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FedEx is destroying its own brand and maybe more

USPS works GREAT for me. Super fast and always reliable. Might be a regional problem for some. I've had no reason to ever select any other method of shipping, honestly.
 
I think the smart post is a cost saving product with bad service

That‘s my feeling exactly.

I think the popular delivery services are reshaping themselves so customers wanting pre-pandemic service levels need to pay well for it. USPS 1st class stamps just went to .58. First class delivery standard within the same town is now 3 days. Want it delivered sooner? Pay Priority pricing.
 
For me, it's UPS. For some reason, their drivers constantly drop off items at the wrong address.

Recently, I ordered something from Costco and six days later I got notice of delivery. I went outside my front door and saw nothing. I waited a day and thought it might show up. On the third day, I filed a claim with Costco and UPS. In the late afternoon a man shows up with a package that looks like it was in a war. He hands me the package and says it was left on his doorstep. He lives on a different street in a different development.

Usually, the UPS drivers leave my package at a neighbor's house or their package at my house. However, the last time it was left in a house nowhere close to mine.

In fact, in the last 6 UPS deliveries, 3 have been left at neighbors' houses.
Reminds me of the crap that UPS has pulled here for decades.

[Sorry, I feel a long story coming on...]

The worst issue occurred back in the mid-'90s when I bought a $3500 titanium bike frame and splurged on UPS two-day shipping from the U.S. Southeast to the west coast of Canada. It was shipped in a hard-sided ABS travel case that I paid $500 for.

Well, three days go by and there's no sign of the frame. I called UPS and provided the tracking number. They said there was no record of it being picked up. I called the vendor and they said that UPS picked it up on Monday (it was now Thursday).

The next day, I called UPS again and told them that the package had been picked up four days ago and suddenly, the agent says "Oh, here it is! It just showed up in our system!" Then she says to call the vendor again and ask them to start a missing package claim. I was like "What? You just said it was in your system." She said that it should have been here two days ago, so was being declared lost. So, I called the vendor again and they agreed to start a claim.

A day passes and the vendor phones me to say that they're sending another frame on their dime and they'll recoup the cost when the insurance comes through. Well, the fatal mistake was sending it by UPS again. Yup, the replacement frame didn't show up either!

So, the vendor now has two claims in progress. And, no surprise, they refuse to send another frame until the claims are resolved which leaves me about $5000 in the hole.

A week goes by and my neighbour phones me at work. He says that a UPS truck was parked in the back alley for a really long time, so he went out to have a look. Turns out that he hit the rock wall at the end of my driveway and was pulling the loose concrete and boulders out from under his truck. The driver had run into the wall at high speed, caving it all in, then pulled it all down as he backed up. :rolleyes: Anyway, my neighbour got the driver's info, so I could deal with it through house insurance.

However, this got me suspicious since it was a UPS truck. I wondered if he was delivering to my house, so I left work early.

Guess what? (Chicken butt)

As I drive down my alley, I see something in the ditch by the end of my driveway. Sure enough, it's a bike travel case covered with debris from my demolished rock wall. But, when I moved the debris away, I saw that the case had a two-foot wide crease right in the middle of it.

Long story short... he unloaded the case and leaned it against the back of the truck, then somehow forgot it was there and backed over it while trying to untangle himself from the rock wall! 😲

Long story even shorter... The driver admitted to hitting the wall and running over the package, so the vendor felt that they had a guaranteed reimbursement coming, so they shipped ANOTHER frame (this time they used FedEx... it arrived the next day in perfect shape). So, everything worked out for me (no thanks to the idiots at UPS).

But, it didn't work out that way for the vendor. They had both claims refused for... get this... "Insufficient Packaging/Insufficient Protection". Nevermind that one of the packages just plain disappeared, but the other one was driven over by the delivery truck!

... So for nearly 30 years, I refused to use UPS... until I bought something from Italian Barber, last year, and they chose UPS Ground. And the shenanigans started again!

I made my order on June 5 and, due to COVID-19 delays, the delivery was scheduled for June 16. Seemed reasonable, so I just waited for June 16 to roll around.

Then, on June 12, my Mom wanted to go grocery shopping. We got in the car and I opened the garage door. As I drove forward, I heard a thump from under the car. I stopped immediately, got out, and looked underneath... and saw a cardboard box. I fished it out and saw that it was the package from IB. I checked the tracking, but it still said "In transit".

The interesting thing is that the box was wet. It had rained on June 10, but it was clear on June 11 and 12, so I guess the box had been leaning against the garage door for 2 days. Luckily, it wasn't completely squashed. A couple of soap containers were cracked, but the soaps themselves work fine. Still, this just reinforced my refusal to use UPS anymore.

