Tracking toy tariffs

I worked at Whole Foods after college and Diamond Parking monitored the free-to-park, but time-limited parking garage attached to the store where we had a designated employee parking level. Diamond had a policy of ticketing every single car in the garage on a random day sometime in September (school's back in session and everyone's busy) just to see who would pay without a fight. We were always instructed to give our tickets to the store manager, who would give them back to Diamond to void and destroy.

A surprising number of very big, very well-known companies will absolutely try to gouge you just to see if you'll pay them to avoid a hassle.
 
A very strange turn around at BBTS.

They are now offering Canadians $8US flat fee shipping. They will also collect duties/taxes upfront like Pulse does for Canadians so that there will be no surprise charges at the delivery. That is a big deal for Canadians because before that it really was not worth it to order from BBTS anymore except for items on extreme clearance. Now with the kind of sales they run it will be more enticing and could negatively affect Canadian etailers like DJC Collectibles and Toy Snowman.

Anyway not really tariff related per se, but a surprising change.
 
Yeah I'm pleasantly surprised with it. I wonder what the turnaround time will be, because as of now most of our stores get things earlier, and the shipping is generally pretty fast for me in Toronto.

But there are a few lines I could see myself going with them since you don't have to pay up front.
 
I just had a package delivered from AliExpress today and they left it right on my porch. No extra notice or anything about a bill due.
Also had a package from Bombusbee delivered yesterday with no extra fees requested (as of now).
 
TheRealSmallville said:
Furthermore, what keeps anyone from just saying they never received it? I suppose if you signed for it then that's that, but I don't even remember the last time I signed for a package at my door. I know they can put you on a list and refuse to bring packages to you if you don't pay, but in the case of legitimate theft or wrong delivery, I just don't see how they can reasonably punish someone for refusing to pay for something they didn't receive. Seems like it would be a very he said / she said situation.
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There's a surprising truth of misdelivery that FedEx, UPS, and the USPS all share--they know EXACTLY when and where their carriers misdeliver packages because they all require the carriers to carry devices that have GPS trackers on them. The problem is that once the mistake has been made the options to recover that package are more expensive than they want to deal with.

So they mostly know when it's a misdelivery. The exception is any kind of shared housing with multiple levels such as apartment buildings. GPS is only accurate to within about 10 yards, so whenever there are multiple recipients located less than the GPS margin of error from each other they usually can't verify something has been misdelivered.

If you go to the USPS and ask where a package has been misdelivered there are circumstances where they will divulge that to you. I don't know what those circumstances are because I've never tried it myself. I don't think FedEx or UPS will ever tell customers where they think a package has been misdelivered to but I'm not sure of it.
 
SalemCrow said:
I just had a package delivered from AliExpress today and they left it right on my porch. No extra notice or anything about a bill due.
Also had a package from Bombusbee delivered yesterday with no extra fees requested (as of now).
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I mentioned this a few pages back--AliExpress usually isn't subject to de minimis because they bundle individual shipments together and transport them in shipping containers, so they are riding on the highly efficient tariff infrastructure that overseas manufacturers also use.
 
EnigmaticClarity said:
If you go to the USPS and ask where a package has been misdelivered there are circumstances where they will divulge that to you. I don't know what those circumstances are because I've never tried it myself. I don't think FedEx or UPS will ever tell customers where they think a package has been misdelivered to but I'm not sure of it.
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When I worked with Amazon, delivering to most apartment complexes was a fucking nightmare. Especially if the pin was to the office (and the office doesn't accept packages!!!!), so I would have to drive around and find each building and then figure out the numbering to find the right apartment. Oh and since the pin wasn't where I was standing? I would then have to call fucking Amazon and make them OK the delivery which was another 10 minutes of wasted time. It was horrible, and I hated it. Or worse, one complex had people's addresses go to the main mailbox...but the actual apartments had different numbers that weren't on the package addresses. Ugh.
 
Detrimental Fig said:
When I worked with Amazon, delivering to most apartment complexes was a fucking nightmare. Especially if the pin was to the office (and the office doesn't accept packages!!!!), so I would have to drive around and find each building and then figure out the numbering to find the right apartment. Oh and since the pin wasn't where I was standing? I would then have to call fucking Amazon and make them OK the delivery which was another 10 minutes of wasted time. It was horrible, and I hated it. Or worse, one complex had people's addresses go to the main mailbox...but the actual apartments had different numbers that weren't on the package addresses. Ugh.
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I'm familiar with that situation because a section of my street was blocked off due to road work. I caught my Amazon driver as he was approaching my house and he had to call it in before handing off the package.

