Shipping snafus so far

[RootAnn]

So, not a Christmas package, but something I ordered for my DH showed FedEx delivered it this morning. I've been home all morning and was near the front door at the time of the supposed delivery. FedEx guy here doesn't usually ring the doorbell, but this was a 13 lb (big) package, so we should have heard something. Proof of delivery says it was signed for (????!) by a name that isn't at all familiar (like a neighbor).

Spent 12 minutes on hold with customer service before giving up and using the 'contact us' feature on the website of the company I ordered it from. FedEx will only deal with the company that shipped it, so I'll let them look into where they misdelivered it. I have a feeling this won't be the only problem with receiving packages this holiday season.

Anyone else want to vent?

Edited November 28, 2018 by RootAnn
Autocorrect crazy

[theelfqueen]

I ordered some toilet paper from Amazon weeks ago. I ordered it with the Buy It Again button and didnt realize it wasnt prime... weeks later, no package. Finally shows that it shipped. We did not get the package. Shows delivered. No package. File a complaint with Amazon. Ughhhh ....

A neighbor shows up with package lol 

Still pissed that it was not.prime, though. And I had to go out and buy toilet paper a couple of times and while waiting. 

[gardenmom5]

Ordered stuff for dh's office from HD.   it shipped in four boxes.  the two big one were ontrac (do you know how many pages of complaints about ontrac will come up if you do an internet search?   multiple sites - just for complaints about ontrac).

they both showed as shipped on the 18th, and delivered (two different time stamps) on the 21.   um . . . . the box with the later time stamp was on my porch.   so, three days later, I call HD.  (dispute it with your credit card.  that was their advice.  amazon has better customer service when ontrac doesn't deliver.)   Monday - dispute it with my credit card. finally figure out which tracking number goes to the box that wasn't delivered.   contact ontrac to complain.  (both via email and phone) "oh, it say's it's out for delivery and that previously they attempted to deliver to the wrong address".    It did show up.  now, I have to contact my CC company - who was deciding about the dispute, they hadn't credited my account.   and I get emails from ontrac wanting verification if it actually showed up.

the other two boxes in the order?  were shipped ups and did just fine.

 

but I did learn (from reading all the nasty ontrac reviews) . . . if your amazon ontrac package misses it's deadline, amazon will often credit you a month of prime. . . . considering how often ontrac screws up, that could be a lot of free months.  but HD didn't care.

[happi duck]

Hopefully it's a quick fix!

I always deal with the place I purchased from.  They're the ones who hired the delivery company.

There's a usps hub that is a black hole.  Every time tracking shows a package there it stays there for days and eventually shows up at my door while tracking is still showing it is at that hub.  Stuff seems to get scanned in and never gets scanned again.

[Selkie]

I ordered some ramekins and an ingredient I needed for a Thanksgiving dessert from Amazon. Both items were prime and I paid for expedited shipping to make sure they arrived in time. The day before Thanksgiving, I got an email saying that there was a delay and the order wouldn't arrive for five more days. It turns out they hadn't even shipped yet. Grrr...At least I was able to cancel the order.

[scholastica]

Ds had an item marked as out for delivery, awaiting delivery scan for 6 days. I was getting ready to leave to go talk to my local post office and checked the status again. It has changed to “Available for pickup at your post office”. So I went in and picked it up. It was postage due. Our regular carrier was on vacation when it was supposed to be delivered and the sub just didn’t want to deal with it. Left it for our regular carrier, who left it for us. I knew she was on vacation because I got mail for  one of neighbors who has the same house number two streets away. Happens whenever our regular carrier is gone.

[Arcadia]

1 hour ago, texasmom33 said:

We had two packages supposedly delivered 3 days ago. Amazon wouldn’t even take the report until 36 hours post “reported deliver”. 

The delivery notifications are becoming pointless in these parts! 

 

I stay in a condo. We had a vacuum cleaner that was missing and supposedly delivered. We did get a replacement delivery from Amazon within 24 hrs probably because Amazon deliveries are a few times per day here since we are in the same day delivery zone and there are close to three hundred units in my complex. A neighbor has a package probably stolen too. 

