“OnTrac has made Amazon Prime a very expensive joke in Los Angeles,” reader Matthew wrote to Consumerist. How much of a joke? “This has happened at least six times in as many months to my wife and me. Tried contacting OnTrac and couldn’t get through to a human being.” That’s not a very funny joke. Matthew and his wife are far from alone in their dissatisfaction with OnTrac, though.

It seems like a good idea for Amazon to hire smaller, regional shipping companies to handle some of their deliveries, especially with the larger shipping volume with tighter deadlines that Prime membership brings. Unfortunately, many customers trying to deal with Ontrac would disagree.

Matthew’s experience is pretty typical of what readers submit to us. He describes waiting all evening on the couch that is literally next to his front door. He heard nothing, not even a peep or a scratch at the door. No trucks or cars came. His package didn’t come. Yet this is what the OnTrac tracking information said:

Exactly 9:59, was it?

Complaints about Ontrac have become so common that there’s even a dedicated Twitter account that does nothing but retweet them. The person behind it calls him or herself OfftracRob, to match OntracRob, a real Ontrac employee who does his best to intervene when people complain about the company on Twitter.

Here’s a random selection of tweets containing the fewest slurs and swear words from just this past week:

https://twitter.com/TheTolczyk/status/463687075758637056

We’ve tried to contact Ontrac when writing stories about them in the past, and we’ve been posting stories about the company for four and a half years now. The good news is that the company has a real gift for delivering customers’ original packages and the replacements sent by Amazon at the same time.

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