back to article Ding-dong! Bye bye Sunday lie-in, your Amazon package is HERE

Amazon has convinced the United States Postal Service (USPS) to break with tradition and deliver parcels on Sundays. The web bazaar said the deal will allow customers to receive packages on Sunday if the orders are placed using the Amazon Prime service. The company said it will first try delivering stuff in Los Angeles and New …

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  1. Chris G

    Huh Luxury!

    Here in Spain we don't get a Saturday postal service never mind Sundays.

    During the week there is a service but if the poor old posty gets tired he has a habit of dumping his remaining deliveries into whatever letter box he is close to when he feels a carajillo (coffee with cognac, anis etc) coming on!

    DHL, a great company in the rest of the world tends to slow down here too, I just received a new phone from China, three days to get the several thousand miles from China to Palma Mallorca and three days to get the 80 odd miles from Palma to Ibiza.

    1. Thorne

      Re: Huh Luxury!

      You're whinging at six days?

      Still waiting for a parcel from Melbourne to Newcastle (10 hours drive) and it's almost three weeks and I still don't have it.

      This isn't unusual in Australia. Australian couriers redefine the word "crap". They made a documentary series about Australian couriers called "Swift and Shift". 100% factual.......

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Huh Luxury!

        I wouldn't want to go to Newcastle either.

        1. Matt 21

          Re: Huh Luxury!

          We only get a five day a week postal service but I've come to quite like it. On the other hand the speed is fairly good.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    This is a double edged sword. On one hand, the postal service needs all the business they can get. Surprisingly, with all the online orders, a person would think that they would be in a surplus of delivery.

    On the other hand, I despise anyone that makes people work on Sundays. Not being religious, but damnit, people need a day of rest and I don't think getting an item justifies someone working seven days a week. Also, I don't like the idea of any company dictating such terms.period.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Not being religious, but damnit, people need a day of rest

      If you're not religious, why do you worry if their 'day of rest' is a Sunday or some other day of the week? Secondly, why do think they deserve only one 'day of rest'. Shouldn't they get two days off a week like the majority of us?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Hear hear…

        I actually wouldn't mind working on Sundays if it meant I got Fridays off.

        1. Tom 35

          I had Fridays off

          My old job I had Friday off, worked Saturday or Sunday (my choice, as long as everything was done Monday morning). It was great as I could deal with government offices that were open M-F 9-5 (more like 10-4 most of them) shopping or the Bank without weekend hoards. Also service or deliveries where you must be home between 11am and 4pm (they show up at 5:40) type things.

        2. T. F. M. Reader

          @Stuart Longland

          Move to Israel?

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Because not giving a specific day means businesses give no days. I see little incentive to allow a break of a day from a profit perspective. As a 5-6 day work week with 1 day break is not a legal requirement, the only other reason is cultural.

        Have already turned down working for Amazon, as I was told (no idea if correctly so) that "overtime is mandatory".

      3. Simon Westerby 1

        One you have kids those "days of rest" soon disappear .....

        1. Duffy Moon

          A simple preventative measure: don't have kids.

          1. Martin

            Which works well.

            But aren't you glad your parents didn't have that attitude?

    2. foxyshadis

      What makes you think the same person is working each of those days? Particularly on Sunday, if the only deliveries are priority/express packages, you can make do with a skeleton crew. The USPS is also trying to get rid of regular Saturday and possibly one weekday delivery, but now might replace both with express parcel deliveries only at a hugely reduced cost.

      As it is, mail carriers usually work five days a week, and a substitute picks up the remainder.

    3. Phil O'Sophical Silver badge

      Sunday working

      On the other hand, I despise anyone that makes people work on Sundays.

      Don't impose your view on the rest of us, please.

      Few companies make people work on Sundays, but many get more volunteers than they need.

      When UK supermarkets started Sunday opening they asked for volunteers among their staff, to be paid at a higher salary, and were taken aback by getting more offers than they needed. Turned out that there are a lot of people who live alone, but who are by no means lonely. They have many friends, but at weekends those friends are often with their families and children, on the other hand they may have free time during the week when their kids are in school, and their partner is at work.

