Dispelling the Myth of Carrier Laziness
Tags: Smart Home, IoT, Connected Home, Startup

A customer service experience will sour quickly when an e-commerce shopper is left with a notification of delivery and no package in sight. The courier website and/or app shows that the package has been delivered, but the package appears to have vanished into thin air. Often this mystery can be reduced to one problem: it was stolen. In an age of instant gratification, missing packages can be cumbersome at best and infuriating at worst.

Package theft affects not only the customer but also the courier service and the e-commerce company. However, when a package goes missing, customers are quick to blame the last person to handle their items. It is not uncommon for delivery drivers to face accusations of package theft or negligence when, in reality, they are just as frustrated with the theft as the homeowner. What many people do not realize is that most delivery services require their drivers to complete missing/stolen package reports. In some cases, drivers have to retrace their route checking their recent deliveries as part of the investigation. All this to say, missing/stolen packages create more work for delivery services.

The drivers for USPS, UPS, FedEx, etc. are not out to get you, and you should not be out to get them either. There are countless Reddit threads calling out the mistakes some carriers make, yet there are hardly any applauding delivery drivers for going above and beyond to make deliveries.

For example, take the United States Postal Service. Each day USPS picks up, processes, and deliveries millions of letters and packages. No single operation in the world comes close to their level of connectivity to so many households and businesses. In one day, USPS processes and delivers 187.8 million pieces of First-Class Mail and more than 75,000 carriers drive through neighborhoods and deliver mail and packages on foot. That is a lot of deliveries to be made in a single day with not nearly as many people on staff. The majority of USPS carriers work tremendously hard to ensure quality and customer satisfaction when delivering your goods.

USPS isn’t the only delivery service with high standards and sometimes grueling conditions. Last year, Business Insider spoke with several Amazon delivery drivers who described a physically demanding work environment in which, under strict time constraints, they felt pressured to drive at dangerously high speeds, blow stop signs, and sacrifice their own hygiene all in the name of delivering packages on time. Carriers care deeply about getting customers the packages and items they ordered.

Another common misconception many customers make about delivery drivers is that they simply do not care about where a delivery is placed. For most carriers, this could not be further from the truth. Misplacing packages placing them in areas susceptible to theft, create more work for the drivers. In some cases, if a package goes missing, drivers have to retrace their route checking their recent deliveries as part of the investigation. For example, if a UPS package was reported as missing, the UPS driver has to file upwards of three reports for the missing packages and the processes set it place can take up to ten days to search for the package. This all happens before UPS even authorizes a claim for a lost item. If UPS submits a claim for a lost package, that claim then enters a round of review and might result in UPS reimbursing the missing item. All this to say, missing/stolen packages create more work for delivery services.

To provide a little more insight into the lengths that delivery drivers go to (with very limited time) take a look at this FedEx Driver’s Reddit thread. When asked how long he normally waits for a customer to come to the door before leaving the package, or with the package, he responds:

This FedEx driver outlines how they intentionally look for “safe,” “dry,” and “discrete” areas to leave packages. Carriers are trying their best to keep up with the demand that eCommerce has put on them. So, the next time your package goes missing, please don’t jump to conclusions. It’s highly unlikely that your carrier took your package or left it in an obvious location. The unfortunate reality is that someone probably stole it. Instead of going through the pains of package restitution, prevent the theft in the first place with BenchSentry.