But, just to add insult to injury, four days later on June 16, the tracking switched to "Out for delivery". Then, later that day, it showed "Delivered (left on front porch)". Now, I don't know about anybody else, but nowhere in the world is a garage considered a front porch. 😵

Anyway, I know that every region is different and that UPS might be great in your area, but they suck here. Just the mention of something being shipped here by UPS makes me break out in a sweat. If any of you sends me something by UPS, I will come to your house and kick you in the shin! 😛
 
I used to be happy when I saw a retailer shipped with FedEx. Now I cringe. I recently had a package go from Jacksonville, FL to Atlanta (where I live in a suburb), where it sat for several days. Then it went to New Orléans, back to Atlanta, and finally delivered to my house about 2 weeks after leaving Jacksonville.

If I find out a retailer uses smart post, I won’t buy from them. It’s a scam of a service and packages always show up looking like they were run over, if they show up at all. The three main carriers have actually pushed me back to doing more shopping locally because they’re all terrible.
 

Rudy Vey

Shaving baby skin and turkey necks
USPS has been good for me, except the time around last Christmas....
I ship all my brushes with First Class, nationally and internationally. The US shipments in the last month or two have gone to their destinations extremely fast, surprisingly fast. Even across the nation. My international shipments to Italy or the UK have been as fast as it can be - 5-6 days.
My last experience with FEDEX international was extremely bad. My shipment from Shavemac took about 2 weeks traveling across Europe, then being here for some three weeks in clearance - FEDEX was very unhelpful!! The odd part is that my bill from FEDEX (importation fees, taxes and their share got to me a day before the shipment - let this sink in....)
For the last shipment we used a cheaper DHL version, it it made it here in about 10 days.
 

Tirvine

ancient grey sweatophile
Reminds me of the crap that UPS has pulled here for decades.

[Sorry, I feel a long story coming on...]

The worst issue occurred back in the mid-'90s when I bought a $3500 titanium bike frame and splurged on UPS two-day shipping from the U.S. Southeast to the west coast of Canada. It was shipped in a hard-sided ABS travel case that I paid $500 for.

Well, three days go by and there's no sign of the frame. I called UPS and provided the tracking number. They said there was no record of it being picked up. I called the vendor and they said that UPS picked it up on Monday (it was now Thursday).

The next day, I called UPS again and told them that the package had been picked up four days ago and suddenly, the agent says "Oh, here it is! It just showed up in our system!" Then she says to call the vendor again and ask them to start a missing package claim. I was like "What? You just said it was in your system." She said that it should have been here two days ago, so was being declared lost. So, I called the vendor again and they agreed to start a claim.

A day passes and the vendor phones me to say that they're sending another frame on their dime and they'll recoup the cost when the insurance comes through. Well, the fatal mistake was sending it by UPS again. Yup, the replacement frame didn't show up either!

So, the vendor now has two claims in progress. And, no surprise, they refuse to send another frame until the claims are resolved which leaves me about $5000 in the hole.

A week goes by and my neighbour phones me at work. He says that a UPS truck was parked in the back alley for a really long time, so he went out to have a look. Turns out that he hit the rock wall at the end of my driveway and was pulling the loose concrete and boulders out from under his truck. The driver had run into the wall at high speed, caving it all in, then pulled it all down as he backed up. :rolleyes: Anyway, my neighbour got the driver's info, so I could deal with it through house insurance.

However, this got me suspicious since it was a UPS truck. I wondered if he was delivering to my house, so I left work early.

Guess what? (Chicken butt)

As I drive down my alley, I see something in the ditch by the end of my driveway. Sure enough, it's a bike travel case covered with debris from my demolished rock wall. But, when I moved the debris away, I saw that the case had a two-foot wide crease right in the middle of it.

Long story short... he unloaded the case and leaned it against the back of the truck, then somehow forgot it was there and backed over it while trying to untangle himself from the rock wall! 😲

Long story even shorter... The driver admitted to hitting the wall and running over the package, so the vendor felt that they had a guaranteed reimbursement coming, so they shipped ANOTHER frame (this time they used FedEx... it arrived the next day in perfect shape). So, everything worked out for me (no thanks to the idiots at UPS).

But, it didn't work out that way for the vendor. They had both claims refused for... get this... "Insufficient Packaging/Insufficient Protection". Nevermind that one of the packages just plain disappeared, but the other one was driven over by the delivery truck!

... So for nearly 30 years, I refused to use UPS... until I bought something from Italian Barber, last year, and they chose UPS Ground. And the shenanigans started again!

I made my order on June 5 and, due to COVID-19 delays, the delivery was scheduled for June 16. Seemed reasonable, so I just waited for June 16 to roll around.

