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Comment by flavor8 | Hacker News Reader

They seem to be dinosaurs. If the UPS website is any indication, they're deeply dysfunctional. Mind you, they're both worlds above USPS.

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I adore USPS. They are by far the most reliable carrier for last-mile delivery, at least in my city. And they have an added bonus that they can leave smaller packages in my locked mailbox. UPS isn't too bad, to be fair. But FedEx, good riddance. Usually takes two attempts for them to figure out how to get something on my front doorstep.

My experience is the opposite; I always get fedex and ups packages on time, but my local usps branch frequently delivers late and often claims they attempted to deliver a package when I was home and nobody knocked or rang the doorbell.

USPS won't attempt last mile delivery for me, requiring me to drive into town to pick up packages. The other two will deliver to my door.

Post office staff here are surly. UPS and Fedex drivers are bright and friendly.

Obviously it varies by location.

Same here. Rural area. Our mail carriers are contractors nowadays and even getting a properly addressed standard size envelope in my mailbox reliably is near impossible for them.

The primary function of USPS, as far as I can tell, is to deliver spam. For the privilege of occasionally getting useful mail or a package, I have to subsidize USPS by maintaining a box in my yard for them to fill with that spam.

It amazes me that the environmental activists haven’t taken this up as an issue yet. The amount of spam I receive is enormous and there’s no way out.

Fwiw, junk mail isn't taxpayer subsidized, they pay a different rate. It's actually a profit center for USPS.

I have to subsidize them by maintaining the box so they can save labor and don't have to walk up to my door to deliver spam.

The spam is a profit center for the USPS, it's what allows them to deliver other mail cheaper than UPS/FedEx.

This must vary by location. My box was purchased initially by the neighborhood but is maintained by the USPS. My mom's house gets walk-up service with mail through a slot. Aside from buying stamps or paying to send a package, I have never directly subsidized USPS infrastructure. Excluding the punitive pension requirements Congress uses to make USPS look like a money pit, they'd probably be profitable.

In more rural areas there are not neighborhood boxes like that. Each person is responsible for an individual box by the road.

As a Canadian, I greatly prefer USPS as it reaches my door by way of Canada Post.

UPS, FedEx and DHL will leave packages in the open, if they deliver them at all. I work from home, and often they would claim delivery attempt when no such attempt was made. If they do happen to attempt and a signature is required but I am out, the nearest pickup location is an hour away.

Whereas Canada Post always attempts, and if I am out they will leave the package at the nearest post office, which is a short walk away.

Maybe USPS would have more value if it weren't being run into the ground? Canada Post performs reasonably well, after all.

USPS is run like a private company while also having the burden of being a gov entity.

USPS is a public utility that unreasonable people put for profit expectations on.

USPS is a public utility that unreasonable people in Congress put ridiculous requirements on.

Canada Post is run like a private company while being a Crown Corporation. It makes a small and reasonable profit, and bizarrely, sometimes the Tories try to kill it because it profits.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_Post

A website is just a public face, it isn’t the product. Fedex has extremely sophisticated systems — they just aren’t written in React with pretty graphic design.

Have you tried, for example, the ebay/UPS integration? It's a disaster. It's expected by their customer support that while the UPS site shows the ebay credentials that they won't work for at least an hour.

Have you interacted with UPS's technical support on anything? They're a disaster, and aside from the example I mentioned have in the past waved off other bugs as being expected.

Have you tried shipping in general using UPS's website? You need to understand a lot about their system to really use it (for a simple example, the difference between "UPS account" and "having a working login under which you've provided your EIN").

Depends on the location. In NYC, USPS is far more reliable than UPS or Fedex. Just because they can actually get into buildings and leave packages inside.

Not in my part of Brooklyn. Don’t even think about getting a package shipped to your home address in my zip code.

Brooklyn tenant here, absolutely not. USPS misdelivers all the time. FedEx tends to claim to attempt to deliver a package, leaving a delivery tag on the entrance door (usually indecipherable). Their redeliveries are unreliable, and my package tends to be put in a locker outside a nearby supermarket. UPS is solid.

Funny how that is different in different parts of the city. I'm in Astoria and USPS is the only reliable carrier for my packages.

UPS is okay but they don't have the key so often can't get into the building.

Fedex just straight up lies about deliveries and often never attempts them. By far the worst carrier.

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