I hate courier companies and their lack of logic.

I have a typical work schedule: Monday to Friday, mostly from 9h to 18h.
They have their typical delivery schedules: Monday to Friday, from 9h to 17h.
This means that, when I order stuff online, I can never be home to get one of their deliveries. Every time I need to call them, explain the situation, and get my package held up at their facility so I can go pick it up. If I'm lucky, I can do that from 8h to 20h, Monday to Friday.

The thing is, half the time when I call, they sound surprised that I have no one at home to receive their goodies. I'm sorry, but I live alone, there's no one here when I'm out. Even if I had a girlfriend living here, odds are that she would be working a similar schedule to mine and wouldn't be available either. This isn't the 50's anymore, with a housewife taking care of chores and shopping during daytime.

I could stay at home to answer the door if I had a rough idea of when they'd be dropping by. With the advanced logistics and tracking possible in 2013, they could at least say if the delivery would be in the morning or the afternoon. In that case, I could skip a half-day of work and take care of that, but I can't. I need to stay home ALL day if I want to handle this properly. An alternative, possible with modern technology, would be to send me a text message an hour or two before the approximate visit time. That way would allow be to leave work, get a box, then head back. Of course, none of this is offered at this time.

One thing that infuriates me even more is the pick-up locations: all the courier companies have exactly one spot each where I can go claim my box. That's at their respective warehouses, all located near the airport in an industrial zone, at least 20-30 minutes from here by car when accounting for the local traffic. None of them have a single convenient downtown location, which I could easily hit on my way to or from work. None of them have a spot easily reachable by public transit either. It always has to be done by car.

Screw you UPS, Purolator, DHL and FedEx. I know that I'm technically not your customer, it's whoever sent the package. Still, screw you for your lack of decent options.

Oh, and UPS? The staff at your pick-up location all look like they're ready to jump down a bridge. Acknowledging me with a polite "hello" would be a great start.

Like many of the neater Amazon things, this is US-only. In fact, this is the first time I read on this... and it sounds really convenient. This is what I'd expect to find downtown, which I could easily access at my own convenience..

Coincidentally, I placed an order with Amazon this weekend. Got an e-mail yesterday: "Thanks for ordering with us, this completes your order. Here is your UPS tracking number..."

... F---!

They used to send everything through Canada Post (think USPS), but they switched away from that some time back.

We're often some months / years behind the US for several things while being perfectly in sync, you'd be surprised sometimes. For example, if canadian Netflix could have the wide range of it's streaming US branch that'd be good. But I digress...

PLOT TWIST! There IS a God!!

I came home tonight and saw the all too familiar "hey, we missed you" paper left by the UPS delivery man. However, instead of having a checkmark on it saying they'd try again tomorrow, there was a large sticker explaining that my box was left at a local convenience store for me to pick up within the next seven days. That store is open from like 8am to 10pm all week long, is less than 10 minutes of walking distance from home, and I actually walk by it twice a day! Jackpot! I have no idea why they're doing it for this specific package, or if this is a brand new option, but I'm totally going to go there tomorrow and ask.

Edited by Dr. Cossack on October 8, 2013 at 22:53:50

I feel the need to revisit this, if only to rant. For the context, I live in an apartment building, with a locked door at the entrance. If you don't have a key, you need to call to be let in.

To be fair, a few things have improved since my initial post. UPS always delivers to local stores now (the location changes from time to time). DHL now has a downtown location with nice customer service instead of their random industrial zone front. Canada Post installed a large box for deliveries inside my building; they can conveniently leave me a key so I can get my package from there while leaving the key inside for the next person. It works nicely.

Of course, the main problem is that most places don't use Canada Post, they use private couriers, and those still have a lack of common sense. Many smaller operations have popped up with the rise of online shopping, too, and sometimes it's... bad.

Cue phone call earlier today, presented here paraphrased and shortened.

Delivery Guy (DG): Hello sir, I have a package for you!
Me: Sorry, I'm not home, I'm at work.
DG: Um, well, can you open the door? If you can't, I need to send this back.
Me: ... I'm at work, I can't open the door. Don't you have a local drop point or something?
DG: No, if I can't deliver this we'll ship it back.
Me: Well, I can't open the door remotely, so we've got a problem.
DG: There isn't anyone else home who can open the door?
Me: My cat's there, but he's not able to open that door yet.
DG: Haha! So, what do I do?
Me: ... Can you redirect the package at my work place?
DG: Is it close by?
Me: No, other side of town.
DG: Sorry, I can't.
Me: Well, I'm out of options.
DG: I can try ringing your neighbors to see if someone will let me in, then I'll leave it on your doorstep, otherwise I need to ship it back.
Me: You can try that, because I'm really out of options!

He called back 5 minutes later, someone had apparently let him in to drop it off. I'll see when I'm home if that really happened...


But, seriously? You need to do the delivery or the package is getting back to the sender? No multiple delivery attempts, no redirecting to another address, not even a drop point in a dodgy industrial zone, NOTHING?! Isn't it a large percentage of people, if not the majority, who are away from home during daytime on a Monday to Friday schedule?! And whoever I speak to nearly always seem surprised at this! How is that even possible!?

In America we have the opposite problem. Companies REFUSE to actually hand you your package or even ring your doorbell at all - even though in some cases this woulde.mean that you're required to throw it away (because it has touched the porch where the dirty person will walk). There are "delivery instructions", which are sometimes blatantly ignored. One company even illegally demands people to "own a phone number", otherwise you are not even allowed to type in the instructions at all! On Amazon you can select some "alternate delivery location"... and then you have to travel there, which may be impossible because they stupidly give you a "limited time frame", so if you have to evacuate the bus or get ignored or can't find enough currency to get on it, then it will be still physically impossible to pick it up. On one occasion I had to order something with the address of a nearby small business and then sit outside all day to wait for the truck to wave crazily at him at the small business! Because some companies will not simply ring your doorbell like a human. Once even a food order from a restaurant, who also blatantly lied about the order being "free", but after the several hours that are necessary to make any food delivery things work and actually see the prices of items (be ause of course it's "free only if the sandwich is X price", but then there's only like 2 sandwiches for that price on the whole menu as usual), and then stand in front of the door and be abused for two straight hours before giving up that they are never coming. Then at 11am the next day when leaving I find this ripped up bag of RESTAURANT FOOD just sitting there on the doorstep!! And never even replied to my email. So... stealing currency is an extremely common thing for American companies to do, and will do it 10x as often if you are poor because of fraudulent ads and illegal demands to own phone numbers and such. But even to simply ring a doorbell like a human is pretend-difficult for them to. Instead of the simple checkbox of which one is better since people who personally own the house or live by themself in a neighborhood where no one will steal it of course will prefer the drop off without getting up in most cases.