Fortunately for us, UPS delivers virtually all of our Amazon orders (2-3 a week since it is easier to use Prime than drive into town). The day that Amazon uses USPS for us is the day we cancel Prime, too.

The only worse delivery company we have dealt with is DHL, who Microsoft uses. I think it stands for (D)ump the package (H)aul tail away, and (L)ie that no one was home. On numerous occasions, DHL has left thousands of dollars worth in software at our gate which is on a busy country road.

A tip that I have found with delivery drivers is to be nice and get to know them. Smile, ask them how they are doing, offer them a bottle of water on a hot day, etc. Many will go out of their way to help a friendly face.

cheaper not easier.

My mom and sister live in a rural county with more dairy cows than humans, and its not just easier, but considerably cheaper. Not sure what its like where you live, but sometimes around here people assume 50 cents/mile total cost aka $1/mile round trip so a trip into town to a big box store isn't twenty miles away, its $20 away, round trip. Suddenly paying less to Amazon than the locals will charge AND getting it "free" in two days is looking like a great deal. When I visit I notice rural retail is rapidly dying other than convenience stores and bulk type stores.

Cheaper and easier? Your post came off as immediately combative, but when I read the rest I realized that it wasn't at all. I don't mean to chastise you, only to point out how it was perceived.

Have a nice day!

I've seen combative, and its looks a lot different than suggesting a different word and giving some back story that's shared experience for two people from cow country of course, but the city slickers in the audience would need significant background to understand. Maybe an analogy for urban people, would be imagine if the subway suddenly changed price to $20 per ride. Or adjusted for inflation of incomes and expenses in urban areas, if the subway changed to $200 per ride. Sure, its easy driving, nice scenery, no legendary California traffic jams, but its still very expensive.

Have a pleasant day

I have a driveway that is an 1/8 of a mile long that is threatened by several beaver colonies trying to flood it out. Delivery drivers are terrified of my driveway because it has a reputation of eating their trucks. One time we replaced the water line that crosses out driveway and that evening a FedEx truck drove across it and, thanks to subsidence, the wheel sunk a foot into the ground.

The driver was terrified of calling for help formally (which would have consequences) so we called the highway superintendent and she sent her husband over to our place with a floor jack and we got him out.

UPS drivers frequently put packages in plastic bags, then drive to the top of the hill hoping they can make a cell phone call about what they've done.

I'd prefer to get small things delivered by USPS because USPS can put them in my mailbox and I can get them without any problem.

That's gotta be a huge mailbox sir!

OR the post office could end its monopoly of your mailbox...

Certainly if other delivery services could use the box it would help.

I've never received a package from Amazon via anyone but UPS.

But I can definitely relate. USPS offices are usually in very unfriendly places as far as public transportation goes. Having to travel, wait on line and then carry your package home would be a deal breaker for me as well.

Curious, are there Amazon Lockers near where you live and if so, was there a reason why you chose not to use them?

[1] http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/11/america-get-ready-to...

I live in Western New York, but we are near FedEx and UPS hubs...which might account for the various delivery methods.

But It probably is location dependent, I live in more of a rural area.

Can you explain more about why you don't have postal service?

sub $100 A-frame ladder with $2.99 overnight shipping FTW.

I always get notified by the apartment building late in the day when they are either closed or I am out for dinner/errands, so I have to wait until the next day to actually get the package. It's always N+1 day shipping with this setup.

As much as it annoys me, I am not sure there's an answer. Can carriers really be expected to actually go to every door in a sprawling apartment building with all of their deliveries for the day?

- Have your packages shipped to a friends work place or somewhere with a doorman. I use Amazon Prime in the city and do just that, it's great.

- You can rent a PO box that accepts packages at many mail-services type stores. Many of them have notification services too.

- Get a business address at a co-working space, a lot of times they will accept your business mail and packages.

- If you live over or next to a business, especially a bodega, you can sometimes convince them to let you ship packages to them. Just remember to buy something each time and keep up that rapport. :)

Otherwise there's just no good solution for shipping in NYC. :(

It's actually sad that it's amazon specific. I'd love to see this rather implemented for the post services like USPS/UPS. In Germany, we have DHL Packstation and you can just have it shipped to those location and pick up your package 24/7. It started getting a bunch of locations in 2004 and nowadays they have them every ~300-500m around big towns (like Munich for instance).

[1] http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/ref=locker_hp_fd?docId...

I'm sure it works out well for DHL not only because they spend less time driving around delivering packages, but also because I now try very hard to avoid any online retailer that doesn't ship via DHL.

