| Re: Which shipping carrier do you prefer?
USPS is by far the most convenient for me. They deliver on Saturdays and if they can't fit the package into the mailbox or community package box, they leave a note for me to pick it up at the nearby post office at my convenience. With the postal service, I also seem to get many more options. I can go Priority if I want it there in 3 days, parcel post if 5 days is good enough and first class if a week or two is OK. Then there's media mail, which is even cheaper for certain items.
UPS does none of that. They show up around the same time every day and if I'm not here, tough cookies. Three tries and the package gets shipped back? What the hell is that? And if I want to pick it up myself at their distant warehouse, I have to either call them to not ship it out on the delivery truck or show up there at around 7PM when the truck comes back in. In other words, I have to accomodate their schedule.
And then there's the matter of priniciple. Sure, package delivery is a profitable business, that's why there are so many private package carriers (at least in the US). It amazes me that some stoopid people actually think that all mail service should be handled by these private companies and the postal service done away with. I wonder if these people have ever thought to consider how much it would cost to send a simple first-class letter to, say, Alaska, using a private shipper. Somehow, I don't think they'd do it for 41 cents, the current postal rate.
So, if given the choice by a retailer, I always use the United States Postal Service (USPS). |