[selectodude]

FedEx contracts out a lot of last mile delivery for non-guaranteed packages to USPS. It's possible the rep was referring to that on the phone. I too have noticed USPS delivery notifications to be completely worthless for the same reasons.

[latchkey]

If I send something via DHL to my data center, I have to add the data centers PO Box to the delivery address because DHL hands it off to USPS. USPS won't deliver it to the address for who knows what reason. Someone at the data center has to drive into town and pick it up at the PO Box.

Sorting this out the first time was me spending hours on the phone calling between DHL and USPS to find out where the package was and what was happening.

Even more inane is that USPS uses a ~20 digit number for tracking packages. Imagine reading that on the phone to a customer support person. I can't believe nobody thought to use base-32 encoding [0].

[0] https://github.com/stickfigure/unsuck/blob/b4dff541d756303ca...