And since Amazon is incredibly customer-focused, I have an easier time believing the positive anecdotes.

It's still a pretty hard problem to solve, though. My experience is that it's taken Amazon about 3 years to figure out how to do their own deliveries in LA.

The first ones were terrible. They seemed to have no good fallback if the building's gate was locked and nobody was available to buzz them in, and stuff just got lost. They were customer focused, yes, but that just meant they shipped me free replacement stuff with free overnight non-Amazon shipping. Not the best experience overall, though, compared to getting it on the original date.

Fast forward to 2016 and they're pretty good here. Though USPS has been best for my building (and elsewhere people here are talking about USPS being the worst - again, it's a hard problem to solve for every area for everyone).

Why do you assume people are lying, just because other people have different experiences than them? It is possible for both to be true. You sound like a marketers dream.

I've had nothing but problems with them:

* Package marked as delivered on Saturday. Package actually delivered on Sunday.

* Package not delivered because there was no safe place to leave it (there's a sign next to the front door with instructions do leave it in the complex's leasing office across the street).

* Package delivered to my door, despite my door being behind multiple card-access doors.

* Package left at the door to the leasing office, even though the leasing office was open and the lights were on.

These have all happened in the past three months. I'm borderline ready to cancel Prime.

Each of these will get you an extra month of Prime if you complain to Amazon.

Great, except what if I ordered something for a specific date because, you know, I needed it for that specific date? An extra month of Prime isn't going to help me there.

Then enjoy the fact that literally no mailing provider actually guarantees delivery date.

At least Amazon is more than willing to work with you to figure out how they can make your experience more palatable.

Royal Mail offer a guaranteed next day delivery service [1]

UPS in the USA do [2]

[1] http://www.royalmail.com/personal/uk-delivery/special-delive...

[2] https://www.ups.com/content/us/en/shipping/time/service/next...

"The guarantee does not apply when late delivery results ... from events beyond our control ... or the exercise of any lien in accordance with our Terms and Conditions of Carriage."

If you can void your guarantee based on "forces outside your control" in something like shipping, where you're at the mercy of traffic, weather conditions, and human error, it's not really a guarantee.

The UK is a substantially easier country to ship in logistically than the US. I don't doubt that Royal Mail's guaranteed delivery works.

Much like a cable company giving you a month of HBO when you complain, I fail to see how giving me more of an unreliable service will fix the broken elements of that service.

I'm in the exact same boat my prime membership is due next month... May cancel

Apparently that customer focus hasn't translated into competence in running a residential package delivery service.

At least they tend to go good for it when they screw up, without much pushback, in my experience.

I've only had positive experiences. I accidentally screwed up the numbers for the address for a package. UPS and USPS showed up at the address and just returned the package. The Amazon Courier called me to check to see what the real address was.