In reply to BoxheadTim :
Trick question. All three will be busted, and the box will be soaked in brake fluid and coated with a layer of liquified UPS brown paint.
In reply to BoxheadTim :
Trick question. All three will be busted, and the box will be soaked in brake fluid and coated with a layer of liquified UPS brown paint.
I haven't visited this thread since page 2 or so, but I just popped in to say since then Amazon has continued to deliver everything perfectly on time, or in many cases ahead of schedule. One minor annoyance is that it's really hard to set it up so my wife doesn't know what I'm buying her. I set up a second adult household member (me) but they still sent her the delivery texts. Surprise ruined.
As to why pay for Prime or Costco, the cost of membership is utterly insignificant give the free shipping with Amazon and discounts at Costco. Heck Costco membership would be worth it just for buying gas if I never even went in the store.
Adrian_Thompson said:I haven't visited this thread since page 2 or so, but I just popped in to say since then Amazon has continued to deliver everything perfectly on time, or in many cases ahead of schedule. One minor annoyance is that it's really hard to set it up so my wife doesn't know what I'm buying her. I set up a second adult household member (me) but they still sent her the delivery texts. Surprise ruined.
As to why pay for Prime or Costco, the cost of membership is utterly insignificant give the free shipping with Amazon and discounts at Costco. Heck Costco membership would be worth it just for buying gas if I never even went in the store.
Yup. Costco pays for itself with the gas, let alone the savings in store - especially for things like TP, Paper Towels, mens dress shirts, and hard liquor if you are into that. Prime pays for itself via the "I don't have to step foot in Wal*Mart" factor and for The Grand Tour.
I'm going to pipe in here about how awful the USPS is.
On our route, the USPS is far more likely to lose something or deliver it to the wrong address than Amazon is. It usually happens on the day that my regular carrier is off. My wife has spent more time than I would trying to get a couple of packages tracked down, because they were near irreplaceable Girl Scout patches from the 1930s. We wound up getting insurance money for those.
noddaz said:So wait. You pay extra money (Amazon Prime) so you can buy things. Do you also pay a membership so you can go into a big box store?
Isn't that how some of them operate?
Knurled. said:noddaz said:So wait. You pay extra money (Amazon Prime) so you can buy things. Do you also pay a membership so you can go into a big box store?
Isn't that how some of them operate?
Yep, and last I checked Sam's Club doesn't come with video and music streaming as part of it's package price.
I don't understand why some people even care about this stuff. If you don't find value in the service provided, then don't purchase it.
Just ran into an Amazon scam. Ordered a book from Amazon, not realizing that it was actually fulfilled by "Milton Munoz". Months later - no book. So I hit the Amazon website to complain and the seller apparently has never shipped anything. He has 222 reviews, 100% negative, and it looks like he's just been collecting people's money and not shipping anything. That's a business model with a outstanding profit margin.
https://www.amazon.com/sp?seller=A1GQKYKCDP3JYX
In reply to jwagner :
They don't have a storefront any more, so it looks like Amazon finally took action. I can't believe they were able to operate for even 90 days like that!
Brett_Murphy said:I'm going to pipe in here about how awful the USPS is.
On our route, the USPS is far more likely to lose something or deliver it to the wrong address than Amazon is. It usually happens on the day that my regular carrier is off. My wife has spent more time than I would trying to get a couple of packages tracked down, because they were near irreplaceable Girl Scout patches from the 1930s. We wound up getting insurance money for those.
Seconded.
Our carrier refuses to deliver any package too large to fit in our mailbox, so for the 3+ years now we've been at our current address anything larger than a padded envelope has to be picked up at the post office. This is doubly inconvenient for me as, due to my work schedule and location, Saturday morning is the only window I have all week to make it to the post office. I've bitched about this numerous times and been told there is nothing that can be done about it because we're on a rural route and the rural carriers are independent contractors who are, apparently, accountable to no one.
Now, in the USPS's defense, the days that our regular carrier is off and it's the little Grumman truck making the rounds, presumably with a regular USPS employee at the helm, we do actually get larger packages delivered. So it's more of an issue with our particular carrier, but it's still an asinine system of their making.
Haven't read the whole diatribe, so sorry in advance if this has been mentioned:
If you buy a dozen different items on Amazon at one time and select free Prime shipping, the items will show up in a couple days, seemingly delivered in twelve different shipments. I'm bringing packages in from the front porch like three or four times a day.
My only real complaint with Amazon (the service, not the primadonna tax exempt business) is the unmitigated flood of chinesium crud on just about any reasonable search term. With few exceptions, if I want quality I don't order from Amazon. If anything, I think that this will hurt them the most from the consumer perspective. Not a lot, as most consumers seem to be replacing something before even amazon can deliver it because they found something newer and shinier to hold their attention.
The prices of most things I have looked for in the last while tend to be a little pricer on amazon than through someone else, unless you get the "straight from 1 of 50 chinese factories" version. I'm not the type of person who usually worries about a day or 2 of extra shipping time, it just doesn't matter that much in most cases, but a dollar here and there add up. As does the cost of replacing cheap, crummy stuff more frequently.
usps..... god how I loathe their very existence. Not only is it slow, but their employees literally give zero berks about anything other than when they get to go home. If this was a normal business it would have folded decades ago.