Any flavor of the comment "I would happily pay more than <current price> for <what I claim I want>" is always hysterical to me. This kind of statement does two things that are incredibly naive:

First it suggests that you as the consumer know at this point what you would or would not pay. You only know what that figure is when it comes time to pay. If Amazon upped the price to $99/year and switched to private carrier and gave you no choice, you might not be so happy.

Second, even if you do know 100% that you'd happily pay more, it suggests that you as one data point know more about how to price a service like Prime than the legions of pricing analysts and product managers employed at Amazon who are privy to years of customer behavior data.

There's a reason Comcast and Verizon are constantly bitched about by consumers yet continue to lead their industries in customer volume. Individual consumers are fickle but really only care about immediate cost.

There's a reason Comcast and Verizon are constantly bitched about by consumers yet continue to lead their industries in customer volume. Individual consumers are fickle but really only care about immediate cost.

We understand things through the lenses of the tools we use to measure them. When you measure only "behavior data" (code for limited quantitative snapshots of transactions at specific prices), then you only see what happens through the lens of pricing and you talk about people as sources of demand who are price sensitive or not, etc. etc. -- but you never get to the why and all you might succeed in doing is hill-climbing optimizations, at best.

Instead, what if we figured out how to measure experiences (not touch points) and what if we took that ability to actually build demonstrably better experiences?

One small example in support -- look at the volume of reviews and the impact of Yelp -- if that's not the antithesis of consumers being price sensitive, I don't know what is. For better or worse (and ignoring astroturfing), Yelp demonstrates the power of consumer experiences (and an attempt at measuring them)

Trust me, the incumbent cable and telco providers are successful not because people are price sensitive but because the market is broken -- there's no competition, in large part due to regulated/legalized monopoly (or at best oligarchy) and they fight hard to keep it. If there were competition, there'd be a different picture...

It was ordered from Costco and their service was fantastic. We had a replacement within a few days. The problem was UPS. After that incident, every single package had to not only be signed for, but actually have a person present to receive the package. I'm not sure if this was retribution on behalf of the delivery person, who probably got into some kind of trouble, but it is what it is. It is very difficult for us to get packages at home now.

I love prime, but it would be fantastic if I had the option to choose a shipper, even if I had to pay a couple dollars extra. USPS is actually much better about leaving packages, which are by far usually under $20 and small.

I'm in a suburb and whether it's UPS, FedEx or USPS, my item is always left on my porch unless signature requirements were specified. In the nine years I've lived here, packages have never been stolen. I, however, would prefer if Amazon shipped via USPS. My mail is delivered, very consistently, between noon and 1:00 PM. For UPS, however, I am almost always the last delivery, which is at 7:00 PM and sometimes later.

I also found it interesting that this person received so many credits for screwed up shipping. I would expect a company like Amazon would have analytics in place to monitor the frequency of these problems and intelligently pick the best shipper. Reading the comments and the problems that others have had with FedEx and UPS makes me wonder if the issue isn't so much USPS vs. FedEx vs. UPS, but instead the location being shipped to isn't served very well by any of them and USPS was picked because they have more pick-up locations conveniently located. Getting the "slip" in my area from UPS means driving about 20 miles to stand in line versus the USPS, where it's only 2 miles. But that's just a guess.

At my last office I would fail to get large/heavy FedEx deliveries. It would say delivery attempted, but nobody came. I'd get the package typically a day or two later. I assume it was just one really lazy driver.

I think the real problem is delivering millions of packages to people all across the country is a tough problem and there are bound to be weird little edge cases that only affect a few people.

I figure your local people are the determining factor since consistency seems not to be a corporate function for any of them.

1) mixing up Air and FedEx Ground will get you yelled at

2) we were getting parts and cables shipped overnight

Um, what? That sounds like a WHOLE lot of pissed off holiday shoppers.

I think in general, the moment you talk about NYC boroughs, logistics are a totally different ball game compared to say suburban New Jersey but I am not defending USPS with this though. All I am saying is that Amazon Prime already runs with very thin margins and adding the luxury of being able to select multiple mail carriers for a region is probably not viable for amazon. Just my 2 cents.

Our Post Office has gotten a little better in the last year about delivering packages. Although they still sometimes try the wrong buzzer.

One thing, with your postal slip you can schedule to have it redelivered through the USPS website. I have had good success with this.

https://redelivery.usps.com/redelivery/

Fortunately very few of our Amazon deliveries are USPS, most of them are UPS.

