What happened to common sense?

[Ed-Sommers]

Both FedEx, and UPS have agreements with the USPS. Fedex's program is identified with the Smartpost" label.

The UPS program is harder to identify, but I have received several packages from Amazon that were sent via UPS, but final delivery was via USPS.

Lack of knowledge does not common sense make!


Ed

[okmunky]

Originally Posted by Dav5942

Have received many packages via UPS at USPO General Delivery, has nothing to do with common sense but maybe your "common knowledge" is incorrect!

Common sense told me to call the Post Office and ask if I would get the package thru them. The answer was, "NO". UPS and USPS might cooperate where you are, but apparently not in southern Nevada.

[Glenn and Kathy]

Why not have it shipped all the way via UPS. I've seen UPS delivering right to campsites at many campgrounds. Any time you can eliminate the USPS you are ahead of the game.

Glenn

[bronk]

I totally agree with Glenn and Kathy! When we full-timed, we had many items shipped by UPS delivered directly to our site at the campground, or if the campground would accept mail; ie, packages, then UPS would deliver directly to campground office. Of course, if you are close to a UPS office (sub-station), you could retrieve items there as well.

B ronk

[dieselclacker]

Common sense left the building with courtesy,........a long time ago.

[danes-on-tour]

I can't start to tell you how relieved I am reading all (or most of) your replies.

I thought it was just me having turned into a grumpy old man moaning about how people used to behave.

I feel much better now.

[JimM68]

Originally Posted by jablair

Why do they call anything so Unique common sense? It has always been that way. Just that now it is coupled with poor education and a few tokes along the way.

Naa' that ain't it. Some of u been toking since the fifties, the ''younger crowd'' since the 70's.
Unless of course you r one of those who didn't inhale... Lol.

No, what they have now is different. It's the ''it's not my fault'' syndrome. Coupled with '' if i don't think, i can't be wrong.

[okmunky]

Originally Posted by Glenn and Kathy

Why not have it shipped all the way via UPS. I've seen UPS delivering right to campsites at many campgrounds. Any time you can eliminate the USPS you are ahead of the game.

Glenn

Glenn,

I'm parked at Lake Mead National Recreation Area, at a "drop the cash filled envelope into the slot" area. Without some sort of office, I was leary that UPS would come find me. That's why I called the Boulder City Post Office before placing the order to make sure they do General Delivery.

Even better, I got another email last night with a UPS tracking # on it, so I called them this morning, fearing they had sent it out wrong, again. They had not shipped out the second one as promised and said it would go out today via Priority Mail.

I wasn't going to name them, but now I'm so annoyed I'll suggest you only do business with Northern Arizona Wind and Sun in Flagstaff, AZ if you have plenty of time and patience. I feel like they are holding me hostage in the desert!

[Glenn and Kathy]

Not sure how it would work now, but in my former life I used to ship a couple thousand UPS packages a day. We used to get addresses like " county rd 8 N. out of Timbuktoo, Turn left after second bridge, 1st farm on right. Our address labeler would kick them out, but we'd call UPS and they said send them.

Glenn

[LadyFitz...]

Originally Posted by Glenn and Kathy

Why not have it shipped all the way via UPS. I've seen UPS delivering right to campsites at many campgrounds. Any time you can eliminate the USPS you are ahead of the game.

Glenn

To deliver a small package, UPS, etc. has to make a special trip to the destination. The USPS can do it less expensively because they already go by the destination every day, if not deliver there daily. Vendors bulk ship multiple packages via UPS, etc. to USPS stations, thus making only one stop for many packages instead of a stop for each package.

[LadyFitz...]

Originally Posted by Ed-Sommers

Both FedEx, and UPS have agreements with the USPS. Fedex's program is identified with the Smartpost" label...

DHL has a similar agreement. Personally, due to the increased delivery time, poor tracking, and the inability to do intercepts when the vendor fouls up an address, I feel there is nothing "Smart" about it. It saves the vendor money but messes up the customer.

The reasons the USPS will not take regular UPS, etc. deliveries (other than than the ones they have contracted to) are they consider the other carriers to be competition and they do not get paid to handle the package. Instead of keeping up with the times and charging for the service of receiving shipments from other carriers like private mail services do, the USPS prefers to drive business to the private mail carriers.

[EngineerMike]

Back in the early 80's I knew a gal who worked for UPS as a problem solver (not her actual designation, but her actual job). She would meet w/problem customers, problem deliverees, and occasionally take a series of packages to places drivers claimed they could not find (the last to ferret out drivers not making the grade and tune them up).
She left Chico, Ca early one morning w/a package to be delivered somewhere out in the woods sort of near Weaverville, CA (which itself is well out into the woods; I met a fellow who lived near there whose actual legal name was Haybuck and who, when I knew him, barely met the two tooth minimum). She had one other stop to make on that round along the way, which she did. So two days of travel, two stops, one overnight motel bill later- the package was delivered, driver was instructed on how he needed to try harder to get packages to their recipients, and she solved a second problem along the way. This was not her ordinary rate of problem solving, this was the extreme. But I don't recall anyone at the post office ever exhibiting that burning need to make sure customers were well served all the time. Maybe USPS needs a dose of common sense where it comes to customers, instead of a plan to reduce service (their current brain child calls for reducing the standard for 1st class mail from its already lax standard).

Historical note: over 100 years ago, Orville & Wilbur Wright, one in Dayton Ohio at their bicycle shop and the other in Kitty Hawk, NC doing flight experiments, would correspond daily. One would write & mail a first class letter on day 0; the other would receive it on day 1, read it, consider the contents, pen a reply and "Post" it same day. The reply would arrive on day 2, whereupon the first brother would read, digest, reply & Post a third letter, which would arrive on day 3. Etcetera. Routine overnight delivery for $0.01 first class postage, six overnight deliveries a week for 6 common cents (sorry couldn't resist), over a distance of 677 miles a over century ago. My how things change.

[JudyH]

We reside in a small town where the post office didn't deliver mail to houses. We have a free Post office box. But UPS and Fedex deliver to our street address. The post office refuses to acknowledge our street address as we were annexed to big suburb. So if we order something it is crap shoot for delivery. The shippers don't even know who will have it at the end, as some hand it to USPS even if it starts out at DHL Global, or Fedex.

[Ed-Sommers]

Originally Posted by okmunky

Common sense told me to call the Post Office and ask if I would get the package thru them. The answer was, "NO". UPS and USPS might cooperate where you are, but apparently not in southern Nevada.

I am a resident of Nevada, and I know for a fact that the program does, in fact, exist here, as it does all over the U.S..

You just asked the wrong person, the wrong question. That person only knows that the package was IN THE USPS system at the time they saw it, and not necessarily know of the entry point.

You still need some instruction!



for a general view on USPS:
How the U.S. Postal System works

"In 2001, the first phase of a business alliance between the USPS and FedEx Express began with the installment of FedEx drop boxes at post office facilities. With those installments, FedEx agreed to pay the USPS between $126 million and $232 million in fees over the next seven years. In the second part of the agreement, the Postal Service began paying FedEx approximately $6.3 billion over seven years for shared access to the FedEx Express national air transportation network. FedEx transports Express Mail, Priority Mail, First-Class Mail and a portion of some international mail. This enabled the USPS to improve its service without increasing its costs.

The USPS made a similar agreement with UPS Inc. in 2003 that was expanded in 2006. UPS began transporting First Class and Priority mail between 98 U.S. cities. UPS often delivers USPS mail to more distant outposts, and the USPS has delivered UPS packages to rural areas."
http://people.howstuffworks.com/usps5.htm



Ed