Shipping needs to be more flexible

First world problems… While online shopping is super convenient, control of shipping is pretty bad. Several times in a row now I have not been able to change delivery times. It used to be the case that you could easily hold packages at Fedex and UPS for free. No longer, it seems.

Recently I was sent headphones with “UPS Surepost” which means “we pick the final stretch carrier for you”. That automatically means you can’t change the delivery. UPS now also charges something like $7 for the privilege of holding a package at a CVS.

Then just this week I was sent something over USPS. Two days ago I placed a vacation hold on my USPS delivery to avoid it getting delivered while I’m out, so of course today I get a message that the package is out for delivery. With my luck they’ll just dump it on my publicly accessible doorstep.

To all shipping companies out there: during the holidays customers are more likely to be out of town. Please make it easier to safely receive our purchases!

I guess it can go here since it has a venting tag and it’s shipping…

Shipping companies need to own up to their mistakes and stop falsely blaming the customer for late deliveries. Mostly it’s UPS these says. When I’m volunteering at a National Park they claim nobody was there for delivery when the address was to the Visitor Center which was open for another hour… then they change the time of the attempt to an hour later. Dudes, I saw that! :roll_eyes:

Another is the fake signature—they all do this—and claimed delivery made. But it doesn’t actually arrive till a day or two later and sometimes the signatures are too obvious, like the time it had Mary [my last name] when I’m male and single, I suppose in an attempt to make it look like the lady of the house signed but the delivery guy couldn’t read the first name correctly? I bet that was the idea.

At the National Park it was always the administrator’s signature since they know that one. Annoys the heck out of her. Last summer when chatting with the park superintendant I mentioned it. He was surprised and what do you know it stopped happening the rest of the year. He must have given them a call. Busted.

Today for the third or fourth time in the past few years UPS delayed delivery with an Amazon package due to a bad address. Seriously? You’re using that excuse when you’ve delivered dozens of other packages to that address? Must be a dumb AI that doesn’t check past history before pulling out a stock lateness excuse from the bin.

What riles me is they try to blame me. The message at Amazon says:

Your package can still arrive Monday

UPS fixed the address issue, so please check back later for more delivery info. Check and update the address info in Your Account to avoid this issue next time.

There’s nothing to fix! :anger:

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Very annoying. The “signature required” hasn’t worked in years, UPS always just leaves the expensive package sitting on my doorstep. WTH?

And just from today, someone’s birthday presents didn’t make it on the promised day. Amazon’s generous offer: “if it doesn’t arrive, you can get a refund”. Gee thanks!

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From what I’ve heard the signature is optional at the delivery person’s discretion ever since COVID-19. So they don’t even need to use that fake signature. So annoying.

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I have a family member who worked for some months at UPS within the last year. That rule has lapsed so if they lose a package from failure in fulfilling the paid signature service and the package had been fully insured, UPS is fully responsible for the package and must compensate.

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That sounds like it still leaves room for the customer to be SOL due to a fault by UPS though. Do you happen to know whether the insurance is really a requirement to get (complete?) compensation?

I was wondering the same thing a couple weeks ago when a package I had sent to a buyer was stuck unmoving for nearly a week. It seems you can still file a claim regardless.

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Not exactly. The seller still is not without responsibility here. If the vendor advertised a signature service for added peace of mind and purchase protection and did not disclose that they did not fully insure it, they would carry the full monetary responsibility and would likely lose in a PayPal and credit card dispute.

This is a gripe about Amazon.com again, the company everyone loves to hate but normally I give them slack (disclaimer: I worked as a temp in their fulfillment centers four separate years during the autumn peak, the last time in 2016).

Ordered May 8, expected delivery currently May 17 (9 days). I pay for Prime, which used to provide free 2-day shipping. Sometimes even 1-day or same-day if you live in the right place.

It took three days for the in-stock item in their El Paso fulfillment center to become “shipped”. It has sat there another three days waiting to be handed over to USPS. Things going through USPS that arrive in El Paso always get to me the next morning. (I’m not far away in New Mexico next door.)

In other words, this should have been 2-day delivery. Easily. What the heck has gone wrong at Amazon? Back when I worked there, sometimes in shipping (though mostly ICQA), this didn’t happen.

This kind of thing isn’t unusual nowadays. Why am I paying for Prime?

/end rant

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COMPLETELY agree. If they didn’t have some of the best shows, I would drop prime altogether. I get faster shipping from the USPS on eBay. I get true 2 day shipping as a Sam’s Club Plus member. I even get 2-3 day shipping from Best Buy and Target.

