They can also be really strange/sloppy/inconsitent about their use of
their InfoNotice (the note they leave on the door). We just had a
delivery that we finally refused in frustration because we couldn't get
a straight answer from their dispatchers. Wonder if labor disenchantment
might be at the bottom of the problems. We'll insist on FedEx for
deliveries from now on.

-Sven

I've had them arrive early before... When it hits the local delivery
station, it will go out on that date... I've never seen a package just sit
there... Of course, there was that one time when it just stopped there and
kept going towards the east coast the next day... <grin>

I've paid for 3-day select for an emergency part of an order only to find
that the other non-emergency items in the order, of equal weight and origin,
which were send standard ground, arrived in 2 days.  The 3-day emergency
item arrived in exactly 3 days.  Since then, I've skipped the extra shipping
costs for that vendor.

Rich Lockyer <rlockyer@linkline.DONTSPAMME.com> pounded away at his
keyboard resulting in:

Sounds pretty reliable to me.

Dan Bracuk
If at first you don't succeed, you run the risk of failure.
The Best of rec.scuba http://www.pathcom.com/~bracuk/RecScuba/

and Calumet in hollywood can ship me a package via ups ground, and it
arrives the next day.

You didn't think that when they load a plane they just throw in hundreds of loose
boxes of assorted size, do you? Everything gets inventoried and containerized, and
when the container gets logged at a new location the tracking numbers for each piece
in the container are updated based on the assumption that they're still in the
container. That means that when a tracking check for that single LED you ordered says
that it arrived in your town, it's based on the assumption that there's a 1 cubic
inch package buried somewhere in a 50,000 cubic inch container that is definitely in
front ofd the person updating the info. It may only be 4 miles away, but it's not
even close to being ready to go on a truck.

Last summer I placed an online order with a company in Seattle at about 1 AM on a
Monday. When I checked the tracking before going to work on Tuesday it had already
arrived at the Airport 30 miles from here, but was scheduled to be delivered on
Friday. Having never been curious about the intricate details of shipping something
from Seattle to NY I hadn't given any thought to the packing and unpacking of the
containers, and when it still showed a Friday delivery as of Wednesday night I called
to see if I could pick it up Thursday afternoon, since I wanted it before leaving
town on Thursday evening. The very helpful woman I talked to checked her tracking
info, which appears to be a bit more detailed than what they offer to us mere
customers, and said my package was still in the container, and that picking it up
would therefore require that somebody make a special effort to locate it and set it
aside, and would cost me an extra $15. I decided I didn't need it that bad. Anyway,
that's why it doesn't show up quite as soon as you'd think, when it covers the first
2996 miles of a 3000 mile trip so quickly.

The company I work for at one time would ship items from distribution to the
floor you were on via FedEx. So from the loading dock they would next day
air your equipment via Memphis! Stupid! but as they had fired the
interoffice mail person, the loading dock people took the path of least
resistance. BTW the shipping charges were charged to the receiver.