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Comment by mindstab | Hacker News Reader

Good, because UPS needs to die. Of my last 3 orders with them:

1) was reported "left at door" of ... my apartment building? so I never saw it and I had to reorder at my cost

2) my ouya was again marked "left at door"... of my apartment building and I never saw it (seems very likely the driver just took it home). Thankfully this time amazon reissued at their cost

3) after one failed day time delivery the package was left at a nearby ups pickup place, we called to confirm it would be there on the weekend and then they called the depot and promptly sent it back to the sender...

UPS's policy of allowing abandonment of packages is not remotely safe because drivers can just steal and mark it "left at door". It doesn't look good thought when it's an apartment building and they probably didn't even get inside.

So yes, UPS needs to die because they have cost me and amazon time and money.

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Everything I order from Amazon I have delivered to work, because I never know which carrier service is going to get it, and I don't like not knowing if they're going to just dump it on my doorstep, leave it with my apartment's leasing office, take it back to some depot on the edge of town, or what.

Though it does mean I think twice about ordering things on Thursday or Friday. I once had a package shipped via Prime go missing for half a week, because I ordered it on Friday and Amazon decided to pleasantly surprise me with one-day shipping instead of two. That backfired immensely. I would have been perfectly happy with a Monday delivery.

When no one was at the office to sign on Saturday morning, the package went back to some mysterious depot and they didn't re-attempt delivery until the middle of the next week. Except they marked the tracking as "delivered" that Saturday - probably so they wouldn't get in trouble with Amazon for not meeting the two-day shipping window. I was freaking out about where the package could have gone, because if it was supposedly delivered, then where was it? Where could they have even delivered it? No one was here! You can't even get in the building on Saturday without an access card. Then suddenly the tracking re-updated on Wednesday to say it was at the depot and I got it later that day.

I wish I could remember which carrier that was now.

At least UPS is better than USPS, which will pretend to deliver the package. When you look at the tracking info, it will say "tenant not home, notice left". However, what really happened was that no notice was left. Instead, the package went directly to the post office, a grimy dimly-lit place from the 1970s which closes early and where you have to go and stand in line for 25 minutes among weird grubby people with Tourette's. Then you get snapped at by a grumpy employee who sits behind bullet-proof glass, who shuffles off (slowly) to find the package and then hands it to you through this special "airlock" where one side has to be closed in order to open the other side. And then you have to carry it home.

Funny, just this last week, Amazon's carrier either left a package for us on the sidewalk, or just didn't deliver it. They marked it as delivered, but didn't ring a bell, or leave a note, and we never saw the package. We had to get it re-ordered and it came through fine with UPS.

UPS is actually the best carrier for Amazon stuff to us, though. We've had problems with their other shippers.

Edge cases.

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