Last week the USPS driver was clearly running behind on his route (which is fine), but then decided to mark my package as "could not access delivery location". Which is funny because:

1. USPS is the only carrier that has direct access into my building (because that's where the mailboxes are)

2. I was home all day and there was definitely no delivery attempt

I'm guessing they have SLAs in place with Amazon that penalizes them for late delivery, so they have to resort to such tactics.

This happens to us weekly.

We simply don't get mail at least one day a week, maybe two.

Packages are marked as undeliverable. But then they show up a few days later.

I've asked around and have heard that mailmen (mailpeople?) in my city just don't finish their routes everyday.

If that's because they're understaffed or too busy due to Amazon or just lazy is up for debate.

If they have an SLA then that is straight up fraud.

The whole "come sleet or snow" saying that used to represent mail carriers really has no heat anymore.

15 minutes ago an Amazon driver left my package on the street in front of my building (in urban San Francisco) and marked it as "handed directly to a resident" in the system.

Amazon doesn't provide any discoverable way to complain about this either so I'm sure their internal metrics look great.

Amazon's ways of getting help are... confusing... at best. Recently I ordered something, shipper marked it as delivered, but it wasn't there. I dug through the orders interface, trying to find an option for "item never arrived", but could only find things about returns and exchanges, or ways to report damaged items or bad packaging. After searching the customer support site for the problem, the (non-interactive) answer was essentially "wait 48 hours because sometimes things appear later than indicated". It had already been more than that, and there were no follow-up steps beyond that.

Eventually I googled the problem, and got linked to some random non-Amazon site, that told me to go find the generic "Help" link, and dig through a couple screens until I found a link to a chat interface (basically a "nothing here is helping me" link), where a robot would help me. The process worked perfectly and easily once I got there, but there's no way I would have gotten there on my own.

I suspect some people, when confronted with a missing item, will try part of what I did and just give up and eat the cost, especially if it's a cheap item. So the internal metrics look good, but that's not telling the whole story.

I ordered an item in early Nov. It was given a tracking number and marked "on it's way" a day later. The day after its expected arrival, the status updated to "delayed" and told me come come back after Nov. 8 if it still hadn't arrived. The tracking number (Amazon) was never clickable so I couldn't get any info. The item never arrived but I also was never charged, so I just ignored it.

Black Friday, I got charged for the item but nothing else changed about my tracking. A few days later, after a similar search, I found the help link and got a refund. To this day, I have no idea whether my item ever made it out of the warehouse.

Mine's definitely been worse. I had one go missing marked "handed directly to resident" for an item on a one day only sale that Amazon said they couldn't reship. Then the next day a neighbor's package was left at our building. I walked it over. Then two days later a package for someone the next street over was left at our building. I walked that over, too.

It doesn't seem like Amazon's delivery drivers know what they're doing at all.

Ordered a gift for delivery on Friday for a party Saturday. Driver shows up, didn't look at the instructions to access my building, texted me, immediately marked the package as undeliverable, left, and now it's sitting a weird limbo. UPS and USPS (and weirdly, Amazon Fresh..) never have issues.

> Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.

I guess this isn't their motto anymore, because I've had similar experiences.

My house has the same street name and number as another house on the same block, across the town line (it’s about 15 houses away). UPS and FedEx drivers rarely mess it up, but Amazon contractors drop my package at the wrong house about 60% of the time. I always dread ordering from amazon for this reason.

That confusion seems like something that should be fixed, if only to not delay emergency services should you ever need any.

Same think with UPS, they marked a package's address as 'incorrect'. Then 3 days latter had it 'out for delivery' a second time but by the end of the day the tracking info reverted to just simply 'In Transit'.

I'm sure it's some dark pattern thing so that their employees have to mark everything as something other than late, damaged, or lost since otherwise it eats into their profits.

I've never had a problem with an Amazon delivery because I use the Amazon locker service. I'm lucky enough to have an Amazon Locker location that I pass by on my way home from work. I get my packages delivered there, and there's never been a mistake.

The only time I can't use it is if my package is too big to fit, and that's rare.

Yep, at my apartment complex USPS and Fedex will often leave my packages in the completely wrong place (by one of the many entrances, sometimes outside of it). One time while I was exercising I saw the USPS guy spend 20 minutes trying to find the entrance to the post boxes. We have an Amazon Hub and amazon deliveries never have these kinds of problem.

I had an urgent Amazon order for a replacement laptop for which delivery was promised by December 11th. They claimed it was delivered and signed for after 10PM, when the entire building was closed, unattended, and inaccessible.

That was December 11 2017. It never did arrive.

I've learned that for things I need to make sure I actually get, have it delivered to a locker in a 7/11 or similar 24/7 location.

Did you ever get a refund or at least a second replacement?