UPS doesn't like delivering to your house

[Dark Jaguar]

http://consumerist.com/2015/02/03/ups-ha...-delivery/

They're basically just flat out saying that it's too expensive to deliver individual packages to homes, so they're going to start charging more. This may lead to a push by all your favorite online retailers to ship packages to lock boxes located "nearby" where you live. Essentially, the milk man is dead again.

Except, it isn't. We still have USPS, and this is exactly why we need that service. This is exactly what happens when mail delivery is profit driven instead of mandate driven, and it's why the USPS needs to stick around, at least until we get teleportation technology.

[Weltall]

Where I live, UPS often just leaves packages with the Postal Service to deliver to individual residences.

[A Black Falcon]

... If UPS is just leaving things with the USPS, why use UPS at all?

[Weltall]

Beats me.

The problem here is that our local post office is terrible. I almost was evicted from my apartment in 2013 because I had two paychecks never get delivered to me. And, when our communal mailbox gets knocked over (about once a year) it always takes months to get it restored. And they refuse to deliver mail to us while we wait.

That's not to say that I don't appreciate how useful and important the USPS is in general, but boy does our local branch suck.

[Dark Jaguar]

Wow, that's awful. How the heck does your communal mailbox keep getting knocked over? Around here, most apartment chains seem to keep that in a room near the front office. Does your's keep it like right by the road, near a sharp turn that idiots never seem to slow down for?

Heck, the idea that UPS just drops things off at USPS is also hard to wrap my brain around. Sheesh, that makes UPS seem even worse than usual.

[Weltall]

Does your's keep it like right by the road

Yup

near a sharp turn that idiots never seem to slow down for?

Double yup. And they refuse to move it anywhere else because they would have to pay like $100 to dig a hole and fill it with concrete. They would rather pay $1300 (their quote) about once a year to replace the thing. Like I said, they're awful here. I don't even like going to the office and dealing with them because they're unfriendly and don't care. I've had multiple conversations with the postmaster about it (and years of working service jobs means that it takes an awful lot to get me to complain to somebody's boss). Nothing happens. So, if I order anything that is important or fragile, I go with FedEx if it's an option. They still deliver everything to the door.

[Dark Jaguar]

I lived in a neighborhood with a sharp turn like that once. The poor people that lived there seemed to need to fix their fence about once every two months or so. It was nuts. They eventually were forced to add in a giant reflective sign for that fence that said "Smart people slow down here!". Things seemed to work out better from then on.