The Great Package Hand-Off - The Alternative to USPS and UPS

Imagine this scenario: "Paul, you've got the the Midwest run today. After looking over last night's orders, it looks like your best route will be to head up to Chicago and stop by for package deliveries to Clarksville, Indianaopolis and Kokomo, Indiana before dropping off these three packages to the Chicagoland area. Then get on I-90 over to Toledo for a delivery, then south toward Cincy and stopping at Kings Mill, Ohio for your last delivery before 2 in Cincy proper. Blake, you've got the West coast. Take the red eye into L.A..... you guys get back in here within the next few days as we have more orders to pack and deliver."

Wouldn't that be fun?! So thank goodness for the Post Offices, UPSs and FedExs of the world. If not for them, not sure I'd be writing this right now.

We put quite a bit of faith in these companies to not ruin our good name by getting packages to where they need to get to when they need to get there. And except for a few every once in a while issues, they do pretty well.

Usually problems that occur are a result of poor communication or lack thereof. Here are my favorites:.

• Postal carrier places package behind a bush instead of the usual place
• UPS delivers to apartment management office which closes before the customer comes home
  
• Wife accepts package and forgets to tell husband she's already taken it out of the box and put up the items
  
• My all time favorite: Customer calls 3 separate times after I suggest usual places to look on a package that tracks as delivered. I finally ask "you have checked your mailbox, corect?". Her reply, "no, I didn't think it would fit". She checks... it's there.

The biggest leap of faith: International orders via the postal service. Via UPS or FedEx (which global express guaranteed is) it's typically trouble-free as it's end-to-end with the same company. But with the usual cheapest option, our post office simply drops it off with another country. I have no idea how reliable Argentina's postal service is. Do you? Maybe w/ time we'll figure out the reliability of all the world's post offices.

And I have no idea packages are going to sit in customs and how much extra fees will be. It's no wonder we receive a disproportionate amount of negative comments from our International customers. I'd be ticked too if it took 5 weeks to get my package and had to pay an additional 75 pesos.