My local USPS office used to be open from 8am-6pm, which gave people plenty of time to come in after work and either drop off packages or pick up packages that need a signature. It was amazing.
Theeennn they cut their hours to 8am-430pm. Saturday is 9am-2pm, but it's beyond packed. Apparently they're open now on Sunday from 12pm-4pm?
They're also very thinly staffed, no one looks happy that I decided to use their services, and half the people in-line still haven't figured out how to just print a label from home.
Brett_Murphy said:I'm going to pipe in here about how awful the USPS is.
On our route, the USPS is far more likely to lose something or deliver it to the wrong address than Amazon is. It usually happens on the day that my regular carrier is off. My wife has spent more time than I would trying to get a couple of packages tracked down, because they were near irreplaceable Girl Scout patches from the 1930s. We wound up getting insurance money for those.
Our neighborhood has a secondary delivery service. When you get someone else's package, you deliver it to them after dinner time. It's a fairly common occurance.
My office complex has the same service.
Putting the misdelivered item back in the mailbox just makes it disappear for a few days. Even though he already has the main box open and just needs to stick it in a different hole.
Brett_Murphy said:I'm going to pipe in here about how awful the USPS is.
On our route, the USPS is far more likely to lose something or deliver it to the wrong address than Amazon is. It usually happens on the day that my regular carrier is off. My wife has spent more time than I would trying to get a couple of packages tracked down, because they were near irreplaceable Girl Scout patches from the 1930s. We wound up getting insurance money for those.
Amateurs. FedEx has lost and found the same pair of wheel bearings I ordered two weeks ago from RockAuto TWICE now. They've still not been delivered.
I hate this time of year.
I'm going to buck the trend (go figure!) and speak up in defense of the USPS, or at least the part of it that concerns the most important person in the world (that's me!).
I ship some stuff I sell on ebay via USPS and I think it's awesome that I can save money by buying and printing postage online. If I need to drop something at the local PO, the people there are always helpful, friendly, and competent. And my local route driver is super friendly, and I rarely get mis-delivered mail.
So, to those who are having a less than excellent experience with the USPS, perhaps you should look at yourself as the possible weak link. Is your house number clearly posted on your mailbox? Do you leave notes of encouragement in your mailbox addressed to your letter carrier? Do you remember to get them a gift at this time of year? Do you greet USPS employees with a smile and a friendly greeting? After all, we're all in this together!
1988RedT2 said:After all, we're all in this together!
Communist!
In reply to 1988RedT2 :
My office box is like this. Very well labeled. Pretty sure my 3 yo granddaughter could figure out what goes where because we have it labeled inside and out, just incase he gets confused after he opens the door.
My house box is pretty large with huge numbers on it much like every other box in the neighborhood. The number is also posted on the column right by the steps he climbs... to drop off the package at the wrong address. The idiot apparently can't read.
USPS is the reason that Fedex and UPS exist.
I like USPS better than UPS. FedEx is just OK. USPS is more reliable and delivers on time more often than the commercial carriers.
Appleseed said:I've never bought a thing from Amazon. I feel pretty good about that.
I tried to once. Did not work out, had no heat in my house for 2 weeks because of it.
Amazon Prime my ass
Not sure if it's a good sign that the parts I urgently need to get the S2000 of the QuickJack went from Pittsburgh to Kentucky today when they should've been delivered today.
I don't have much hope that Amazon is going to do anything if I complain about this, either.
And now things have gone from "guaranteed delivery today" to "anytime between tomorrow and Friday". So thanks to these incompetent muppets I now get to spend 1 1/2h on the road tomorrow to my nearest Napa that actually has the type of brake lubricant I need.
And I'm sure that if I complain I get another promise of a gift card credit that somehow never materializes.
I've had two more recent amazon purchases. One said guaranteed delivery by Thursday 8PM. It came Thursday around 2PM. The second said something to the effect of "out of stock, will be delivered between Sunday and Tuesday (this was probably a Monday that we ordered it). It came on Saturday, a full day early.
Still no complaints from my end.
While I buy a good bit of stuff from Amazon, I do believe that they are to be feared and reviled, simply because of their immense size and the power to influence world governments.
As a result, not everything I buy comes from Amazon. Most recently, I shunned the behemoth Amazon and ordered some computer parts from Newegg. I am paying dearly for my folly. Today I track the shipment and find that one part is due Thursday and the other one Friday. I was incredulous. Amazon would have had it here yesterday.
Amazon evil, dangerous? Probably.
Amazon circling the drain? Probably not.
I returned five hedge trimmers to the UPS store two days after Christmas. Each kid brought one in to the delight of the patrons. Amazon's remedy was to change their website so that the $90 tool with battery was now a $90 tool without battery that literally shipped the same thing as the $54 bare tool. I gave up. Six hours of talking with customer service got me a $30 credit.
I am absolutely done with them.
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