Another time, I felt like an idiot during a call with my local PO. The tracking showed a delivery just a few minutes prior, but I couldn't find the package. I called the PO to ask if they could contact the carrier before too much time has passed to see if they could recall where it was left. The guys says he can see the delivery location with GPS and tells me to look again by my mailbox while he stays on the line. I'm like, "okay I'll look again, but my carrier leaves packages by my front or back door, dur dur dur."
This store always mails single box figures in a Priority Box too big to fit in my mailbox, but this time they went with a small brown box that my carrier was able to fit in the small mail box compartment that's usually used for newspapers. Yeah, like a dumbass, I had to tell the guy it was in my mailbox.
 
mrboshek said:
Another time, I felt like an idiot during a call with my local PO. The tracking showed a delivery just a few minutes prior, but I couldn't find the package. I called the PO to ask if they could contact the carrier before too much time has passed to see if they could recall where it was left. The guys says he can see the delivery location with GPS and tells me to look again by my mailbox while he stays on the line. I'm like, "okay I'll look again, but my carrier leaves packages by my front or back door, dur dur dur."
This store always mails single box figures in a Priority Box too big to fit in my mailbox, but this time they went with a small brown box that my carrier was able to fit in the small mail box compartment that's usually used for newspapers. Yeah, like a dumbass, I had to tell the guy it was in my mailbox.
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That's an amazing story so thanks for sharing it! They really told you this on the phone? When I've heard people relate GPS dropoff stories in the past the USPS always demanded that you could only get GPS information in-person at the main post office for your zip code. Did you call the national USPS help line, or did you call your local post office directly?

On a related note I have had the tracking from all three major carriers, i.e. FedEx, UPS, and the USPS claim that something was delivered up to an hour before the carrier actually delivered it. My guess for this is that couriers sometimes scan multiple items at once as delivered while sitting in their truck for a block, street, or general area to save scanning time. I first time I had the kind of panic you just described was about 3-4 years ago, and since then I've seen it enough to give couriers at least an hour before I go searching for where they may have misdelivered my package. I think this is just something some individual couriers do because I rarely see it, but I have definitely seen it about a dozen to two dozen times in recent years.

I have NEVER seen Amazon do this kind of early tracking delivery, and in my experience they are by far the best carrier as compared to all the others. They do misdeliver at times, but for some reason it has always been consistently been to my neighbor on one side and not to the wrong street or some address nowhere near mine. A few years ago they delivered my packages five times in a row to that neighbor so I'm guessing their GPS had a bug.

What I don't get is why the devices from the carriers don't explicitly tell the carrier when they're misdelivering a package. The device should have everything it needs to warn the carrier that they've screwed up...so why are misdeliveries so common then? Does the software warn them and they just ignore it? I find the whole thing baffling.
 
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Don't want to jinx my luck, but the last time I had a misdelivery was.... maybe just shy of 10 years ago. I think it was Amazon and they delivered to to 13579 240th Street instead of 13579 240th Terrace. Back when I lived in apartments I was never interested in ordering anything that didn't fit in a standard envelope.
 
Red Ogre said:
Don't want to jinx my luck, but the last time I had a misdelivery was.... maybe just shy of 10 years ago. I think it was Amazon and they delivered to to 13579 240th Street instead of 13579 240th Terrace. Back when I lived in apartments I was never interested in ordering anything that didn't fit in a standard envelope.
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Depends on where you live. I live in a highly urban area with house lots divided into fractions of an acre, and I get misdeliveries about 3 to 10 times per year across all carriers. I'm guessing you're either suburban or rural, and delivery is easier there and the GPS can identify your house far more clearly than in urban areas.

I used to live in the suburbs for about 15 years, and I don't recall ANY misdeliveries. But since I moved to the city it happens all the time. My address is printed clearly on the side of my house, but everyone has their address in a different place here so I get that it's more difficult to identify addresses here. But when you take a picture of the package on a porch and the wrong address is clearly visible IN the picture which I've had happen well over a dozen times now...you're just not doing your job right.
 
EnigmaticClarity said:
That's an amazing story so thanks for sharing it! They really told you this on the phone? When I've heard people relate GPS dropoff stories in the past the USPS always demanded that you could only get GPS information in-person at the main post office for your zip code. Did you call the national USPS help line, or did you call your local post office directly?

On a related note I have had the tracking from all three major carriers, i.e. FedEx, UPS, and the USPS claim that something was delivered up to an hour before the carrier actually delivered it. My guess for this is that couriers sometimes scan multiple items at once as delivered while sitting in their truck for a block, street, or general area to save scanning time. I first time I had the kind of panic you just described was about 3-4 years ago, and since then I've seen it enough to give couriers at least an hour before I go searching for where they may have misdelivered my package. I think this is just something some individual couriers do because I rarely see it, but I have definitely seen it about a dozen to two dozen times in recent years.

I have NEVER seen Amazon do this kind of early tracking delivery, and in my experience they are by far the best carrier as compared to all the others. They do misdeliver at times, but for some reason it has always been consistently been to my neighbor on one side and not to the wrong street or some address nowhere near mine. A few years ago they delivered my packages five times in a row to that neighbor so I'm guessing their GPS had a bug.

What I don't get is why the devices from the carriers don't explicitly tell the carrier when they're misdelivering a package. The device should have everything it needs to warn the carrier that they've screwed up...so why are misdeliveries so common then? Does the software warn them and they just ignore it? I find the whole thing baffling.
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I called the local PO. I was surprised someone picked up because I've tried to look into a handful of lost eBay packages by calling the buyer's PO and I've found it difficult to get someone to answer the phone.
 
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