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Comment by kenhwang | Hacker News Reader

I've rarely not had an issue with shipping from Amazon. Turns out when you randomly gig-hire a different person every day for delivery, they never learn how to get into an office/apartment building.

USPS/UPS/FedEx have been sending the same person for years. They know where the mail room is, what the building hours are, who to call for building access when codes rotate, where the elevators are, where the emergency stairs are when the elevators are down, and where the units are.

Half the time Amazon delivery just leaves the package somewhere in the lobby or not even in the building.

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They're bad at last-mile, yeah. (All the providers seem to be, for one consumer-group or another.)

But if you can cut off the last mile, Amazon's "pick-up point" service beats UPS's or FedEx's hands down.

Amazon Lockers are 24hrs; never have line-ups; there's one outside every grocery store near me; and in a pinch, my own post office can be used as one, too. (Though I don't do that, because my post office is not 24hrs, and because there's a Locker directly on the way between my home and my office.)

FedEx and UPS, meanwhile, both bounce my packages to a warehouse at the airport (40 minutes away) or in a neighbouring exurb (50 minutes away), and only after first attempting to deliver them to my house (which will never work), with no option to send them straight to the pick-up location. (Yes, I can get the packages redirected from the airport warehouse to a pick-up location once they're already at the airport warehouse, but that means an extra two days of waiting for my package, and then I have to go to a pick-up point that's 20 minutes away from me anyway. I may as well go to the airport!)

I live in an apartment building with a flaky buzzer entry system and no lobby mailroom. "Pick-up from a nearby location" is the only viable option for me. Amazon nails it. Everybody else is way behind.

Last time I used a locker for delivery, they tried to deliver twice when no lockers were available, broke the item on the second try and then gave a refund instead. I think the experience varies.

This is a very locale based phenomenon. There are more ups lockers near me than Amazon.

Only a subset of the lockers are open 24 hours. I've had nice employees let me hang out after they lock the doors so I can wait for the delivery guy who is an hour late

About half the time, the lockers near me (at a 7-eleven) are full and unavailable for delivery.

You might look into UPS' My Choice, which allows you to set a permanent preferred delivery redirection. Alas it is not available for all shipments, e.g., signature required or a shipper can tell UPS not to allow redirection. There's a charge (per delivery) unless redirected to a UPS store/access-point/center or you are a premium (paying) member. FedEx Delivery Manager is similar.

I'm not sure "you might want to look into this service that's unreliable and costs extra money" makes for a very compelling proposition.

This is exactly the kind of example that makes vertical integration so often more consumer-friendly.

Regarding UPS/FedEx I've found it varies based on where you live. I've had the same experience you describe before with long-time drivers. At my current residence it's the opposite, the drivers seem to switch out all the time. My door is hard to find so I notice when the driver changes.

Surprisingly Amazon has done the best in this situation because they incorporate a distinct step in their delivery protocol: the driver calls me if they can't find my door. I don't understand why FedEx and UPS can't do this.

As a driver I typically don't have your phone number. The times that it is on the package, I will call you if anything is out of the ordinary. I'll call you and then if that doesn't work I'll leave a voice mail and follow up with a text message in the hopes that you'll get back to me while I'm still in the area/before the re-attempts the next two delivery days. Most times I'll call another driver before I call the customer, because they'll likely have knowledge of the area. In my hub they try to keep the drivers on the same routes or, in the very least, on the same loops (groupings of routes). When you learn an area everything goes much more smoothly. In your case I would consider calling UPS and getting in contact with one of their Operations Management folks. What they can do is add a short note about the location of your door to the scanner, so that a driver who is not familiar with the area is able to find it. If you get ahold of one of the drivers they can also let the Operations workers to add that sort of note.

>I don't understand why FedEx and UPS can't do this.

Amazon can be reasonably certain that the consignee is also the person that ordered the package, and they have that person's phone number. FedEx and UPS do not have this luxury. I've called numbers for alcohol deliveries (Under no circumstances can I release the package to a neighbor or just leave it) and instead of the consignee I was put through to a winery out in California. Thankfully they got in touch with the customer and had them divert the shipment before I had to return to sender the package.

