Text 13837, 75 rader
Skriven 2007-04-23 09:42:37 av Gregory Weston (200.babylon5)
     Kommentar till en text av rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated
Ärende: Re: Volume 11 - Ordered
===============================
In article <0001HW.C25224DF00271F0DF0182648@news.verizon.net>,
 Amy Guskin <aisling@fjordstone.com> wrote:

> >> On Mon, 23 Apr 2007 08:40:12 -0400, Kurt Ullman wrote
> (in article 
> <kurtullman-98B7BF.08401023042007@customer-201-125-217-207.uninet.net.mx>):
> 
> > In article <0001HW.C25219290024605EF0182648@news.verizon.net>,
> > 
> >> 
> >> Luckily Cafe Press packs these things really well, so when it's sitting 
> >> behind the bushes underneath my mailbox (why?  I don't know), at least I 
> >> know 
> >> it's protected inside that cardboard sheath.
> >       Probably because CP uses UPS or DHL instead of the US Postal 
> > Service and they can't by federal law use the mailbox.  If your enquiry 
> > was more related to behind the bushes instead of in the mailbox, I 
> > haven't a clue.. <<
> 
> I thought Cafe Press had this weird thing going on where the shipments were 
> part UPS, and the rest of the way USPS, but I could be remembering that 
> wrong.  Or maybe it was that they put UPS labels on everything, but in some 
> areas the USPS was required to deliver them anyway.  Anybody else remember 
> something about this?

There's all kinds of weird things going on in the shipping industry. 
USPS and FedEx, for example, had a resource sharing mechanism in place 
(I'm not sure if the agreement is still in effect) whereby both agencies 
would use FedEx resources for long distance transit but USPS resources 
for local delivery. It was an excellent attempt to leverage the 
strengths they each had.

I've had a couple of UPS packages ultimately delivered by USPS. I'm 
really not sure what triggered that. I know there are some places UPS is 
unable to deliver, but I'm not in such a location _and_ as far as I know 
UPS simply doesn't accept such packages.

My wife works for a company that ships a large volume of product and 
they discovered a while ago that for a particular subset of what they 
ship USPS was hugely cheaper than what they were paying UPS. UPS noticed 
the drop in volume and asked what was up and when told said: "Oh, well 
we can beat that price." The truly bizarre thing is that their plan for 
beating the USPS price was to ship via USPS to the delivery-point's UPS 
depot. They'd get lower rates because of their shipping volume and pass 
some of the savings back to my wife's company.

> Another reason I suspect the USPS is that the doorbell never rings when my 
> script books are delivered.  My UPS guy not only rings the bell every time --

> he actually has a distinctive ring!

UPS drivers are on fairly strict time schedules and ringing the bell is 
pretty much at their discretion unless they're absolutely required to 
get a signature - and even that doesn't seem to be quite enough. I 
haven't had good UPS service across 3 addresses over the past 25 years 
and go out of my way to avoid giving them any business if I have any 
alternative. The laundry list includes:

- Crushed boxes, more often than not.
- A computer that was shipped in one piece and delivered in more than 50.
- A package left without any weather cover behind the house in the 
middle of January with no delivery tag on the door. Three days later a 
neighbor said: "Did you know there's a package on your deck?"
- An expensive piece of computer equipment, signature required, left on 
a doorstep clearly visible from the road with the "this end UP" arrow 
pointing at the mall half a mile away that's the best place in the state 
to get your car stolen.
- Most recently, an expensive package needing a signature left at the 
door. Different front door than the previous one, but the delivery 
record accessible online says that it was handed to my wife. Oddly, she 
and I were out at lunch at the time.

G
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