      The Sunday volunteers saw it as a win-win, they were out of the house getting paid more on what would otherwise have been a boring Sunday, and then they got a day off during the week when they could meet up with their friends. For an increasing number of poeple Sunday is just another day of the week, and it's useful to be able to organize one's 5 day work week as one wants.

  3. Don Jefe

    Self-Supporting Entity?

    The USPS is by far the most fucked up agency in a government chock full of fucked up agencies. They burn through cash faster than a bonfire fueled with $100 bills. Amazon gets my packages to me in two days but it takes three days for the post to send a letter back to the town of origin because it has to be driven 60 miles to the processing facility.

    The town nearest my home, where my mail is delivered, has a population of 403 people and a post office with five full time employees and you can't overnight a package to the post office from the same post office no matter how much you are willing to pay. They can't even leave an envelope in the same room overnight correctly.

    It's easy to get irritated at the employees but they're just following the rules. The USPS has created so many rules and regulations that they're paralyzed. They can't do anything without running into their own rules. It's stupid and the whole thing would be better off if Amazon just took over.

    1. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

      Re: Self-Supporting Entity?

      The USPS would be doing much better if Congress 1) let it run itself, rather than blocking every move the Postmaster General tries to make, and 2) stopped stealing billions of dollars from it every year (in the form of requiring it to overfund its pension system).

      The USPS has to provide universal service - an extremely expensive proposition in a large country like the US. Its most profitable lines of business have been cherry-picked by the commercial delivery firms and eroded by the Internet. Major cost areas such as fuel and retiree health care have grown tremendously. But the Federal government that the USPS is supposedly "independent" from prevents any sort of reorganization, at the behest of constituents, while robbing it blind.

      In short: you don't know what the fuck you're talking about.

  4. dssf

    Maybe Google should have taken over the deliveries...

    Then, Google's vehicles could have in google font "!WE! Deliver for you... Umm, THEM!"

    Anyway, this scheme (positive and perjorative meanings implie) is probably just a wet bandaid beneath a damaged sieve to stave off release of even more disorienting hemhorraging of money. All the local courier companies in the US put together probably could collectively, and with less union bs, deliver more efficiently.

    In around 5 or 10 more years, when the younger generations -- if not willing to mail-order -- personally shop and refuse to lick stamps and drop snail mail in letter boxes, the USPS will implode, once and for all. Well, unless Congress or some other entity stea.. umm, taxes from the taxpayers $22 trillion in the "Keep the USPS Alive for National Security and Stimulus Package with Riders, Clauses, and other *es"...

    We'll see...

    Maybe we'll be delivered a "reach around" as a courtesy?

  5. skeptical i

    Curious to see how this works in PHX

    A bunch of USPS processing centers in Arizona were closed as a consolidation/ "cost-cutting" measure, with those centers' processing work being schlepped via truck to PHX, then schlepped thence onward to its destination. So a postcard leaving my mailbox has to go across the state to PHX and then come back to ultimately land four miles north of me. We protested that with population and other trends, PHX would eventually become overwhelmed, so why not just leave local processing local and avoid disruptions. USPS consolidated anyway. Fast forward a couple of years and now PHX will be a location for Amazon Sunday delivery and, presumably, a chunk of Amazon's other shipping business. If this proves to be such a bonanza in shipping business that now- closed processing centers must be reopened because PHX is overworked, yay for Amazon. (Probably overly optimistic, but leave me my delusions. :))

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Curious to see how this works in PHX

      Last time I was in Phoenix I got THAT DAY delivery from Amazon.

      I was extremely impressed.

  6. El Limerino

    Psst! USPS already delivers on Sunday!

    USPS already has a service that delivers on Sundays -- Express Mail. Since they already have the infrastructure in place for Sunday delivery, this is a good way to boost volume and make some more moolah. Which the USPS needs, due to declining mail volume overall.