Now we get photo proofs of delivery most of the time for Amazon deliveries unless it is through UPS which is very reliable locally. OnTrac rarely delivers now after all of us in the complex logged complaints about OnTrac being worse than FedEx. USPS is reliable here for their Sunday special delivery service but just as bad for their usual delivery service. We do get a USPS parcel van or two from Thanksgiving to New Year because the mail van can’t take the parcel load.

Edited November 28, 2018 by Arcadia
typing errors

[purpleowl]

16 minutes ago, gardenmom5 said:

if your amazon ontrac package misses it's deadline, amazon will often credit you a month of prime. . . . considering how often ontrac screws up, that could be a lot of free months.  but HD didn't care.

Amazon told DH a couple days ago that they are no longer doing the free month of prime if a package is late. Boo. They gave him a $5 credit on his account, which is great but only about half the value of a free month of prime.

Anyway, I have stories.

1. My mom's story, actually - she ordered some things (not from Amazon, can't remember where) that were being delivered via FedEx, two packages. They showed delivered, so Mom is searching anywhere they could possibly be...no packages. She starts to file a report that they must have been stolen, and then she has an idea. She goes over to the YMCA and asks if they have any packages that don't belong to anyone there. "Two packages, for Mom'sName?" Yes, they had them. My parents' address is (making up numbers) 3589 StreetName and the Y's is 3489. The carrier had written "need suite number" on the packages, as if Mom had been the one to make the mistake. *eyeroll*

2. I had an Amazon order that still had a couple of days (no-rush shipping) and suddenly they're telling me they attempted delivery but no one was home and they didn't want to leave it. Say wha? It was a $15 book of sheet music, and they leave packages on my front porch all the time. I look more closely and the attempt was made while the package was still in a city a couple of hours away. Package arrived at my house when it was supposed to. My guess is someone accidentally hit the wrong button while it was in the other city? 

3. The delivery mentioned above for DH (a gift for me) - the morning of the scheduled delivery, it was showing as "out for delivery," in our zip code. Around 6PM, they said they attempted delivery but the driver needed a code to access the building. Um, we live in a single-family detached house, which is not in a gated community. The package was delivered the next day. My guess there is that they realized they weren't going to get it delivered on time so they went ahead and scanned it as attempted delivery. DH contacted Amazon like I said above and they gave him the $5 credit but not a free month of prime.

4. Two separate deliveries where items were damaged because Amazon just tossed things into a box with zero packing material. (A couple other deliveries have also been packaged like that but the items have been fine.) I'm waiting for replacement items in both cases, and hoping they pack them a little better. 

[2ndGenHomeschooler]

I ordered from Amazon on Monday. Item in stock, we have Prime, guaranteed 2 day delivery, will be delivered by December 19th. Ummm...how does that math work? 

On a happy note, the couple who rents our basement apartment is having their baby today (homebirth). The midwives are here, then the UPS guys pulls up and puts a car seat box on their doorstep. Excellent timing! 🙂

[purpleowl]

32 minutes ago, 2ndGenHomeschooler said:

I ordered from Amazon on Monday. Item in stock, we have Prime, guaranteed 2 day delivery, will be delivered by December 19th. Ummm...how does that math work? 

Amazon's math on what "2 days" means is always a little fuzzy this time of year, but 2=23 is a bit of a stretch even for them!

[RootAnn]

And . . . the FedEx guy just delivered the missing package to my door. No doorbell, no signature. But, as I suspected, it was difficult to miss the sound of someone dropping off such a big item to my front door porch (if you are upstairs). I do wonder what the deal was with the delivery report I received this morning. Did they have the driver go back to wherever he delivered it this morning & get it back? Or was it a mistype for another package? Or something else??

The extra mail truck came by only 5 minutes before the FedEx guy & delivered one big box & one little box. He rang the doorbell like a good delivery person.

[Amy in NH]

Fed Ex got stuck in my unplowed driveway this morning.  The guy pounded on the door and asked if I had a chain to pull him out!  I told him that I'm not pulling out his big truck with my littler Honda. I did invite him in where it's warm, but he borrowed the phone in my mudroom and called for help, then went to sit out in his truck.  They took about an hour to get here, and then tore up a small section of my lawn where the truck had backed in to turn around.

The plow guy was supposed to be here last night.  We already had 6-8 inches in our driveway and it continued to snow overnight and all day.  I was shocked that he attempted and made it up my driveway to begin with!  Plow showed up just after Fed Ex left.