And then puts the key in someone else's mailbox. So you have to wait for someone to check their mail and then hope they're nice enough to notice the package that arrived was not for them.

UPS, FedEx, etc, are allowed (if the resident signs a waiver) to leave packages with building management in their package room, after which point the night doorperson will email you when your package is ready to be picked up.

I will choose non-USPS every single time I can.

There's no accountability in these post offices for how they deal with their customers.

I'm glad almost all of my Prime deliveries are via UPS or FedEx. Occasionally they go through USPS or through them via FedEx SmartPost and those are the only ones that ever have problems.

My post office in South Carolina is pretty crap too. If the carrier calls out sick, nobody delivers the mail that day. Every once in a while there will be several days of this and then my mailbox is stuffed with all the mail I should have received. Or something arrives 6 months after it was sent.

In Columbia and/or Charleston, I have never missed mail on a delivery day because the carrier was sick.

I have, however, had them not deliver the slip for a signature-required package, then try to blame it on me. (I still try to figure out how that one is my fault...)

My only complaint with amazon using usps for the last-mile delivery (fedex smart-post, whatever ups's equivalent is) is that being just outside a good-sized city, fedex/ups will get it to their facility in a day or two, and then the post office will take another full week to move the package 5 miles.

I'm excited when I see my Prime shipment is via USPS. I know my mail shows up everyday around 4PM during the week and around 2PM on Saturday. My postal carrier is also nice enough to put the packages under the bench on my porch when I'm not home.

Of course, the standard disclaimer of plural of anecdote is not data applies.

Even if Amazon's worried about letting the user choose what shipping option they want, they should show the shipping method at checkout as a read-only field, so that I know whether to ship a particular package to home or work.

I also sell products on Amazon using their Fulfillment services, and the majority of shipments go out on UPS as well. I only ever see USPS shipments if the receiver is close to the Illinois warehouse.

EDIT: The real takeaway is that the article implies that USPS is Amazon's exclusive shipping carrier for Prime shipments, when in reality it varies based on geograpy, shipping speed and other factors. However, I would say that UPS delivers most shipments.

When I lived in a condo, some carriers would leave packages by the door and some would just leave slips. For a long time UPS would only leave a note, then I'd have to go the next day to pick it up from the distribution center. Eventually I got them to start leaving packages though. Sometimes USPS would leave a note and sometimes they'd just leave the package, depending on the phases of the moon or whatever. But I don't get notes anymore at all at the house.

"The Postal Service receives no tax dollars for operating expenses, and relies on the sale of postage, products and services to fund its operations." [1]

[1] http://www.carper.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/postal-reform-...

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/16/us/politics/postal-service...

"theoretically profitable" is not the same as "profitable"

"a congressional mandate to prefund retirement health care benefits"

I'm not saying that's a bad idea in isolation. However if you're trying to make a political point that your enemy is a failure, merely force your enemy to do something sensible that no one else is forced to do, then when that destroys them, you can blame them for it, or something like that.

That was just round one. Here's round two of how to destroy the USPS, done in two simple quotes from the same story:

"In addition, it would give access to another $10 billion loan backed up by Postal Service property, which would have to be sold a decade later to pay off that loan."

"And individual Democrats and Republicans are united in their effort to prevent their own neighborhood post office or postal plant from closing."

Ta da! We require you to take out a loan, which you need because we forbid you from managing your own business, furthermore we also specifically forbid you to repay the loan. I'm sure nothing bad could happen in that situation LOL. I give 100% odds that this scheme will hit the fan as "proof of usps and bureaucrat mismanagement" when it is actually 100% the fault of congress meddling, of which at about 50% are trying to manufacture a political point to fit a predetermined agenda.

The problem with meaningless sloganeering is even if a slogan is generally correct, there will of course be outliers in opposition. This seems to be the case with the USPS. It would seem that blind faith based belief is so weak, the only way to enforce conformity is to intentionally sabotage a minor outlier.

The TLDR is they're being set up. (Edited to add, its the old game of take away authority needed to succeed, while leaving behind the responsibility of resulting failure. For a .gov, the USPS is actually pretty well managed, which is why its being targetted).

They're being set up the same way that Social Security has been set up to go bankrupt, Medicare has been set up to go bankrupt, Obamacare has been set up to crash and burn, the Community Reinvestment Act was set up to cause a housing bubble, government backed student loans were set up to cause hyper-inflation of education costs...

You see a pattern?