    I have some (OK, a little) sympathy for USPS because congress never seems to tire of interfering in how they run the business. Who needs that bunch of electards telling you exactly what to do?

  7. Winkypop Silver badge
    Coat

    8 days Sydney to Perth by courier

    Apparently the camels that transported my recent delivery have a rostered day off en-route.

    Camels have unions, who knew?

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I once sent a food parcel to my friend in America from Scotland. It was packed with all the best of cultural treats and eats and she was sending me likewise.

    I had within among other things, a bottle of Irn Bru and a Melton Mowbray pork-pie which was in a sealed, vacuum packed bag. This was a special request on her part.

    So I had the box taped up like mad, and sent it away with Parcelfarce.

    THREE MONTHS later it reached her. Apparently everything was fine apart from the Irn Bru going off like a nuclear device when she opened it and the seal had degraded on the pie and the stench of death had built up within this sealed parcel. She threw up when she opened it.

    Oops.

    1. Duffy Moon

      Irn Bru and a pork pie are not really my idea of the best of anything, except maybe as an example of a diet best avoided!

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    It ain't gonna work in the UK...

    ...well, not in most parts anyway (and there is chatter of this service rolling out here).

    The gold standard here is a sharp intake of breath for having the temerity to ask Royal Snail where your f***ing parcel is. Since they can't get anything to me on time the other six days of the week without righteous and convulsive self-defensiveness, I've little to no faith that this will be of any value to most of the UK.

    My last four Amazon Prime 'Get it on release day!' buys have turned up distinctly outside that timeframe.

    Maybe private contractors can do better, I don't know. I know people have had trouble with them - but I've not found that to be the case. In general, anything I've had from private firms has rocked up on time and undamaged. YMMV I guess.

    1. Ian Yates

      Re: It ain't gonna work in the UK...

      I know. They can't.

      I'm currently awaiting a parcel to be delivered *for the third time*.

      Courier 1 "tried" twice, without leaving a card, so the first I knew that they had failed was when Amazon emailed me to say that the parcel had been returned; full refund.

      Courier 2 did deliver the parcel. Unfortunately, they delivered it 2.5 miles away to a completely different address. But it was signed for, so that's okay. They couldn't even tell me why it was delivered somewhere else, or even the full address of where it was delivered, just the signatory name and postcode. They expected me to figure out where it was, deciding that the driver had done it for the best of reasons.

      On the plus side, Amazon's customer service is excellent, so they sent out a replacement without fuss and I'm now waiting for that to arrive, via Courier 3.

      Unfortunately for some, none of this can be blamed on the Royal Mail float.

      1. A Nother Handle
        Facepalm

        Re: It ain't gonna work in the UK...

        Too true. UPS in the UK appear to shut down completely on weekends. If they try to deliver on Friday and you don't get home to the slip of paper by 5pm it's too late to reschedule Monday's delivery. Even though you can manage the whole process online, you can only do so on Monday to Friday, 9 to 5.

  10. Martin

    Sundays - well, maybe...

    Speaking for myself, I think I'd prefer to have evening deliveries....

  11. aidanstevens
    Stop

    Anti competitive?

    This seems anti competitive to me, giving Amazon special treatment (as if it needs it), this is only going to turn them into a huge monopoly and hurt smaller online retailers.

    1. Don Jefe

      Re: Anti competitive?

      One of the few parts of the USPS that works mostly right is their partner logistics programs. If you're willing to absorb the costs of compliance with their automated systems and develop your own software for their well documented API's they're willing to work with you. Amazon may be riding big on the Sunday thing but there are thousands of businesses who get 'special' treatment from USPS.

      It's sad funny, but an agency best known for being inflexible and displaying a special kind of institutionalized dumbassery has the most flexible partner programs. The USPS really wants to help and they have great programs to provide that help. They're just buried under 4,377 regulations and are difficult to find because they all use meaningless USPS jargon to define themselves. It's unfortunate.

      They've got envelope designers and packaging engineers and sourcing connections and its all free. You just have to find it and be willing to deal with their insane internal machinations.

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