UPS just called to say they were on their way with nine! packages, and would I like to meet them in town if they felt my driveway was unsafe for them...

[Amy in NH]

2 hours ago, Selkie said:

I ordered some ramekins and an ingredient I needed for a Thanksgiving dessert from Amazon. Both items were prime and I paid for expedited shipping to make sure they arrived in time. The day before Thanksgiving, I got an email saying that there was a delay and the order wouldn't arrive for five more days. It turns out they hadn't even shipped yet. Grrr...At least I was able to cancel the order.

 

We discovered when doing a recent 4-H project that you can use smooth-sided coffee cups as ramekins. 

We got cups w/saucers at Ocean State for $1/set, and the apple & cheese souffles were delicious!

[Lanny]

Sorry to read about the Delivery issues.  The GOOD thing about shipping during the busy holiday season is that far fewer things are damaged. That is because the aircraft and the trucks are full and things are not bouncing around. Bottom line is this is the best time of the year to ship delicate things like computers.

[City Mouse]

Last week FedEx delivered a package. Nothing was wrong with the package, but the driver got his truck stuck in the very muddy ditch right in front of my house. It took 5 hours for a tow truck to come pull him out. we live in a very rural area. I offered to give him the number for our local tow truck, but he had to wait for the company to dispatch at specific tow company.

 

When the Fedex guy delivered yesterday, he declined to park in the ditch. He left the truck in the road.

Edited November 29, 2018 by City Mouse
Update

[TheReader]

Nothing so far this year, although we got some boxes from Target that were very smooshed; items inside were fine. 

My best stories are the time we ordered a swing set (a big, very heavy one) on Amazon. First delivery got us duplicate boxes (so instead of all the parts, we got 2 boxes of half the parts). Filed a report thing, they delivered the right parts....but delivered the whole thing all over again, so now we had two boxes of parts we didn't need. Which they wanted us to return to them. 

The return shipping label they sent was for only one of the boxes, so we had to request it twice. Finally got it sent back properly.....and then they credited us a refund for sending it back. We contacted them once to explain they'd sent a replacement, but the credit remained. 

At that point, we accepted it as futile to keep fighting, so in the end we got the swing set for free. 

My other good story was the time we ordered an iPod for youngest, as a Black Friday deal. The box shipped out, and arrived to us on time......but empty. Totally, completely empty. Shipping box, shipping paper, no item at all (or packing materials). 

It took a lot of back & forth, hassle, going up the chain of command, multiple phone calls, etc. (the store of course no longer had any in stock, and people all over the country were reporting that the store was just cancelling orders they'd made & refunding their money; said store is now closed) but eventually we reached someone high enough in the company that he was able to track down the item at a store (and ended up bumping us up to the next size iPod, actually, as that is all that was in stock), honoring the Black Friday price, and getting it sent to us in time for Christmas. 

So, happy endings both times, but hassles in between. 

[BarbecueMom]

Not a holiday delivery fail, but we recently bought a TV from Costco, and the shipping experience was the absolute worst I’ve ever had.  The company they contracted to deliver it was awful.  Gave us a daytime window on a Friday where someone had to be here, so DH took off work because we were out... never showed up.  No notice, company closed for the weekend before the end of the delivery window.  Finally got someone the next week to deliver it... one guy slides the TV out of the truck kind of clumsily and says, “You’ll have to carry this in.”  Um, what.  The delivery charge description specified that they would bring it in, and I was recovering from abdominal surgery and was not supposed to lift anything.

And naturally, it was broken when we got it opened.

Took almost two weeks and several phone calls to Costco and the delivery service to get it picked back up and refunded.

We reordered from Best Buy and their delivery, communication, and customer service was excellent.

I will never, ever order a large, non-UPS/FedEx delivery item from Costco again.  If I had known the delivery company’s name ahead of time, I wouldn't have even tried, because their entire Facebook page is full of the exact same customer complaints.

[alisoncooks]

I bought almost everything online this year. My only shipping issue has been from an eBay seller. They packaged my item in a priority box but only paid postage for 1st class. So when the postman brought it to my door, it had a postage due of $30! Um....no. I returned it to sender, and they tried again. I did get it, just a few days later.