BeigeJournal

I hate attempting to receive packages at home. I do attempt to have mail order items delivered to work when I can, even though, in theory, I probably shouldn’t be burdening the loading dock with personal stuff, because at least UPS and FedEx can deliver to the loading dock at work. Home is a different story. Here is a handy tip for FedEx and UPS: I am not home during the day on weekdays. This can’t be that unusual. The delivery truck driver, for example, isn’t home then, either. He or she is at work, just like me. Sometimes, after trying and failing to deliver a package during the afternoon, the next attempt by FedEx will be after 5:30 or so, so that I will actually be at home. But sometimes not. This time, not. I could have run errands after work, like picking up another package from UPS, but I was home, hoping they’d try to deliver then like they did last time, but they didn’t. They didn’t leave a door tag this time, so I didn’t know until I thought to check their web site to see if any of the numbers on the door tag from yesterday could be used to track the package. You can, it turns out, track by door tag number. I guess I’ll have to drive out to their facility way way way out away from where I live tomorrow and see if I can pick up the package then.

I also have a package waiting at UPS. At least their facility is much closer to town. They finally allow you to have a package held by web rather than lengthy telephone process. That process always used to be much harder than necessary, as if it was very unusual for someone to work during the day on weekdays and therefore need to have the package held at the UPS facility to be picked up in person.

Why is this so hard? Are not many, perhaps a majority even, of their customers working during the day? Why can’t they do something to make package delivery or pickup easier for us? In this age of privacy destroying computer databases, don’t they know that, in years of trying, they have not once been able to deliver a package to me during the day on weekdays? Why do they keep sending the truck way out here each time to try? Why can’t I set some kind of UPS or FedEx preference that says I will not be home during “business hours” so that they can save the truck trip and notify me somehow that my package is ready for me to come pick up without the multi-day delay for failed delivery, request to hold, another failed delivery attempt because they didn’t get the message, and so on until I can finally drive way out yonder to get the thing? Why isn’t the mail order business pushing for something to make this easier? I’d order more stuff if it was easier to actually get the items. They keep trying to make it easier to ship, with partnerships with Kinko’s and Mailboxes Etc. Why not allow customers to pick up deliveries there, too, instead of at a sorting center by the airport in another county?

I actually like the USPS better than FedEx or UPS, because at least they sometimes succeed in delivering things on the first try, if they fit in the mail box, and if not, I can pick up the item in the morning, on the way to work, the next day, at a reasonably nearby location. That makes the Post Office faster than Absolutely Positively Has To Be There next day air that then takes two or three extra days after it arrives in the city to actually get.