Emmy and her partner shop online a lot, and they’re also not home much during the day. Historically this hasn’t been a problem: UPS leaves an InfoNotice on the door of their four-unit apartment building, then returns the next day and leaves the package. After a management change, the delivery policy to Emmy’s neighborhood changed, too: they would have to fetch their packages from the depot ten miles away or have all packages delivered to Emmy’s work. They don’t like either option, but what else can they do?

My partner and I use the internet to do a lot of shopping. Amazon’s our biggest addiction, by far. In addition, we’ve been living in our apartment building for almost three years.

We often aren’t home during the day (work and school, respectively) so our packages were often delayed by a day: UPS would try to deliver, we wouldn’t be home to sign, they’d leave a door tag, we’d sign it and leave it, they’d leave the package outside the next day. (Our apartment is a fourplex with a security door to which only residents and USPS have a key, and there’s no office on site.)

This arrangement totally worked for us.

Then UPS, last month, got new management in our “area,” and they decided they would no longer leave packages (even if the door tag was signed) unattended outside of apartments because of recent thefts in our “area.”

(Representatives at the local UPS office and on Twitter haven’t been able to tell me what the “area” is – our block, our neighborhood, our city, the general metro area, the state, perhaps all of the Midwest? – nor when the ban will be lifted.)

Now, when we order packages, if they’re delivered by UPS, we have to drive ten miles up to the package center and stand in line with other apartment-dwellers, or have the packages delivered to work.

This is super inconvenient, but no problem, right? We just won’t use UPS.

Except … Amazon doesn’t offer that. Amazon ships your package by whomever they deem best for that particular order. I’ve live-chatted with a couple representatives just to be told it’s not policy to do shipping “that way” (i.e. to allow the customer to choose).

So: we can’t get UPS to deliver our packages, and we can’t get Amazon to not send our packages by UPS.

Consumerist. Help us?

If you have a trusted friend who lives in a single-family house or other place that UPS will actually leave the packages, can you redirect packages there? I did this often for friends when I lived on a

This is a common problem, and may become more common if UPS is looking to make routes more efficient and avoid making two stops to deliver the same package. Does the Hive Mind have any other ideas? Having the items delvered at work looks like the best option right now, but there are also really good reasons not to do that.

Want more consumer news? Visit our parent organization, Consumer Reports, for the latest on scams, recalls, and other consumer issues.