Shipping Oddities

[watermelon83]

So I got a Fed Ex tracking number for a book order placed on Amazon. I'm in northeast Indiana. Fed Ex got the package to Indy yesterday. Normally, packages in Indy make it to the local dist. hub overnight and get delivered the next day. Not this one. They shipped it into MI and handed it off to the post office extending the delivery time out to Thursday.

I've seen all the major carriers do this hand off thing before, so I'm not surprised by that. The surprising thing is that Fed Ex is making a delivery to my house today anyhow. I guess I'm just surprised that they don't have some sort of software that matches adresses and packages in their system to allow for max effeciency. Odd.

 

[ubnserved]

Bigger is better my a$$....
The bane of our modern day existence - large corporations that say they can do everything for you but slack on the details causing frustration and delay for everything.

But hey, it is still faster than the pony express.

 

[Hammy71]

If the mail is cheaper, than the post office gets it. Depends on where your item is shipped from and where it's going.

 

[Newsman]

I really wish Amazon would allow us the option to pay a *little* extra for all FedEx instead of handing off the USPS. That always adds an extra delay, usually an extra day.

 

[jmendez29]

Some packages are tracked and shipped individually. Others are tracked by the pallet load. It depends on how it was originally entered into the system. From what I gather, FedEx, UPS, USPS, and others all contract to each other nowadays.

But yeah. Frustrating to say the least. To be fair though, there have been a bunch of times I've gotten a USPS tracking number saying it will take a week or more for my package to show up and then a private carrier delivers it in four days. That's a nice surprise.

 

[Psylocide]

The FedEx to USPS handoff has always pissed me off... adds at least 2 days and good luck tracking it.

 

[Hello]

I really wish Amazon would allow us the option to pay a *little* extra for all FedEx instead of handing off the USPS. That always adds an extra delay, usually an extra day.

I had a package delivered by FedEx on a Tuesday and on the same day my "smart post" delivery arrived via USPS. The items were all from the same Amazon department and ordered at the same time. I just think Amazon loves to box crap up. I understand different items come from different warehouses, but in this case it was all within the same department.

 

[Misplaced_Canuck]

I was waiting for a cheesemaking double-boiler kettle recently... It was "out for delivery", and returned to UPS for "Exception: address not found". They had been there the day before. And they delivered it the next day. What it meant: The UPS driver missed the drop.

MC

 

[sandyeggoxj]

Ups has a butt load of seasonal employees right now for the Christmas season.

I ordered something last week. The tracking showed it as a 2-day priority package that got picked up tuesday. I called on Saturday because it hadn't been scanned since it got into the hands of usps. Then it magically got delivered on Sunday. Sunday? Huh. Oh well at least I got my package.

 

[Grannyknot]

Anything you order from now until January is almost guaranteed some sort of frustration or shipping nightmare.

 

[Airplanedoc]

So I got a Fed Ex tracking number for a book order placed on Amazon. I'm in northeast Indiana. Fed Ex got the package to Indy yesterday. Normally, packages in Indy make it to the local dist. hub overnight and get delivered the next day. Not this one. They shipped it into MI and handed it off to the post office extending the delivery time out to Thursday.

I've seen all the major carriers do this hand off thing before, so I'm not surprised by that. The surprising thing is that Fed Ex is making a delivery to my house today anyhow. I guess I'm just surprised that they don't have some sort of software that matches adresses and packages in their system to allow for max effeciency. Odd.

If I order multiple items from amazon, this is situation is almost guaranteed to happen. It always surprises me that with all the technology UPS and FedEx have, they can not determine that we have 3 packages going to this address already today, so lets deliver the 4th as well.

The thing that really pisses me off is when UPS stores my package for a extra day or so in my local office rather than deliver it to my house, and refuses to let me pick it up as well. They manage to do this even if they are already making deliveries to my place too. Recently I had to items move thru the system together all tracking entries were identical. Until they reached my local office where one was held for delivery the next day, while the other was delivered. I asked my driver about this and was told that yea she was aware there was another package, but she was not allowed to deliver it until tomorrow. She had no explanation for the stupid logic, and mentioned that it gets brought up all the time in meetings.