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Comment by mcarrano | Hacker News Reader

I am starting to question whether my Prime subscription is worth it or not. I only have it for the 2 day shipping as I don't watch Prime Videos, listen to Prime Music, etc.

Recently, I attempted to purchase a TV from Amazon. They used a third party courier, XPO, to do a scheduled delivery.

The day before delivery, I get an email from Amazon saying things are on track. Delivery day comes and I wait, wait, wait... Lo and behold the scheduled time comes and goes. I give Amazon a call and they tell me that XPO has had issues all week and that the earliest they can get the TV to me in next week.

No thanks, cancelled the order and went to BestBuy to get the same TV. I ended up spending more time on the phone with Amazon CS than it took to buy the TV from BestBuy.

I dislike when Amazon uses USPS to deliver my packages. Usually the package will arrive in the 2 days like expected but it goes to my local USPS office which will deliver the package the next day.

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> I dislike when Amazon uses USPS to deliver my packages. Usually the package will arrive in the 2 days like expected but it goes to my local USPS office which will deliver the package the next day.

Before I moved West I lived in Harlem, and the USPS was a total sh*t show. The delivery guy for our block would routinely forge signatures to get out of delivering packages to our building, and I'd have to show up at the local post office to claim my packages. Claiming a package involved convincing the postal employee behind two inches of bullet proof shielding that a United States passport is indeed valid identification for federal purposes...

It's possible that the quality of service you get from USPS correlates to the city it's operating from. I prefer USPS in my area. Their delivery schedule is consistent. In contrast, UPS will sometimes show up in the morning or as late in the evening as 9 PM and rescheduled deliveries are too commom.

USPS will often have better access to your building and/or leave small packages in the mailbox, which I appreciate.

UPS has a habit of just leaving a "sorry I missed you" sheet at my building. Several times, I've been home the entire day the delivery happened, but they never buzzed my apartment. They just left without contacting me and saying that I wasn't home as the reason.

Best Buy will also match Amazon prices. Also they have a really nice buy online, pick up at store system. I actually do like Amazon Prime TV though.

I do too. Netflix is going to have a very, very hard time remaining #1 in the market.

http://relentless.com

Not until they have the same work on everything attitude netflix has.

Plus, Amazon Video is only in the US (and I think the UK). Amazon is pretty bad at rolling out services internationally. Here in Canada, we still can't buy MP3s from Amazon, despite the fact that we were told "soon" years ago.

I had a similarly bad experience with XPO.

I got it the right day, but.... One truck had two deliveries scheduled for the same 3 hour window. One was in San Antonio. I live in north Dallas. That's a ~280 mile drive.

I got the TV 3 hours after the window was supposed to be closed.

Complain to Amazon - if enough of us give negative feedback on companies they choose, they'll find others.

I've been noticing the same thing with their third party couriers. They get a lot of complaints from people too. I complain every time, I look through the forums and see people complaining. They are essentially these shipping companies that formed purely to undercut UPS and work with Amazon. I wouldn't even be surprised if Amazon had some type of stake in these alt couriers that are coming out of nowhere. They all have horrible reviews and nobody likes them, but apparently Amazon sees this as acceptable because they are the biggest and the best and losing a few customers probably doesn't hurt them.

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