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Comment by mistermann | Hacker News Reader

Id very much like to know why they don't send a text+email prior to a physical delivery so I can confirm whether I will be home to take delivery and potentially offer a reroute address or simply say do not attempt, rather than the current approach of making three unsuccessful attempts.

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My old FedEx guy used to do this. It was great. Then they took away their phones as a cost-saving measure... Now I never order anything to ship via FedEx. Hope they're saving lots of money.

I recently consulted with a logistics company. Turns out reroutes and missed orders are expensive. Really expensive for the company. Since the company also used owner drivers, the cost of the reroutes are put on the drivers themselves. Naturally, the incentive is not to reroute.

Actually, after working with them for a bit, I am a lot more sympathetic to posties who just leave stuff at the door.

You can register your address at ups.com and have them reroute or hold it before the first attempt.

... for $5 a pop.

You can "Hold for Will Call" (Request packages to be held for pickup at a UPS facility) for free -- but the usefulness of that will depend on the hours and location of your local UPS facility.

You can also sign for the package online or provide the driver with "leave with..." instructions.

At least for FedEx, rerouting individual packages costs money but vacation holds are free.

Since I've never encountered a day where I'm expecting two packages to be delivered by my driver and I'll somehow be around to receive one but not the other, I've never seen much reason to go with the non-free option.

If you have the my UPS app they will send you a push notification to your phone. It is possible to reroute it with the app, but I've never needed to; since the UPS driver will most likely just leave it.

In my experience, only freight companies call ahead.

I'm working on this exact issue with a delivery company currently. The biggest question they have is "would you pay for it?". Would you pay extra to receive a message to advise of delivery time, and would you pay extra to have that delivery delivered at another time or elsewhere?

Whilst missed deliveries are costly they obviously don't feel that is justification enough to develop a better solution.

My own personal opinion is no, I wouldn't pay for this service. However, maybe the costs can be driven down by simplifying the solution. Instead of 'deliver wherever the customer wants,' only present the customer three options: 'Receive at home,' 'Receive at work,' 'Don't deliver, I'm out of town'. This solution perhaps reduces the complexity in customizing delivery location (fewer possibilities), pushes down delivery costs (fewer missed drop-offs), and increases customer satisfaction (receive package with less hassle).

Some of the consumer delivery firms that Amazon use in the UK have started texting the night before (or early on the day) with the option to either delay delivery or to deliver to alternative -- but the alternate delivery address must be in the same postcode (between 1 and ~20 houses) so no re-routing is required.

That's an excellent point - surely missing a delivery offsets the benefits of a LOT of no-left-turning.

I imagine it'd depend on the density of deliveries. Once the truck is loaded and navigating a town, the marginal cost of a re-delivery is probably negligible compared to the logistical problem of recomputing optimalish routes and attendant schedules on the fly.

if you are in a low crime area, they should be dropping it off whether your are home or not like they always did for me (fedex, ups and usps).

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