What's the deal with Fedex/UPS SmartPost/SurePost

Alright,

So I've done a lot of online ordering in the past month or so. All of my items seem to come either Fedex SmartPost or UPS SurePost. This is very annoying to me since it takes like an additional 3 days for the USPS to get off their butt and deliver it to my house. Why can't we just go back to normal FedEx/UPS delivery? Why do we need this dumb new "smart" solution? I don't get it. Any ideas as to why they do this?

 

I talked someone into ordering something off of Amazon recently. It took 10 days for the item to arrive (one business day was a holiday so that accounts for one day of delay). If you were willing to pay extra, you could order next day or two day delivery from Amazon. As I suggested the free standard delivery, Amazon did not prepare the item for shipment until two days after the order was placed. So for two days Amazon left the order sitting in their warehouse before they shipped it out. Two day delay waiting for Amazon to ship the item, then another week for delivery for a total of 10 days.

I think Amazon may be intentionally delaying shipments in order to encourage paying for expedited shipping or to drive memberships to Amazon Prime.

When I ordered books from Amazon years ago, they arrived within 5 days of ordering usually. Amazon did not leave the items sitting on the shelf for two days before shipping in order to cause delay. About 15 years ago I heard rumors that one of the shipping companies you mention would leave packages sitting in trailers for a couple of days so standard shipping would take longer in order to encourage people to pay for expedited shipping.

 

I noticed that it took ten days to get an audio book that I ordered recently from Amazon. I understand that they may be employing the strategies that billzo suggests, but it may just have the unintended consequence of driving some buyers to brick and mortar stores. Can't wait ten days and with expedited shipping charges the brick and mortar stores are competitive and the gratification is immediate. If I were Best Buy or Barnes and Noble or other such competitors, I would consider an ad campaign targeting this issue.

 

I will always prefer brick and mortar stores to online, even if it costs a little more. Last year I purchased a computer from Dell. It was a Windows 7 run, so it took longer. It took 10 days for the computer to arrive from the day I ordered it. It arrived damaged. So I had to contact Dell, spend time on the phone, get them to ship out another computer. It took another 10 days to arrive. So from the time I placed my order to the time I got a computer in good condition was 20 days.

I purchased an MP3 player at a Best Buy about 8 months ago. I took the MP3 player home, unplugged the earbud jack, plugged it back in and it wouldn't play sound. The jack was damaged. So I went back to the store and got a replacement. Total time was about 1 hour for going to the store and back both trips. I did not have to wait nearly 3 weeks to get a working product as I did when I ordered my computer.

Sometimes buying online makes sense. Sometimes it does not. If I could have gotten the computer I wanted at a store near me with Windows 7, I would have bought it in store even if it cost me a bit more. Online offers the advantage of being able to buy products you cannot find in stores. So there is more variety. But the prices are not always better online and the wait time may not be worth any savings. It depends.

 

Yes, the wide selection online is a big advantage. In fact, I went to Barnes and Noble first looking for an audio book for my long car rides (road warrior.) I found a very limited selection on topics that interested me. Online, I had a tremendous array of choices on my topic of interest. On the other hand, when my wife needed to find some books for my 12-year-old on a specific topic, the people at B&N were extremely helpful and made the task much easier and we walked out with them in hand.

I guess we have to wait for Amazon's drones to go into production and for some serious online competition to spring up.

 

I used to prefer online shopping, but lately my experiences have been I'll order something, and it comes defective, or with a problem, and I must pay return shipping for them to replace it (vs. driving back to the store). I ordered some Skullcandy Crushers off Amazon, and they came defective. I had no option but to pay $20 to send it back to the Skullcandy warranty center, and once it took them two long weeks to approve my claim, they shipped some new headphones. Those headphones are gonna take 8 DAYS to get here. So I've pretty much been without my new headphones for 3 weeks.