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Comment by petercooper | Hacker News Reader

So the real problem is that the US government can't provide a postal service that's fit for purpose despite being obliged to provide a service of uniform quality to all Americans. Switching providers might help but it seems the underlying systemic issue is with the USPS not being what it's meant to be.

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It is? Maybe in this one case.

At my last office I would fail to get large/heavy FedEx deliveries. It would say delivery attempted, but nobody came. I'd get the package typically a day or two later. I assume it was just one really lazy driver.

I think the real problem is delivering millions of packages to people all across the country is a tough problem and there are bound to be weird little edge cases that only affect a few people.

Yep, never had a problem with USPS or UPS, but I absolutely hate FedEx Air[1]. They pulled a "we don't deliver in your area from Dec 20 to Jan 2" crap and I had to drive 90 miles to pickup the package myself. I told the vendor if they shipped the next package via FedEx, that would be the last one ordered[2].

I figure your local people are the determining factor since consistency seems not to be a corporate function for any of them.

1) mixing up Air and FedEx Ground will get you yelled at

2) we were getting parts and cables shipped overnight

"we don't deliver in your area from Dec 20 to Jan 2"

Um, what? That sounds like a WHOLE lot of pissed off holiday shoppers.

It was 1996, so I think most of the folks were buying stuff on shopping trips and not over the internet.

Agreed - the real issue is that USPS is a horribly managed and run organization. Sadly since they will continue to exist in this state, I feel the only recourse is to get Amazon, which does listen to customers, to either force change upon it (like with Sunday delivery!) or allow customers to opt-out.

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