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Has anyone else had issues with amazon Prime deliveries?

mitchntx

Follower of Rev. Doug
Joined
Jun 11, 2006
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Location
Whitney
First Name
Mitch
Last Name
Warren
Over the last few months, I've had deliveries that have been delayed due to shipper mishandling ... specifically, USPS.
Amazon is of little help and of course, the post office is nonresponsive.

I use Prime for the free shipping (basically, prepaid and fixed amount shipping) and a designated delivery date.
Being semi-rural and an hour from the nearest "city", it makes fiscal sense to buy mail order.

So I'm torn between those benefits and the frustration with increasing delivery problems.
I'm wondering if there are others becoming more and more frustrated and thinking of blowing off amazon altogether.
 
If it comes UPS or FedX, no problems. If it comes USPS... well, let's just say they have never been known for their exceptional service. Our USPS person can barely be bothered to get out of their car EVER. They leave packages leaning up against trees or mail box poles out by the street. I've watched them literally drop packages over fences onto concrete. They NEVER get a signature when it is a signature required delivery. Deciding to use USPS was probably not one of Amazon's best moves.
 
Same experience ... I've counted four delays due to missorting since November 1st.

A package ordered on the 9th was shipped from Houston and is now in Kansas City and buried in a snow storm.
 
My Amazon shipping experiences are going the other way. I am frequently surprised by what all I can order and with Prime it is either free 1-day or free same-day delivery. I can't tell you the number of times I've ordered something at lunch while at work, and it is sitting on my porch when I get home. I do need to point out that I am right smack in the middle of the metroplex, so while I get the crappiest of crappy traffic, I also seem to get the best of the best when it comes to shipping.

And it does all depend on what is being bought. Quite a bit of my stuff is fufilled through Amazon, but there are times where it goes through Amazon's portal but is being shipped from a vendor, then shipping times are varied. But overall I have been very happy with it.
 
Mitch, are the Amazon pick up lockers an option for you? They deliver to the locker and send you the info to access it. You have to drive to the locker, but it never leaves Amazon's delivery system. We get good deliveries here and my wife works from home so theft isn't an issue, but people around us who can't be home will use the lockers.
 
Nearest locker is about an hour away.

I wondered how that might work out.
 
I've only recently had something get delayed. Pair of pants I ordered came from Pennsylvania and after getting to Dallas, they got sent to San Antonio before finally being brought back to the Dallas area to be delivered a day late. While it was in route from SA to Dallas, Amazon tracking wouldn't tell me anything until it got to Dallas.
 
FWIW, our delivery issues with USPS are exceedingly rare. They will usually come up our driveway (~100 yards) for larger packages to put them at our door. But then, most of the large packages come by UPS and FedEx who always come up the driveway.

When there is an issue, USPS is far easier. They are helpful, and 5 mins away unlike the others who are 40+ mins.

This is Spring Branch, kinda less rural than Granbury distance-from-a-big-city-wise.
 
No ongoing delays in the Temple metroplex. Sometimes UPS contracts the "last mile" shipping to USPS, and I think that hand-off isn't always smooth. I've experienced nothing so bad as to ponder wanting to give up Prime or Amazon. That's unthinkable. :eek2:
 
On the fence with package deliveries, but I don't blame Amazon for the service that USPS and UPS provide. I buy a lot of parts for both my bikes and cars trough Amazon and I'm always surprised by what I can find there. I work from home and the biggest issue I have with delivery is when they deliver off the day they said at the time I ordered. Early is just as bad as late if I'm not at the house when it arrives. Once I caught a postal carrier throwing the package from my driveway to the door of the house, but that was an outlier. I'll go out and greet the postal carrier, the UPS driver and the FedEx driver. It makes a big difference in how they handle your deliveries. If you do get a Prime delivery late, contact amazon and they will extend your Prime for a month.

BTW, the USPS is like AAFES in that it is a non-appropriated funds division of the Fed. It gets no tax dollars to support it's operations. Go online and check it out.
 
I hate Amazon with a passion. I have had a box left on the side of the road a quarter mile from my drive way. I have had countless orders cancelled due to shipper mis handling. I'm not a prime customer and should not have to be. Their search features suck if you don't know exactly what you are looking for. They are two big and not managed well. They are so big that the shipping cost is more of a bribe. It's no longer about you choosing how much you want to pay for a shipping cost that they are passing through from the shipper to you. You are paying them to move quicker. I ordered an item the other day that was delivered from Keller area. (20 miles) They said it would take 10 days for delivery. On the email for the order it asked if I was sure I did not want it faster? I could go ahead and pay for faster shipping. Just seemed a bit slimy to me.
I use jet when I can our wherever else I can find it. Unfortunately I still have to use Amazon for somethings anyways.
I hate Amazon.....
Sorry for the rant.
 
On the fence with package deliveries, but I don't blame Amazon for the service that USPS and UPS provide. I buy a lot of parts for both my bikes and cars trough Amazon and I'm always surprised by what I can find there. I work from home and the biggest issue I have with delivery is when they deliver off the day they said at the time I ordered. Early is just as bad as late if I'm not at the house when it arrives. Once I caught a postal carrier throwing the package from my driveway to the door of the house, but that was an outlier. I'll go out and greet the postal carrier, the UPS driver and the FedEx driver. It makes a big difference in how they handle your deliveries. If you do get a Prime delivery late, contact amazon and they will extend your Prime for a month.