Then, on June 12, my Mom wanted to go grocery shopping. We got in the car and I opened the garage door. As I drove forward, I heard a thump from under the car. I stopped immediately, got out, and looked underneath... and saw a cardboard box. I fished it out and saw that it was the package from IB. I checked the tracking, but it still said "In transit".

The interesting thing is that the box was wet. It had rained on June 10, but it was clear on June 11 and 12, so I guess the box had been leaning against the garage door for 2 days. Luckily, it wasn't completely squashed. A couple of soap containers were cracked, but the soaps themselves work fine. Still, this just reinforced my refusal to use UPS anymore.

But, just to add insult to injury, four days later on June 16, the tracking switched to "Out for delivery". Then, later that day, it showed "Delivered (left on front porch)". Now, I don't know about anybody else, but nowhere in the world is a garage considered a front porch. 😵

Anyway, I know that every region is different and that UPS might be great in your area, but they suck here. Just the mention of something being shipped here by UPS makes me break out in a sweat. If any of you sends me something by UPS, I will come to your house and kick you in the shin! 😛
The saga of the bike is truly horrifying, appalling, and sickening. (BTW, my soap and blades appear to be no closer.)
 
I was about to make my own postal question but since this was started would like to share it here. I've shipped only through Canada post/USPS to buyers in the USA never had a problem always fast and reliable even recently during this Covid pandemic. Havent ordered anything from the U.S. in a few years but a month ago I ordered a vintage car part shipped USPS Priority to Canada and Ive had the package crawl and sit at various facilities in Florida for 23 days straight, never had a parcel stuck that long in one place before.
 
Reminds me of the crap that UPS has pulled here for decades.

[Sorry, I feel a long story coming on...]

The worst issue occurred back in the mid-'90s when I bought a $3500 titanium bike frame and splurged on UPS two-day shipping from the U.S. Southeast to the west coast of Canada. It was shipped in a hard-sided ABS travel case that I paid $500 for.

Well, three days go by and there's no sign of the frame. I called UPS and provided the tracking number. They said there was no record of it being picked up. I called the vendor and they said that UPS picked it up on Monday (it was now Thursday).

The next day, I called UPS again and told them that the package had been picked up four days ago and suddenly, the agent says "Oh, here it is! It just showed up in our system!" Then she says to call the vendor again and ask them to start a missing package claim. I was like "What? You just said it was in your system." She said that it should have been here two days ago, so was being declared lost. So, I called the vendor again and they agreed to start a claim.

A day passes and the vendor phones me to say that they're sending another frame on their dime and they'll recoup the cost when the insurance comes through. Well, the fatal mistake was sending it by UPS again. Yup, the replacement frame didn't show up either!

So, the vendor now has two claims in progress. And, no surprise, they refuse to send another frame until the claims are resolved which leaves me about $5000 in the hole.

A week goes by and my neighbour phones me at work. He says that a UPS truck was parked in the back alley for a really long time, so he went out to have a look. Turns out that he hit the rock wall at the end of my driveway and was pulling the loose concrete and boulders out from under his truck. The driver had run into the wall at high speed, caving it all in, then pulled it all down as he backed up. :rolleyes: Anyway, my neighbour got the driver's info, so I could deal with it through house insurance.

However, this got me suspicious since it was a UPS truck. I wondered if he was delivering to my house, so I left work early.

Guess what? (Chicken butt)

As I drive down my alley, I see something in the ditch by the end of my driveway. Sure enough, it's a bike travel case covered with debris from my demolished rock wall. But, when I moved the debris away, I saw that the case had a two-foot wide crease right in the middle of it.

Long story short... he unloaded the case and leaned it against the back of the truck, then somehow forgot it was there and backed over it while trying to untangle himself from the rock wall! 😲

Long story even shorter... The driver admitted to hitting the wall and running over the package, so the vendor felt that they had a guaranteed reimbursement coming, so they shipped ANOTHER frame (this time they used FedEx... it arrived the next day in perfect shape). So, everything worked out for me (no thanks to the idiots at UPS).

But, it didn't work out that way for the vendor. They had both claims refused for... get this... "Insufficient Packaging/Insufficient Protection". Nevermind that one of the packages just plain disappeared, but the other one was driven over by the delivery truck!

... So for nearly 30 years, I refused to use UPS... until I bought something from Italian Barber, last year, and they chose UPS Ground. And the shenanigans started again!

I made my order on June 5 and, due to COVID-19 delays, the delivery was scheduled for June 16. Seemed reasonable, so I just waited for June 16 to roll around.

