28 Oct
2011
28 Oct
'11
6:21 a.m.
At 06:04 AM 10/28/2011, Steven Hirsch wrote:
FedEx contracts out their ground service, AFAIK. My
experience with them as a recipient has been horrible. They left a badly damaged box
unprotected on my steps during a driving rain storm last year. The Amiga 600 survived,
the Corvus hard drive was nicely smashed and soaked. I simply could not believe anyone
would be that sloppy.
UPS has some cheap shipping methods that contract to USPS, too.
A few weeks ago I lost a package. I watched the UPS tracking number
and was puzzled to see it was set for Saturday delivery to my office.
Normally UPS doesn't do that. On Monday the UPS tracking now includes
a USPS tracking number that it said it was delivered on Saturday,
but there's no sign of it.
Saturday was a street festival in my downtown outside my office,
with hundreds of people milling about. My security camera confirms
the USPS postal carrier dropping the package outside my office
building door, two feet from the sidewalk. No one touched it
until midnight, when it was swiped by a woman walking her dog.
The postmaster said he's told the carriers not to leave packages
like this, but said it was "within the carrier's discretion."
He said he couldn't understand why the carrier did it. We talked to
the carrier, he said oh-shucks-I'm-dumb-don't-know-why, I-won't-do-it-again.
No one would take responsibility.
Fortunately, Thinkgeek simply shipped a replacement for the $50 order.
Three weeks afterwards, I visit a client's office down the block,
with the same postal delivery man, there's a USPS-delivered box
on the step outside their locked downtown office door.
More apropos the topic, within the last year I've been frustrated
by some computer rescue methods. It's nice that someone wants to send me
an old and rare computer, and I can *try* to explain proper packing
and be willing to pay for it, but it's so sad to open the box and
see chunks of old computer floating around in the packing peanuts.
This year's damaged goods include a Terak RGB monitor and a couple
mono Teraks.
On the other hand, in another rescue, the person simply dropped
everything off at the UPS packing store, handed them $350, and
those computers were wonderfully plastic-wrapped, double-boxed,
foam blocked, and packed with peanuts. Couldn't have done
better myself, and everything was delivered so cleanly the
nice new big boxes were easily reused.
- John
For those outside the US, "UPS" is a private shipping company,
"USPS" is the U.S. Postal Service.