Last month, my sister placed an order with Amazon.com. This order was shipped through the United States Postal Service. However, I did not receive this package successfully.
I was required to go on a business trip at around the time the package was to be delivered. That Friday, I received a notice that the package had been attempted to be delivered ("First delivery attempt") and the slip said that I could pick the package up after 10 am the following day. By 10 am the following day, I was halfway across Texas.
I returned home nearly three weeks later to find that the package had been delivered to my apartment's doorstep the day I left on my trip. The delivery confirmation was not updated; the online tracking said the package was in "attempted delivery" status. The exterminator that my apartment had hired to spray had placed the package inside my door when he came two weeks later. However, my package was empty, devoid of the enclosed gifts, because it had been left in an open breezeway in my apartment complex for two weeks.
When I consulted with the local post office's manager, I was informed that leaving a delivery confirmation package on the doorstep of an apartment, in an open breezeway, was well within the regulations in place for postal delivery. I was further informed that delivery confirmation simply means that the Post Office will make available the knowledge that the package was "delivered" (even if said delivery amounts to leaving a package in front of a residence). The Post Office took no responsibility for the condition of my package nor the loss of the gifts.
If the Post Office was a private company, this behavior certainly would not stand. I don't know that I can outright boycott the USPS, but you will certainly be getting less of my business and I plan on informing as many other people of this situation as possible.
V/R,
me