Then, on June 12, my Mom wanted to go grocery shopping. We got in the car and I opened the garage door. As I drove forward, I heard a thump from under the car. I stopped immediately, got out, and looked underneath... and saw a cardboard box. I fished it out and saw that it was the package from IB. I checked the tracking, but it still said "In transit".

The interesting thing is that the box was wet. It had rained on June 10, but it was clear on June 11 and 12, so I guess the box had been leaning against the garage door for 2 days. Luckily, it wasn't completely squashed. A couple of soap containers were cracked, but the soaps themselves work fine. Still, this just reinforced my refusal to use UPS anymore.

But, just to add insult to injury, four days later on June 16, the tracking switched to "Out for delivery". Then, later that day, it showed "Delivered (left on front porch)". Now, I don't know about anybody else, but nowhere in the world is a garage considered a front porch. 😵

Anyway, I know that every region is different and that UPS might be great in your area, but they suck here. Just the mention of something being shipped here by UPS makes me break out in a sweat. If any of you sends me something by UPS, I will come to your house and kick you in the shin! 😛
Sorry to hear that. Out here it seems the UPS drivers do not need to have and reading or comprehension abilities to be hired.
 
This past month was the first time I’ve experienced any major delays with USPS. Packaged mailed on 4/28, updated that it left the post office on 5/2. Nothing until tracking updated today that its now in my region. I know mistakes happen, but over a month is pretty darn slow for a domestic delivery between two points under 900 miles apart. I feel worse for the sellers who have to deal with impatient buyers.
 

luvmysuper

My elbows leak
Staff member
UPS, USPS and DHL have provided sterling service for me.
Fedex is a frigging nightmare and I look at shipping options before buying online. If it is at all possible, I will not buy from a vendor that uses Fedex.
 
Courier companies are likely the better choice for both consumer AND retailer right now, for INTRA-country deliveries. Shipping internationally, I would STILL choose USPS or Royal Mail or whatever over the couriers, as a consumer.

UPS uses brown as their corporate colours for a reason. Easy peasy for the shipper, but a nightmare for the receiver.
 
No complaints about FedEx deliveries, but my wife swears that FedEx trucks on the highway are out to get her. She'll speed way up or slow way down to avoid being anywhere near one.
 

Whisky

ATF. I use all three.
Staff member
I think I’ve posted this before but for me at least USPS has been the best of all the carrier/mail services. We live down a driveway that is about 1/4 mile long. Due to trees and another house that shares our driveway we cannot see the mailbox from our house. USPS carrier will drive up the driveway and deliver packages to our door along with any mail we have that day. FedEx leaves packages on the ground by our mailbox (on a busy street) sun, rain, or snow. UPS will sometimes come up the driveway and sometimes leaves boxes by the mailbox. We have plenty of room to turn their delivery trucks around and I keep the trees along the drive trimmed just so they can get they can get their trucks to the house so there isn’t really any excuse not to come up the drive. Just before Christmas my neighbor pulled up to my house and in his truck he had 15 packages that had been left on the ground by our mailbox. The 2 that USPS delivered that same day were on my porch.
 
I have been waiting for a USPS order since the end of February. It made it to Ireland just to go back to the States and now it is stuck in Miami for the past 20 days. Frustrating doesn’t begin to explain my feelings at present. Three gorgeous straight razors. I just hope they don’t get lost...
 
I have been waiting for a USPS order since the end of February. It made it to Ireland just to go back to the States and now it is stuck in Miami for the past 20 days. Frustrating doesn’t begin to explain my feelings at present. Three gorgeous straight razors. I just hope they don’t get lost...

Miami must be the southern USPS black hole that Kearny, NJ is for us in the north. My wife and I dread seeing a package go into Kearny. Packages go in and take a month or more to come out.
 
No complaints about FedEx deliveries, but my wife swears that FedEx trucks on the highway are out to get her. She'll speed way up or slow way down to avoid being anywhere near one.
My wife says the same thing. She commutes 30 minutes to work each way on the highway and swears that FedEx truck drivers are the worst on the road.

Follow up to my previous post in this thread... my Simpson brush has been in transit with FedEx for 2 weeks and is still in London. The agent claims it is due to excess packages and they will try their best to get it out on the next plane. Is it me or is that a lame excuse for a shipping company?
 
Miami must be the southern USPS black hole that Kearny, NJ is for us in the north. My wife and I dread seeing a package go into Kearny. Packages go in and take a month or more to come out.
Must be. At some point the package was in NJ and then in Jamaica NY. This is the second time it is in Miami. The seller called them and asked about an update and was told that the package is on it’s way back to him. Funny enough, it also ended up in a walking distance from the seller before going to Miami again. It is all kinds of crazy...
 
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