UPS is much better that the USPS for me. UPS almost always delivers without a signature and the UPS person puts the packages in the carport, where they're out of the rain and can't really be seen from the street. The postal service just abandons them anywhere on the front walk, without even making an effort to put them under the eaves, even when it's raining. The number of steps to the carport and the front door are about the same.

This is my favorite USPS story, though: Some years ago, I had ordered a new part for some equipment at my job. When it didn't arrive, I called the company and it sent another part. About a year later, the first part arrived. The package was stamped--yes, they had actually had a rubber stamp made up--"Found in postal equipment thought to be empty."

Weird. Does the postal service have a policy of deciding something is too light and saying "Well, we won't bother to finish delivering this."?

DH worked for a while in a plant that had a Fed contract to repair USPS equipment: canvas carts, tall metal cage carts, canvas bags, trays. He was astonished at the stuff that just never got delivered. Some carrier hit the wall before the end of his route, or something. CDs, Netflix, Amazon shipments, actual first class letters, computer parts. Just left in the bag or the cart, no attempt made to deliver it.

Then there were the things that had parted from their labels, both "to" and "from", so there was no way to deliver or return them. Now I always label twice, once writing on the actual container, just in case the label comes adrift.

The UPS has delivered hard drives and other computer parts to my house and left them on my front steps.

My front steps are just ten feet in from the sidewalk.

Often when this happens, a removed "signature required" sticker is evident.

I much prefer the post office (Canada Post). If no-one is home for the package, they leave a notice saying which post office it has been left at. There are four post office branches within a ten minute walk from my apartment and the closest one (where my packages are always stored) is less than two blocks away.

UPS on the other hand seems to get very muddled with its tracking. For my last delivery they did delivery attempt 1 fine. Then (the next day, on which I arranged to be home) they claimed a second delivery attempt, which they called the third. Then they (I believe) actually tried a second time. They called this the first attempt. Then (and only then) would they agree to leave it put, so I could get a drive way way out to the industrial park so I could pick up the @%*$# DVDs. I was unimpressed.

There was a huge scandal in Washington DC about 10 years ago with mail carriers throwing away third class mail

There was a huge scandal in Washington DC about 10 years ago with mail carriers throwing away third class mail

Had they been forgetting to spit on it first?

it has all been delivered to my house. The first class mail however....

they literally found a tractor trailer full of undelivered first class mail

Quite the contrary, it is the Postal Service that has failed to fulfill its functions. Several incidents demonstrate the Postal Service’s pattern of failure to deliver mail in a consistently timely and secure fashion. Large caches of undelivered mail have repeatedly been found abandoned, burning, stashed in the homes or cars of postmen, hidden in tractor trailer trucks, or simply piled in warehouses. In July 1994, a surprise audit of three D.C.-area postal facilities uncovered more than three million pieces of undelivered mail, most of it stashed in parked Postal Service trailers, some pieces dating to February 1994. A Price Waterhouse study that same month revealed that only 61 percent of Washington, D.C.’s first class mail was being delivered on time.

In October of 1994 postal inspectors arrested a Washington, D.C., postman for stockpiling four truckloads of undelivered mail in his apartment. Workers had to don surgical masks and robes to remove the mail because the efficiency apartment was overrun by a dog, 15 birds, and 43 turtles, and the mail had become saturated by excrement and the putrescent carcasses of more birds and turtles. Less than 1 percent of the 22,800 pieces of stolen mail was deliverable or salvageable.

although I think the second guy had other issues.

43 turtles

To say the least, Vortex!