FedEx, obviously inferior to UPS.

And the debate rages on........

I think people will argue which one is better or worse until teleportation is perfected and shipping anything no longer exists lol.

Alot of it falls to the actions of a particular driver. UPS may be totally unreliable in one community but in another town 20 miles away they may be the pinnacle of reliability.
I have a regular UPS driver, and as long as she's not on vacation, I never have any problems. Once I had a delivery of frozen rats. It was summer and I wasn't home when she came. She knew what was in the package, and didn't want it to set in the sun all day. She also knew where my wife worked at the time, a fact I would have never suspected she knew, so she took the package to her so she could keep it cool. Not many would go to that trouble. The substitute drivers however can be a nightmare.

I suspect that neither company is all that much better than the other overall. It's a matter of which is better or more reliable in a given area. Some people have particularly bad service from one or the other, but I find the service in my area is not tremendously different, both have decent records. I'm not prone to having problems with either one, but I have had more problems with UPS. They don't mess it up that often, but it seems when they do they mess it up good.

Originally Posted by Clay Davenport

I have a regular UPS driver, and as long as she's not on vacation, I never have any problems. Once I had a delivery of frozen rats. It was summer and I wasn't home when she came. She knew what was in the package, and didn't want it to set in the sun all day. She also knew where my wife worked at the time, a fact I would have never suspected she knew, so she took the package to her so she could keep it cool. Not many would go to that trouble. The substitute drivers however can be a nightmare.

I suspect that neither company is all that much better than the other overall. It's a matter of which is better or more reliable in a given area. Some people have particularly bad service from one or the other, but I find the service in my area is not tremendously different, both have decent records. I'm not prone to having problems with either one, but I have had more problems with UPS. They don't mess it up that often, but it seems when they do they mess it up good.

I'll agree with this... My NORMAL UPS guy is wonderful. We have a system worked out if Im not home and I have is cell number programed into my phone if I need him or want to meet him a couple towns over and pick it up there.

I do however prefer FedEx because my packages arrive in an AC'd van NOT a delivery truck and FedEx normally gets to me about 4 hours earlier than UPS. Im not getting anything from UPS before 2pm.... doesn't matter how you ship it.

I have not had negative experiances with either but I prefer all my packages to be shipped to me via UPS and held at the hub for me to pick up. This way I can be there when they open and get it first thing in the AM. Ever since I have started this practice I feel much better when getting animals in the mail.

Since I have owned a supply for 15 years, I know most of the UPS drivers on a first name basis. IMO UPS it better for regular packages. But I have confirmed and reconfirmed all the way up to corporate UPS that they will not ship snakes ever. Even during all the SYR, RE, and so on.

I have used strickly Fedex for snake shipments for 5 years now and never had a single problem, except one late shipment due to snow storm. Even then all I did was call to make sure they knew the package contained a live animal, They were nice enough to keep the package in a warm office until they were able to deliver the next day. The snake was just fine when he arrived.

UPS is horrible around Daytona, late shipments and the people at the local office were kind of rude, but I guess my route kept gettin new drivers, got real bad for a while there.

Fedex is always within a half hour of estimated arrival time in my expierience, I try to urge every shipper to use them for my orders.

Does FedEx normally come back if you are unavailable? A second delivery attempt never happened for my cricket delivery on Friday. No attempt on Saturday. That box is going to smell!