Any American based whole nation wide postal service plain sucks, never delivering in time, never attempting to deliver properly, and often mishandling packages; you will never find worse customer service than American based company, not even in Russia.
In Poland, to-door delivery does all of that. That’s why what everyone uses instead are dense competing networks of “packomates” — automated lockers you open with a code, put your stuff in, the recipient gets a SMS with the code, walks to his packomate.
As it’s the last mile (or for any location I’ve used, less than 1.5 a street segment) that’s the problem and 90% of the labor, the companies can afford to hire only competent workers. The distance that a package has to be carried by hand is minimal.
Usual failure mode is “your packomate is full” (an unit with the interface and ~50 lockers) that happens on like 10-20% of deliveries, which suggests they run enough volume that consolidating into fewer bigger packomates wouldn’t give the company much savings, and this keeps the networks dense.
Their competitors used to contract with convenience shops (which are all in one of a few franchises these days) to have the cashier give you your package; they’ve mostly built a less dense network of packomates on their own since and are doing hybrid.
Meanwhile, American-style to-door delivery receives hardly any volume and their service deteriorates further and further…
UPS Driver’s reminding everyone to pay them a living wage.
Any American based whole nation wide postal service plain sucks, never delivering in time, never attempting to deliver properly, and often mishandling packages; you will never find worse customer service than American based company, not even in Russia.
I’m sure it WAS something very nice.
In Poland, to-door delivery does all of that. That’s why what everyone uses instead are dense competing networks of “packomates” — automated lockers you open with a code, put your stuff in, the recipient gets a SMS with the code, walks to his packomate.
As it’s the last mile (or for any location I’ve used, less than 1.5 a street segment) that’s the problem and 90% of the labor, the companies can afford to hire only competent workers. The distance that a package has to be carried by hand is minimal.
Usual failure mode is “your packomate is full” (an unit with the interface and ~50 lockers) that happens on like 10-20% of deliveries, which suggests they run enough volume that consolidating into fewer bigger packomates wouldn’t give the company much savings, and this keeps the networks dense.
Their competitors used to contract with convenience shops (which are all in one of a few franchises these days) to have the cashier give you your package; they’ve mostly built a less dense network of packomates on their own since and are doing hybrid.
Meanwhile, American-style to-door delivery receives hardly any volume and their service deteriorates further and further…
His other job has him working as a chiropractor.
I just generally pronounce UPS as “oop”
Ace Ventura