They're far and above better than Fedex / UPS and never throw the packages over my gate into my flowerbeds.
I've had Amazon Logistics carriers: Be unable to find my door (it's a non-gated, outward facing door in a row-style townhome with street access). Leave things at an _entirely different_ residential complex, whose address matched neither my street name nor number. They've done this twice, and not even at the same wrong complex (the hint is it said "left at reception", and we don't have a reception area). Try to pressure me into letting them just leave something on the sidewalk outside a gated apartment ("would that be safe?").
I'm a Prime addict and I feel like my dealer just started cutting the supply. At least let Prime members opt-out of Amazon Logistics (hell, I'd pay extra in my annual fee to do so).
Not sure that I've ever had a package delivered by Amazon, but if I did there weren't any problems. That UPS incident is my only personal shipping issue in years.
Just like you mentioned, it was really bad at first. Packages would routinely arrive late, wrong address, etc. I live in a gated apartment complex and they would always leave the package with the leasing office instead of using the code I provided (UPS, FedEx, would always leave at my door).
Now it is indistinguishable from other carriers, in that all my packages arrive on time, at my door, without any problems.
The only thing I don't like is PrimeNow, which uses 'part time' carriers like Postmates, and they ALWAYS get confused by my apartment complex - so I stopped using it.
UberEats on the other hand can never find my house as their routing sends them down an alley that has no street numbers.
I wish I could say the same. I get calls from UPS delivery guys/gals about 30% of the time because I live in a duplex and my unit faces the alley. So they come in through the main street, can't find "Unit B" and end up calling me. I have to explain to them that they have to enter through the gate on the side.
This one time they left the package in front of the mailboxes, out in the open. When I got home, the entire box was soaking wet from the rain. Gross.
The first ones were terrible. They seemed to have no good fallback if the building's gate was locked and nobody was available to buzz them in, and stuff just got lost. They were customer focused, yes, but that just meant they shipped me free replacement stuff with free overnight non-Amazon shipping. Not the best experience overall, though, compared to getting it on the original date.
Fast forward to 2016 and they're pretty good here. Though USPS has been best for my building (and elsewhere people here are talking about USPS being the worst - again, it's a hard problem to solve for every area for everyone).
* Package marked as delivered on Saturday. Package actually delivered on Sunday.
* Package not delivered because there was no safe place to leave it (there's a sign next to the front door with instructions do leave it in the complex's leasing office across the street).
* Package delivered to my door, despite my door being behind multiple card-access doors.
* Package left at the door to the leasing office, even though the leasing office was open and the lights were on.
These have all happened in the past three months. I'm borderline ready to cancel Prime.
At least Amazon is more than willing to work with you to figure out how they can make your experience more palatable.
UPS in the USA do [2]
[1] http://www.royalmail.com/personal/uk-delivery/special-delive...
[2] https://www.ups.com/content/us/en/shipping/time/service/next...
If you can void your guarantee based on "forces outside your control" in something like shipping, where you're at the mercy of traffic, weather conditions, and human error, it's not really a guarantee.
The UK is a substantially easier country to ship in logistically than the US. I don't doubt that Royal Mail's guaranteed delivery works.
They also deliver on Sundays and they call me since my apartment building's package room is closed on Sundays.
I haven't had that near as much in town, but USPS is my absolute last choice in the space.
I complained to the postmaster multiple times. Although, as a typical gov. employee, he just laughed and said we do what we want, it is your neighborhoods problem. Eventually the whole neighborhood got together and made some changes happen. It is still not perfect, but better.
I've had a lot less issues with UPS than I've had with the Amazon delievery service.
Are you sure about that?
It sounds like you bought from an arbitrager: someone who's just a middleman, posts something for sale which they don't even have, but at a higher price than some retailer that does. Then, when you buy it, they go buy the thing (on Amazon in this case), use your address as the delivery address, and then pocket the difference. It's extremely common on Ebay and Amazon both, and many other places.