No porch pirates here, Im usually home anyway.
Having a circle drive helps them out also.