Warning for NY/NJ/PA: A-1 Courier Services

[Misanthropia]

Does anyone in the PA/NY/NJ area have experience with this courier service? I recently ordered something via Amazon Prime (relevance: they often have great prices on knives) and the free two day shipping was handled through A-1 Courier Service, a company I heretofore had no knowledge of. I briefly googled them and it looks like they're a small courier service that only operates within a few states, which took me by surprised because evidently they were being contracted through Amazon.

The problem here is that they made repeated attempts to deliver my package, all of which were unsuccessful, and it is now being returned to Amazon. I live in an apartment building where the delivery people are buzzed into the building and hand packages off to the clerk at the front desk. USPS, Fedex, and UPS are here daily and are able to deliver things with no problems at all. I'm guessing the delivery person from A-1 saw that there were no external mailboxes and didn't bother to try and come inside. This is my first experience living in an apartment building like this but I assume that it is regular procedure for the delivery person to actually go into the building to drop stuff off.

So just a heads up to anyone in the area who might encounter this courier service. Either I got a lazy delivery person four days in a row, or they're not terribly inclined to deliver to apartment buildings.

UPDATE: Apparently Amazon contracts this company for all of its 1-2 day shipping in the tri-state area. There are TONS of reviews indicating the exact experience I've had. So if you use Amazon Prime and live within the tri-state area, be warned!

 

[cakes072185]

I live in an apartment complex as well, a huge mill they turned in to lofts, and my package situation is the same. Only problem I have is getting packages after the office closes.

 

[choombak]

Well, my experience with fedex is exactly the same -- they never seem to be able to get in, don't bother to call ahead, nor leave any slips indicating they attempted delivery. I think the delivery person is just being lazy...

Worse, Amazon prime has no option to set preferred courier - they ship via FedEx, ups, ontrac, and a few more here in the Bay Area.

 

[Misanthropia]

I live in an apartment complex as well, a huge mill they turned in to lofts, and my package situation is the same. Only problem I have is getting packages after the office closes.

You must be in northern RI, that's where I'm from! Just here for grad school.

Well, my experience with fedex is exactly the same -- they never seem to be able to get in, don't bother to call ahead, nor leave any slips indicating they attempted delivery. I think the delivery person is just being lazy...

Worse, Amazon prime has no option to set preferred courier - they ship via FedEx, ups, ontrac, and a few more here in the Bay Area.

I think with Fedex it's to be expected that they might have intermittent problems given the volume they work with, it just sucks that it happened to you. But A-1 has a 175 page thread on Amazon's forum of negative experiences, and that's just people in the tri-state area. It's really frustrating that you cannot select which courier service you prefer with Amazon Prime. I got in touch with a customer service rep and he essentially said that they have no control over it, to which I said "So how can I continue to make purchases if there's always the risk that it won't be delivered?" and his answer was to give me a $5 credit because there is no solution.

Amusingly, I brought this up to local friends here last night and one of them had a similar experience with A-1 Courier Services, in which they just left the package outside the front door of her apartment building, where anyone could have taken it.