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Comment by FireBeyond | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, last week USPS delivered $1800 of SSDs to my house. Great. Except they flagged it as "delivered, on front porch", two days prior, leading to much consternation, shoulder shrugging and the like while I attempted to find them.

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Same has happened to me twice, although I'm pretty sure the mailman is scanning items as delivered in order to make a quota and then waiting until the next day to deliver them.

This. I'm pretty sure there is a huge problem with USPS workers fraudulently scanning items as delivered (to meet Amazon's SLA) and then actually delivering them a week later. I'm surprised Amazon hasn't done anything about it yet.

Hm, now I want my order email to include a (nonce) barcode that I print out and leave on my door, and the USPS worker has to scan that before they can claim anything was delivered.

In general, USPS does have the infrastructure to do this: Managed Service Points are barcodes placed on mailboxes that can be scanned by the carrier, to establish when he/she reaches certain checkpoints.

https://about.usps.com/strategic-planning/cs02/2f3.htm

It's a more modern version of the mechanical "watchclocks" installed in buildings to ensure that guards make their appointed rounds. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guard_tour_patrol_system https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watchclock

I have no idea how regularly USPS examines or audits their MSP data.

I don't think this is related to Amazon's SLA. I had this happen to me too, but the package was marked delivered 2 days before it's expected delivery date, and was actually delivered 1 day prior. So yes, strange it's happening, but might not be related to amazon's SLA.

This would be hard to pull off long term because the scanner also logs the current GPS position.

Source: I recently had a package stolen from the usps pipeline and was told this by their investigators.

I know a couple of (rural-route) mail carriers personally.

Working for USPS is not a comfortable place to be. USPS kind of got taken over by Amazon traffic, and it's been an adjustment.

I've had LaserShip report items as delivered multiple times, only to have them actually delivered a day later.

Definitely file a complain with amazon and provide the order number. They will lay down the hammer.

So this happens to me all the time. I'm pretty sure they deliver it to my neighbors, and two days later a neighbor puts it on my porch.

This happens to me seemingly every time I order from Amazon and USPS fulfills. Either that or the mailman gets lazy and marks it undeliverable even though they have keys to my building and the mailboxes are inside. I cannot wait for Amazon to put USPS out of business.

> I cannot wait for Amazon to put USPS out of business.

Lack of competition would raise the likelihood of eventual declines in service. Better for Amazon to put pressure on UPS to do a better job of running their business than to eliminate them all together.

im surprised that in each of these cases, the same company is used to deliver the package?

why dont they send the first try with UPS, and the second with FedEx or someone else?

I don't know. That would make a lot of sense.

One time, I had a package coming via Amazon Logistics. It was marked as delivered but was not there. I asked for it to be sent via a different carrier but their customer service said they couldn't control that.

I guess nobody has built that feature yet. :(

Perhaps it is USPS that should be exposed to competition [1]. If other carriers were permitted to ship to mailboxes, I have no doubt they would provide a better service. Note I am referring to the United States Postal Service (government run), not United Parcel Service.

[1] http://fortune.com/2015/03/27/us-postal-service/

This happens to me every time a USPS package is to be delivered on a Saturday or Sunday. My local post office has "temps" delivering on the weekends and they simply just don't come. They mark it "undeliverable as addressed" and then my normal mail carrier brings it on Monday.

Amazon says there is little they can do about it, except offer me a small credit on my account and file a complaint with their folks that handle the USPS relationship.

Have had that happen a lot with USPS. When I asked the mailman about it he said "Oh yeah I don't like carrying that scanner thing around so I just scan all the packages back at the post office and then we'll deliver them in the next day or two." Sigh.

Cause he knows it's got GPS in it and tracks his every movement. This way he can make a few "pit-stops" along his normal route and relax.

For me it's usually Amazon Logistics that causes problems like that. Just had a order last night that was marked delivered with no sign of it, so it depends on where you are. Usually I get better tracking and notification from some of the others too.

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