It is always an adventure to find where my packages will end up when delivered by UPS. Frequently, I find them in the mailbox, at the end of the driveway or at someone else's house. Now, this is despite the fact that in the 10 years I have lived here there have been dozens of deliveries. Well anyway, case in point, I had ordered a cellphone from Amazon..it was supposed to be delivered Monday, so Monday since it was not on the porch, I checked the delivery status,,,saying it had been delivered on Friday next to the garage. Well I have no garage!! Anyway, I checked the mailbox just in case a neighbor had found it and put there...no...so, I went across the street,,,to my part time neighbor...they apparently hadn't been there over the weekend..and there it sat!! Thank God it was under a roof. I mean how many times to they have to deliver here before they get it right??
When I lived in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, my packages were often delivered to other people's houses, and often to people who didn't even speak English and weren't about to admit that they had my package if I did ask for it. Fortunately, much of what I ordered was from Amazon.com and they'd just send me another one. Even when I was at home waiting for my package, they'd deliver it somewhere else. It is true that there wasn't much of a pattern to street numbers in the Valley, but I did always make sure to have my number posted on the house. We never have a problem here though. We know our UPS guy by name, and if he sees us somewhere else in town and has a package for us, he'll ask if we want him to deliver it to the house or if we'd like it now, so he knows us by name as well. He should, as we certainly have enough stuff going both in and out of here.
This reminds me of my recent purchase from an online store. It is a fancy bracelet which was very appealing to me and since it is quite cheap so I ordered it for delivery. But the thing delivered was a notice from the Post Office that I have a parcel to be picked up. Gosh, that's annoying because it's a real hassle to go to the post office much more that they are only open during office hours. Fortunately our laundrywoman volunteered to do the errand of going to the post office. In fairness to the store, the bracelet is a beauty.
I hope you know how lucky you are @Ken Anderson, because it is no fun having to look for packages all the time. One time I needed something for work that was delivered at the end of the driveway in a plastic bag since it was raining. I mean they couldn't make the 75 yard track up to the house to put it on the porch?? I mean really! I know they deal with millions of packages, and my son used to work there, so I know how hard they work, but I mean...when they make the same deliveries to the same address why can't they get it right? I assume most of the time it is a regular driver.
A few years ago, we sent my wife's brother a package, thru USPS for Christmas. It was large, but not small either. He has lived for years in an older re-constructed two-story motel w/kitchettes. There was no office for it to be delivered to if her brother wasn't home. He wasn't home, so the package was sit by his room door. Somebody took it! We didn't insure it, because we never had a problem before with delivery. Now we have him pick up his Christmas package at either USPS Office or UPS Office. We had bought a Marine Battery Jumper and it was being delivered by UPS. After it didn't arrive to us, I stopped the UPS driver and asked him about it. He remembered the box that had "Marine" written on it, but said it was delivered down the street at a different apt. complex. He told me the name of the complex and I went down to get it. It had our address on it, but simply couldn't figure out why it was delivered to a different street/address. The Office Manager at the complex couldn't figure why the box was signed for and kept in their office. "Oh well" I told her and took the box home. Nowadays, for nearly anything that we order and it's shipped UPS, I try to be home to get it.
We order a lot from Amazon, so both the UPS and the USPS Delivery people know Bobby really well. We usually do not have any trouble with our packages getting here any more. A few years back, when we lived in a dfferent part of Alabama, we had trouble all of the time. The address for the house was the same , but a different street altogether, and not even close to us; so it should have been a different route. I guess it was right at the post office where it was sorted wrong; but whatever happened, we would get mail and packages for the other address all of the time, and they would get ours; so we were always having to return it back to the mail man. I even called the main office, and they still could not seem to get it straight for some reason. It is always worrisome when mail goes to the wrong address, and especially when they keep delivering it wrong after being told about the mistake.
We had to know the area before we were allowed to drive. That meant being able to fill in a blank map with the street names, that were provided on a separate sheet of paper, and it included names that the streets were formerly known as, because streets were renamed often, and residents would use whichever one they were more familiar with. Once 9-1-1 came in, we were provided with more accurate information. Now, of course, they have GPS.
Ha ha that cracked me up "streets were renamed often", that does sound like The Valley. I have been having issues lately with some of my deliveries. My internet provider has never gotten the address correctly, despite installers/repairmen having been here on numerous occasions. They shipped the router to the city that provides our services here, despite that not being the mailing city, so they had to take it back to the distribution center and re-route it here or perhaps they shipped another one entirely...I haven't figured that out. There's no reason they should even have that other city anywhere associated with my account, since they have my legal address and have been here. I see neighbors posting all of the time in the Facebook group, "hey ____, I've got your mail here at my house.", and they make arrangements to pick it up or drop it off. A friend in another state has always had an issue with his mail since he moved into an apartment, but I think most others I know don't have regular issues with deliveries.
Yeah, it is crazy dealing with tracphone, they use some kind of database supposedly used by UPS or something, and according to them, my address "doesn't exist." lol, like I have been living in cyberspace for 10 years or something. Anyway, I thnk when I bought this place it was supposed to be 158, and the numbers got transposed to 185...so it is on the other side of the street, OK, even so, I have the numbers on the mailbox and plenty of other people can find it, so why not UPS??
When I was the treasurer for the Los Fresnos Fire Department, we received a packaged addressed to the Mercedes Fire Department at their address. Although it was addressed correctly, they delivered it to another city that wasn't even in the same county. I wrote on it, "You might try Mercedes."
I saw this article on Twitter earlier and thought of you @Ken Anderson. I'm going to have to look around to find out the policy of storefronts charging to accept packages for UPS pick up. I guess maybe they leave it up to the store owner, but obviously I would prefer to drop my package off at a place that doesn't charge, so it seems they might lose some money in the process. From what I saw, there was no charge for dropping off a FedEx package.