They're being set up because they are part of a system that has failure baked in from the beginning. Not failing is the odd surprise when it comes to government control of large complex business entities -- and even then the question of whether or not some apparent success is actually failure depends upon how closely you look at how much it cost to prevent catastrophic collapse (ie, the military).

(edited to add: this almost solely happens around christmas rush time, another reason why I really don't care as long as it gets here before the 24th)

I subscribe to prime because on long term average its way faster than supersaver so I didn't get the guy in trouble, besides he's kinda my lifeline and pissing him off over nothing would be a dumb idea.

Last mile delivery seems to be a natural inherent monopoly, whats keeping the competitors alive is the extreme variability in station-station shipping where competition can actually exist (like milwaukee to chicago, not house to house)

My understanding is its embarrassingly profitable for a .gov organization, until politicans play "hollywood accounting" games to make it look unprofitable for obvious political spin reasons. So that's how it remains in business for decades despite being reported continuously as a disaster.

The main problem is some long story about political polarization, which supposedly is always wrong. However, if the USPS workers were "correctly" polarized like the teachers union, they wouldn't be punished with hollywood accounting. It explains a lot about their retirement fund vs the local school districts retirement funding level, or even state gov retirement funding levels. The story is not just accounting corruption for political reasons, but WHY those political reasons exist vs other .gov groups in much worse conditions.

I'm sure NYC is a big market for Amazon and no matter what the root cause is of the problem you are talking about, I'm sure it's one worth solving for them. Have you emailed Jeff B. about this? From the below Business Week article, it sounds like he pays attention...

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-10-10/jeff-bezos-a...

I actually appreciated the honesty, but I hope they fired the driver.

When I was a boy in a small town most goods were available in local stores. Local dealers maintained inventory. I could handle and inspect goods before buying them.

Some items were not available locally. I would call long-distance, order a part, give an address and a credit card number (or mail a check) and wait a week - what could be easier?

Today we order stuff on the Internet.

But is that better for the end-user? Although focused on delivery problems, many of these posts would suggest that it is not. And we haven't yet broached the subjects of expected vs received product, returns, overcharges, identity theft, etc.

I once ordered a hand plane on Amazon. I was planning on going to home depot (about 20 minutes away) but Amazon had same day delivery for $3 extra (prime). Easy choice, it was 10am, and by the time I get home i'd have the tool to continue work on my project. The website said delivery would be at or before 8pm. It ended up showing up at my door at midnight.

On one side, its incredible that at 10am I made an order, and about 14 hours later I had the order... on the other hand I probably would have just picked up a similar item (granted worse quality) at the store had I known it would be late.

Routine non-deliveries that they'd report as delivered, only to have it randomly show up 1-2 days later. Customer service was pretty bad too.

So while I've been home all day, I get an email (usually around 6pm) claiming no one was in when they attempted the delivery.

This is frustrating when it happens once, but it has now become a regular occurrence and complaints just end in a free month of Prime being added to my account (had 4 extensions this year so far).

Four years later I found myself eligible for the free trial and have given Prime another shot, so far so good with 3 out of 3 orders arriving next day via Royal Mail.

"Some of the drivers decide they don't have time, or it's near the end of their shift, and log deliveries as no one home" - yes that is truly annoying and verging on fraudulent behaviour.

Also not everyone can afford a building with a doorman. But good for you.

On the surface, it sounds like it would make sense for Amazon to let you choose your carrier for some additional cost.

But that sort of active, involved, optimizing customer is probably where Amazon takes the biggest loss on Prime.

Bezos has probably done the math on the value of the goodwill of those customers.

The USPS guy would regularly heave a package over a fence onto a stone patio (fragile packages be damned). Or lasership (a last mile carrier) would never actually deliver on time despite marking it in their tracking system as delivered (yet they would magically show up the next day claiming that it must have accidentally been delivered to a neighbor, though none ever claimed they did).

I would gladly pay a premium to choose delivery companies.

Nah, we have exactly the same problem here in Germany. I think that this will be one of the biggest challenges for Amazon in the coming years and can imagine them building their own delivery service for that reason.

How many people reside in areas where they go around on foot vs by jeep?

Also:

> doesn't bode a single issue.

Should probably be "doesn't pose a single issue". Bode means:

indicate by signs; "These signs bode bad news"

Cities have a _lot_ of people, last I checked.

Sure, we know that, but that wasn't the question I asked, which probably requires some more detailed knowledge of the USPS to answer. I'm sure there are others like him, though, but to really reason about it you'd have to take all the numbers into account.