BTW, the USPS is like AAFES in that it is a non-appropriated funds division of the Fed. It gets no tax dollars to support it's operations. Go online and check it out.

I hear you, brother ... my take is somewhat different, though. Amazon chooses the carrier ... so I do hold them culpable for carrier related delays.

As you, I strike up a conversation with the delivery guys ... offer them a cold bottle of water on those hot summer afternoons. Establishing a report does humanize what they do and made maybe it changes the attitude.

The issues outlined for me are those associated with mishandling, missorting and damaging the items while in transit ...

This specific time ...
I ordered parts on the 9th with next day delivery offered by my Amazon Prime subscription ... it's not free, I prepay for it.
Tracking shows the parts were mailed via USPS same day.
Made it to Dallas same day, then fell into a black hole.
On the 11th the parts show up in Kansas City due to "missorting" (everything is barcode scanned, how can it be missorted?)
On the 12th, the parts were delayed due to weather.

I contacted Amazon and had a chat with a CSR. Ultimately offered me 20% off the order ... a $26 order.
Maybe I'll have a cup of coffee with it.
 
Our UPS/FedX people are very responsive to personal contact and they have always done right by us. Our current USPS person is not responsive AT ALL. No one in our neighborhood or in my parent's neighborhood likes her. She exemplifies that unresponsive government agency worker apathy that people make fun of. Even when I try to engage her and be friendly, it is REAL obvious she isn't having anything to do with it. Our last USPS lady was awesome. This one... not so much. :whatever:
 
Check out USPS Informed Delivery. It's free to sign up and has eliminated all the issues I have had with getting packages from Amazon Prime.

I live in downtown Brenham in a residential house. Twice in a row I had prime packages for Sunday delivery that were marked undeliverable due to apartment/commercial building door locked and said I needed to contact the post office for delivery instructions. Lo and behold, come Monday morning, my package is sitting on my front door. I called the local postmaster to complain but was told it was a judgement call on the postal carriers part and there was nothing he could do.

I spoke with my brother-in-law who is a rural route carrier for a nearby PO. He said they are under pressure from USPS to fulfill the Amazon orders on time or else the USPS gets dinged by Amazon. There are a few exceptions to this, such as being undeliverable. He said his local postmaster will get them to game the system so they don't get dinged. Evidently if there are enough dings Amazon has the right to pull their contract and go with another carrier.

He said to sign up for informed delivery, because those packages and regular mail are handled a little differently. I will say, since i signed up, I haven't had any more delivery issues with my Prime orders. Plus, it's nice to see what mail will be in the mail box.
 
Thanks for the feedback. I did sign up for informed delivery.

Not sure how that might help mishandling packages while in transit, but it certain can't hurt.
 
Probably depends a lot on where you live.

I probably have 2 or 3 Amazon orders a week. Out of over a hundred orders last year, I only had one incident where an empty envelope was delivered because the item fell out. It was promptly replaced the next day.

I am in the middle of their shipping lanes though....that might explain my excellent results.
 
I am somewhat confused at some of the animosity towards Amazon. Not that I am any kind of Bezos fan, but the troubles I am seeing are with the shippers. Other than Amazon choosing lowest bidder, they really don't have much control over it. If you are the type that throws money at problems to solve it, I think there are still options for premium or overnight shipping in Prime.
 
A Prime membership is $125/year which, for me, is a fixed cost for shipping for the year.
They decide who their primary shipper will be.

So yes, Amazon is culpable in delivering a service I prepay for.

If I order a pizza for delivery and it arrives 4 hours late ... is Domino's culpable in selecting a delivery driver who drives a Yugo?
 
Most of the time I have no issues. Our neighborhood carrier is known among the community facebook page for delivering to the wrong address. I've had a few envelopes go to the same number the next street over, but never an Amazon package. Once delivered next door was all. My issues usually are with USPS and getting it to my local post office, such I'm doing now on a $10 electronic hobby box that was supposed to arrive on Thursday but is now rescheduled for this coming Wednesday. It happens but only occasionally.

Not sure about the hate on the search thing. It's one of the reasons I like Amazon because I can always find what I'm looking for so fast. In fact, after wandering Wal-Mart for about 10 minutes I found a battery display that was all out of the battery I needed. 30 seconds later I had an order in on my phone for said battery.
 
Amazon chooses the carrier ... so I do hold them culpable for carrier related delays.

Fair enough.


Our UPS/FedX people are very responsive to personal contact and they have always done right by us. Our current USPS person is not responsive AT ALL. Our last USPS lady was awesome. This one... not so much. :whatever:

One USPS carrier stopped long enough to say that they were measured and watched pretty closely and that if he was seen wasting time talking to me that he could get into trouble. Then again some carriers are just jerks.

Check out USPS Informed Delivery.

I've got something similar with UPS. They send me an email that they have a package to delivery, an email when it goes on the truck and an email after the guys scans it at my door. This sounds pretty good for USPS. Worth a try.
 
Informed Delivery won't help with the 'In transit' part, but it has certainly has helped with my issues on the delivery end.

But, I've also had my fair share of drunk packages with carriers other than USPS:

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Update:

The package due on Saturday the 12th has vanished.
No tracking updates since Friday the 11th

Amazon has cancelled the order and issued a refund.

I did sign up for Informed delivery and it's a nifty tool.
 
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