[Elecraft] KPA1500 Caution

[John Marvin]

In general, the quality of service that you perceive from the USPS, UPS 
or FedEx is almost completely due to the behavior of your local delivery 
person. None of the carriers treat your package with kid gloves, and a 
lot of it is automated such that they really don't pay any attention to 
"Fragile" notices, etc.  Most of the time if your package is damaged 
before your local delivery person gets their hands on it, it is due to 
low quality packing materials used by the shipper.

Judging the overall nationwide quality of the USPS, UPS or Fedex based 
on what you see from your local delivery people doesn't make much 
sense.  That's why when people get in this type of discussion you hear 
about all the nightmares of a particular service from one person, and 
all the kudo's of the same service from another person.

I happen to be lucky in that my local delivery people for all three 
services vary from very good to outstanding (my USPS carrier, when 
delivering a package, comes to the door with the rest of my mail, and 
rings the bell, waiting for me to come to the door. If I'm not home he 
places the package behind a post near the front door, and delivers the 
mail to the street mailbox). But friends living in the same town with 
postal workers working out of the same post office facility, have lots 
of bad experience with their carriers, and therefore hold a very 
prejudicial view of the USPS.

Now there are other services that are terrible, and the problems occur 
throughout the system.  Amazon Prime occasionally uses a service called 
Ontrac, which ships to 8 states in the west. At least here in Colorado, 
they are reprehensible, and border on fraud when it comes to making 
their shipping comitments. Based on online reviews, I don't think 
they're any better anywhere else.

73,

John
AC0ZG