> In your case I would consider calling UPS and getting in contact with one of their Operations Management folks. What they can do is add a short note about the location of your door to the scanner, so that a driver who is not familiar with the area is able to find it. If you get ahold of one of the drivers they can also let the Operations workers to add that sort of note.

I've actually tried this! UPS operations management does apparently have the description of where my door is, because they can read it back to me when I call them, but the drivers don't seem to use it on the ground.

> As a driver I typically don't have your phone number.

This seems crazy to me! UPS and Fedex do have my phone number because I've registered for their delivery management programs. It boggles the mind that this isn't passed on to the driver.

Thanks for the inside baseball, it's fascinating to learn more about this process.

>because they can read it back to me when I call them, but the drivers don't seem to use it on the ground.

I guess the notes they can keep and the notes they put in the scanner are separate. Is the door a really really far walk or something? I can't imagine the drivers are just ignoring the note. I'm guessing that it's just not in the scanner. Really what I'd like to see is the ability for drivers to create/edit notes themselves, instead of having to rely on the operations folks to do it for them. Would be better to have all of the access codes in the scanner instead of a giant text message that we pass around

>Thanks for the inside baseball, it's fascinating to learn more about this process.

You're welcome! I still find it fascinating seeing how it all works. What happens in the hubs is basically a giant bucket sort with lots of conveyor belts and sweat

This is much worse an issue if you live in a super new apartment in the suburbs. UPS/FedEx drivers know location very well. Amazon delivery ends up in a totally different location, marking it as delivered. I dont know how Amazon makes money when 2 out of 5 deliveries to my address were being lost or mis-delivered ️

If I had to guess, it's by having typically 6-figure salary delivery drivers replaced with near minimum wage gig workers.

But yes, I've also noticed when my package ends up in a completely different building on the other side of town because of missed cardinal direction on the address. Our office manager has working relationship with the office manager on the other side of town with an address similar to ours because of how often they have to trade wrongly delivered/addressed packages/mail.

Looking at Glassdoor and a couple other Google results, the median is closer to $50k than >$100k for Fedex and UPS, as well as USPS. Though the point stands that gig workers should save money, even if they mess up fairly often.

I live in a pretty well established suburb. The first year I moved to my house, I had zero problems with Amazon deliveries, usually from FedEx. Somewhere along the way, they switched to their own drivers, and I started getting deliveries for a guy with a somewhat similar name +10 streets away (like 44th St. instead of 54th St.).

Over the span of about six months, some stuff I got included an electric lawnmower left right in front of my door, motorcycle helmet, cooking appliances, and a foot massager. Every time I called, I begged Amazon to fix this. After the third delivery, I threw my hands up and stopped calling. I figure the recipient calling to complain about missing packages was more effective than me calling to ask them to stop sending me stuff. There were a couple of more deliveries after that before they got the hint.

This probably explains why some people have a great experience and some people have a horrible experience. If you live an apartment with gated entry, you will have a bad time. If you live in a house with ample parking in front, it will go well.

It might depend on where you are. In a big building, that makes sense, since the driver probably stops by your building nearly every day. I've also had an overall great experience using UPS and FedEx at work, where it's a similar situation.

But, for home shipping, I've always lived in 2-3 flat apartment buildings, and Amazon's delivery service has been like a breath of fresh air. They always deliver to the correct location, they're usually conscientious about placing the package in an inconspicuous location if possible, and then you get a push notification on your phone. USPS does the same, but loses points for notifying us by ringing every single doorbell in the building and then walking away, typically during someone's baby's nap time.

UPS, for their part, will generally drop the package at the bottom of the steps, essentially right on the sidewalk. FedEx, not to be outdone, likes to leave it on the sidewalk in front of some random building a block down the street.

OTOH, I don't think i've ever had an amazon delivery person deliver one of my packages a couple houses down. That has happened to me a couple times with both UPS and fedex (although one must be specific with fedex when it comes to normal fedex or fedex ground).

The last time it happened it was a Christmas gift and I didn't even know about it until the person it was delivered to IM'ed my wife using one of the neighborhood contact services. Turns out the delivery company even knew they delivered it to the wrong address because they put "delivered to XYZ instead of ZYX" in the delivery notes.

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