And then there is good ole Amazon. And it doesn’t even make sense from a cost perspective. I will order some random crap for $30 on Tuesday that it says will get here the following Wednesday–so Amazon is saying 8 days. That’s already bad enough. Then it will sit there at their warehouse until Monday night and they will 2 day it so it gets here on time.

I think they figure they have a monopoly and just aren’t even trying at this point. I use literally anything else if I absolutely can.

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For me the two day shipping mostly stayed as advertised, but I still canceled Prime when they wanted $140 to renew for a year. I’ve been Prime-free for two months! I’m a bit shocked myself. :vb-grin:

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I was struck by a thought after my last post. Remember back in the day when Netflix mailed DVDs (pre-streaming) and you paid for your chosen plan of x-number of disks “out” at a time. But if you dared to actually use some of the higher limits—like if you were binging on a TV series with a decade of seasons—they would throttle delivery. I was in SoCal and they’d literally mail from Maine or Alaska or somewhere else far away. (Note: the anger that remains from back then has kept me boycotting Netflix to this day.) I found an article, though it was from the “unlimited” era, not when they had plans for x-number “out”: (edit - changed it to a better article)

https://supreme.findlaw.com/legal-commentary/the-class-action-against-netflix-challenging-the-practice-of-throttling-under-which-not-all-customers-are-equal.html

Anyways, the thought is that maybe I got on Amazon’s persona non grata list somehow and I’m being throttled. :thinking:

Ah, of course, there’s already a megathread on Reddit:

https://www.reddit.com/r/amazonprime/comments/n1w9u2/delayed_shipping_megathread_rants_questions_etc/

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Interesting, it never occurred to me that that might happen. When would they even consider that? You think there’s an amount of items shipped above which Prime shipping starts eating into their profits?

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That has to be the case. I mean, a dozen or more of cheap items ($5-$10) shipped individually for free every month? Prime can’t cover that. And I’m in the habit of not making big orders, doing each thing as I think of it, and never doing the Prime Day option unless they offer a digital credit for it… which I haven’t seen in months. Do they still do that or have they stopped offering it to me?

Regardless, something for me to consider before renewing Prime. I don’t watch enough Prime videos for it to be worth it and I never like their offerings of free Prime books.

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Yeah, it’s not worth it regardless if I’m really getting throttled or not. If I want free shipping I’ll just wait till I can order enough at a time to get it.

Only 19 videos in the past year and I ceased listening to Prime music months ago when they decided to mix “similar” music into playlists. Like, my cat music was considered “pet music” by their standards so throwing in dog music was good, right? Freaking out my cat with doggie whimpers and howls. :anger:

It was up for renewal this month. Cancelled.

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My experience has been just the opposite - once you get the handoff routine to USPS all h*ll breaks loose and delays are inevitable. It was ALWAYS more reliable when it was UPS from Amazon to my doorstep…

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I’m not sure if it’s the same in the US, but in Canada if Amazon misses their “Guaranteed Delivery Date” you are within rights to phone in and request compensation for the inconvenience (eg. for a time-sensitive engagement).

I had computer hardware that I’ve needed by a certain date, and the times that Amazon missed the delivery dates, they either refunded the item in full (allowing me to keep the item), or provided online credit.

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Right, the way they get around that is by making sure they are up front about the fact it will take like 9 days to get there.

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Yup, and in this particular case there was date range for delivery when ordering. It’s not going to be late; the original estimate was way too far out for a Prime member without any reason for it (in stock within 2-day delivery, EASILY, if they had wanted me to get it that soon).

Ordered May 8 and this was in the email:
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Which was same as when I made the order. I’m not disputing that I’m getting the expected, just saying that their estimate turns out to be unnecessarily slow for someone paying for Prime. It “ships” from a fairly local warehouse, about a hundred miles away. USPS packages that hit El Paso, Texas, where the warehouse is located have always delivered to me the next morning. And they’re taking nine days for it.

What the heck was I subscribed to Prime for? What’s happened to Amazon?!

2015 & 2016 when I worked the Dallas/Fort Worth area fulfillment center in Haslet, Texas, and 2012 & 2014 in Fernley, Nevada (the location cited in the movie Nomadland—I was there doing CamperForce the same year as the character in the movie—different warehouse shown because the actual building was shut down in early 2015) they would put us on overtime to get Prime packages out in time to not go over the 2-days. We worked our hinies off to try to keep things from falling behind, even during the worst of the peak season after Black Friday.

/end rant again

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Ah, I see. I noticed Prime shipping dates getting quite a bit longer too over the pandemic. However, I noticed them speeding back up this year.

“Two-day shipping” usually takes less than a week here, but if stuff took more that on a regular basis I’d still say you can phone in to b*c about it as a Prime customer. :wink:

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