One of the perks of paying $99/year to be an Amazon Prime member is the free two-day standard shipping on millions of items sold on the e-tailers’ site. But according to a new survey, being a Prime member didn’t always prove to be beneficial when it came to on-time deliveries last holiday season. [More]
deliveries
Whole Foods, Instacart Take On Florists With Valentine’s Flower Deliveries
By 2.6.15
There could be a new war of the roses brewing this Valentine’s Day. Whole Foods Market and its app-based delivery partner Instacart announced this week that they will challenge traditional florists– and the often-disappointing telefloral industrial complex — with special Valentine’s Day flower deliveries. [More]
UPS Works To Avoid Another Holiday Backlog, Will Charge Retailers Extra If It Happens
By 11.18.14
Dear retailers: UPS has its eye you. In an interview with the wire service Reuters, the company’s CEO explained its efforts to avoid another disaster like the Christmas 2013 shipping delay that left many Americans sad and giftless. Namely, if retailers try any last-minute sale shenanigans while promising delivery by Christmas, it’s going to cost them. Money. [More]
OnTrac Still Marking Packages Delivered Ahead Of Time
By 8.18.14
Amazon is in the business of selling you everything and getting it to your doorstep quickly. What stands in their way? The regional delivery services it partners with to get Prime packages to their customers in certain regions of the country. While the tracking information claimed that Diana’s package was delivered to her house in the early afternoon, it wasn’t. However, it did arrive at the same time as the replacement that Amazon sent. [More]
Another Amazon Prime Order, Another Delivery Fake-Out From Ontrac
By 5.7.14
“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. [More]
Uber Tired Of Customers Using Cars As Couriers, Begins Testing Actual Courier Service
By 4.8.14
One could argue that Uber is a type of courier service, right? They’ve delivered Christmas Trees, kittens to brighten your day and of course shuttled you across the city. Well, you won’t have to argue the merits of that point anymore now that the company has officially began testing Uber Rush – an actual courier service. [More]
Americans Might Get Flowers And Beer By Drone After All
By 3.13.14
Great news for people who were looking forward to a future of receiving small deliveries on their doorsteps by unmanned drone. A federal judge’s decision last week means that a Michigan-based florist can go ahead and continue their tests of flower delivery by unmanned aerial vehicle. [More]
Brave Florists Pioneer Valentine’s Day Deliveries By Tractor, Drone
By 2.14.14
By gosh, it is florists’ sacred mission to get their blooms into the hands of their customers this Valentine’s Day, come hell or high snow. We heard about two pioneering petal-pushers who tried innovative new ways to get flowers out this week. One plan succeeded, but the other failed due to government intervention. [More]
Check Out The Arm On The FedEx Guy Tossing A Package 20 Feet Onto A Customer’s Porch
By 12.30.13
Baseball. Football. Cricket. Trench warfare. All of those things are occasions where being able to lob something at a target from a long distance is a good skill to have. But using that good arm to chuck Fedex deliveries onto a customer’s porch from 20 feet away will not garner praise, especially when you’re (allegedly) caught on camera doing just that. [More]
Ontrac Takes My Amazon Package On Weeklong Vacation, Delivers It Alongside Replacement
By 9.12.13 — Updated: 5.7.14
We hear wonderful things about Amazon Prime…except from readers who live in parts of the country served by smaller shipping carriers like Ontrac and Ensenda. Reader Z. recently reported a package missing, and Amazon sent a replacement. Ontrac brought both the original package and the replacement on the same day…a week after that original shipment was supposed to arrive. [More]
This Gun Safe Came With 285 Pounds Of Free Pot
By 8.19.13
Buy a large gun safe, get ten free bales of Mexican bud? That’s an appealing and potentially very lucrative promotion, but wasn’t an actual thing. Authorities are still trying to figure out who put 285 pounds of marijuana in a $1,700 gun safe that was shipped from Mexico to a customer in Ohio. They believe the customer that he didn’t order it, namely because he was the one who reported the shipment to police. [More]
Amazon UK Users Will Be Able To Track Packages In Real-Time All The Way To Door
By 7.19.13
Most of us know the anxiety of tracking a highly anticipated package (especially a pricey, highly anticipated package). You follow it online from warehouse to distribution center to shipping hub to receiving center and then it goes on “on truck for delivery,” meaning that you’ll probably get it at some vague, undetermined point before the end of the day. But rather than hope you are around to receive the item — lest the delivery driver just hurls it over your fence — wouldn’t it be nice to know exactly when it’s coming? [More]
I Just Want UPS To Take My Money, Let Me Use MyChoice Premium
By 7.3.13
Some of our readers aren’t fond of UPS’s MyChoice Premium, comparing it to a protection racket for items that you’ve already paid to have delivered to your house. We get that. Michael likes the concept and finds it useful. Or he would if UPS would actually apply it to his packages. [More]
OnTrac Claims They Delivered Another Phantom Package
By 6.6.13 — Updated: 6.7.13
Our readers generally love Amazon Prime, but complain about the regional delivery services that Amazon contracts with in some areas in order to make that fabulous free two-day delivery possible. Carriers that include Ontrac and Ensenda seem to get the job done okay most of the time. When things go wrong, though, customers who had the wacky assumption that “out for delivery” meant their packages would actually be delivered get upset. [More]
FedEx Now Allows You To Pay Extra For 2-Hour Delivery Window
By 4.23.13
Sick of taking off all day from work waiting for a FedEx delivery? Today, the company launched a new program called FedEx Delivery Manager that allows you, along with other free options, to pay extra to have your shipment delivered within a two-hour window, or have it delivered somewhere else. [More]
Walmart Considers Paying Its Customers To Deliver Online Orders
By 3.28.13
So you’ve ordered something from Walmart.com, but when it arrives, it doesn’t come on a UPS/FedEX/USPS truck, or even in one of the vehicles Walmart currently uses for same-day delivery. No, it is handed to you by a fellow Walmart shopper getting paid to run an errand for the retailer. [More]
UPS Refuses To Deliver Package, Messes Up My Daughter’s Birthday
By 3.11.13
Julie currently lives far away from her daughter, and went her a wonderful box of gifts from cosmetics retailer Sephora for her recent 14th birthday. What a lovely surprise! Or it would have been if UPS hadn’t refused to release the package with a mere signed slip because it had been redirected after getting sent to Julie’s billing address initially. The package was significantly delayed past her birthday, and the surprise became significantly less fun. [More]
UPS Tells You To Pick Up Package From Station, Closes Package Station Due To Nemo
By 2.12.13
It was just Manu’s bad luck that the computer he really, really needed was due to arrive at the same time as an East Coast superblizzard. The storm wasn’t as bad as expected in New York City, where Manu lives, but it was still bad enough that work closed early on the day that they didn’t deliver his computer to his home, so he could go fetch it from the depot. So he left on an epic trek through the snow to the UPS depot to… well, not pick up the computer, as it turns out. [More]
