41–50 of 107 posts
You're blaming USPS, but the problem is that you live in an apartment building. Such is life in the city. I live in Brooklyn as well and I solve this problem by having a doorman :)
Also not everyone can afford a building with a doorman. But good for you.
You see, the problem with Amazon Prime is that you are shipping almost entirely via the USPS. I've never received a package from Amazon via anyone but UPS.
I live in Brooklyn too. Not sure if it's a regional thing but lately all packages have been delivered via USPS. I don't currently have the problem that the OP has but that's only because I live in a larger apartment building to which USPS sends a truck with all the packages for the day. But I can definitely relate. USPS offices are usually in very unfriendly places as far as public transportation goes. Having to trav…
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.
Any flavor of the comment "I would happily pay more than for " 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.
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.
Not so much an Amazon problem. As with a lot of services, we see quality private sector services (OnTrac, DHL, FedEx) being consistently better than bloated government services operating at a loss and subsidized by taxpayers. I wonder how much further the USPS would dip if Amazon stopped doing business with them.
> I would venture to say there are a lot more people like me out there. 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.
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...