Hacker News Reader

Comment by gt565k | Hacker News Reader

I'd have to agree with you.

I've had 2 bad experiences with Amazon orders, and USPS was to blame for both. They put the envelope/package in the wrong mailbox in the apartment complex I live in and marked it as delivered. I've received other people's mail in the past too...

Amazon's customer service has been exceptional, they send an overnight replacement with UPS and required a signature.

Recently, Amazon opened a pickup location near where I live, and I've been shipping more expensive items there. The pickup process takes less than 15 seconds. Literally, walk in, scan barcode, locker opens up, and I pickup my package.

Can't wait for Amazon to own the entire vertical and optimize the living shit out of it.

View on HN

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Hmmm this is a human problem at the end of the day. You don't get the wrong mail because of USPS policy.

When the mailperson that delivers your mail currently gets fired by USPS and gets hired by Amazon - do you think much will change in that regard??

There are policy changes around labelling, IT, or whatever that I'm sure could reduce the error rate for this. Amazon has a direct incentive to, at least for Amazon packages, solve these problems. UPS has an incentive to ignore complaints.

If that person is paid a better wage, or given better hours, or less-unreasonable targets/deadlines, then the service might change.

We are still talking about Amazon here.

USPS pays fairly well, I thought. Don't know much about working conditions though.

Yea, they're not know for their wages or working conditions, unless you're in IT ... or a robot.

Or just has these delivery issues treated more seriously. Amazon knows exactly which orders they reship and the complaint that the customer makes, they could directly track that metric against delivery drivers.

Very much so. Early on in our Prime experience about 2 years ago one of the delivery men, after dropping off the package, went back to the van, whipped it out and started peeing in the street. All while our neighbors kids were playing in the front yard. I thought twitter would be a good place to contact Amazon's support, and they didn't seem to care. That guy never delivered again, but no real response to my concerns was a bit creepy to say the least.

Otherwise packages come from all makes and models of cars over the last 6 months. Still pretty cool to get most things same day delivery cheaper than me driving to Fry's for a piece of hardware. I don't see how they make money though and compete in the long run after VC runs out.

None of that will happen, what might happen is better technology, like having to take a photo of the delivery address that gets OCRed and compared before the package is confirmed as delivered.

More likely they will go from a union job with more security to being worried about their job all the time..

Definitely. Amazon would fire them after about the second time. They have much better data and know exactly which one of their people makes a mistake.

When you give bad shipping feedback, if the same person gets bad feedback multiple times, they get retrained and then fired.

Not unless there's some strong union action going on.

It comes down to a price.

These big shipping companies started out good, but with time things slid downhill. You don't start out with the goal of providing mediocre service.

The problem is if you want top employees, you have to pay top dollar. Amazon's shipping service company will probably start out good, but it may windup in a similar place once they start trying to "optimize" their shipping service.

They will cut cost, overwork existing employees, and try to extend the reach of their service. If they don't, you will be over-paying for "Amazon" services and many will look elsewhere when it comes down to paying an extra 5% or more for better service.

On the topic of feedback: You can provide feedback to shipping companies. I called FedEx and reported their driver for dropping 2 packages in a row (and damaging the contents). He came back 2 days later with the 3rd package, apologized, and read me back my report. You just have to be proactive and communicate with them.

Exactly. I mean everyone has a horror story from UPS/USPS/FedEx, but for each of those, millions of packages get delivered every year without a single hitch. Amazon running their own service just adds another one to the list.

Personally, I stopped shopping on Amazon after I returned to the US. I realized they had become the new Wal-Mart, and I haven't shopped there since 2009.

I think Amazon will use the data. USPS operator probably fills in a paper form, it get stamps and then it get filled never to be used in any meaningful way again.

> The pickup process takes less than 15 seconds. Literally, walk in, scan barcode, locker opens up, and I pickup my package.

So they magically transport you there in a second as well?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com