This is what I do, but then nobody's happy. I'm probably paying over the odds, and they're probably shipping goods in a van which is underweight. They could fit another parcel on there and make more money.

This actually formed part of my experience with UPS. When the guy said to me "How much does this TV weigh?" I had no idea: the TV was in my parents' house a few hundred miles away. And why the fuck should I have to weigh it? He wanted my parents to take a heavy TV set and put it on some scales in order to weigh it. When I told him to make it up he said "but we might get it wrong and undercharge you!" I don't care. Just charge me a penalty or something. Shipping is one of those things that I don't have any sort of inclination as to how much a competitive price is.

At this point, you're not looking for a carrier. You're looking for a moving company, someone who comes to your house, wraps up the object, transports it to the desired location and unwraps it. There are definitely companies in that business, but UPS/Fedex/et al generally aren't, because that's not what their customers want.

Amazon uses something similar to this if you order a TV from them - they have someone who actually brings the TV into your house, unwraps it, connects it and takes away the box.

No, I'm looking for a courier whose responsibility for the item extends to packing it up for me. I don't have packing materials. I could obtain them, but these guys are in the business. How many claims do they have to deal with for goods damaged in transit every year? How many could be solved if a guy with a few rolls of bubble-wrap and a pre-printed box of the right size wraps up the item for you.

Again, ad nauseum, I am not in any way suggesting that UPS or FedEx should be doing this.

Here in the US, UPS, in fact, will do this for you. (http://www.theupsstore.com/products-services/packaging-shipp...) They won't go to your location, but I think that's more because there isn't sufficient demand for that service (at a profitable level) than their not wanting to do that. You can also hire intermediary services that will show up at your house, wrap an item and ship it via a third-party carrier (transparent to you.) I've done that for large items that had to be sent via rail, like furniture.

I know you're frustrated by folks saying that you're suggesting UPS or Fedex do this, but your post title suggests that's what you're asking for, and it's also rational to view it as more likely that those carriers would create this service, or someone would create it as an overlay (MVNO-style) utilizing their existing shipping networks, than creating an entire new shipping system - the cost would just be astronomical to create a whole new transport network for this.