Another Amazon Prime Order, Another Delivery Fake-Out From Ontrac

“OnTrac has made Amazon Prime a very expensive joke in Los Angeles,” reader Matthew wrote to Consumerist. How much of a joke? “This has happened at least six times in as many months to my wife and me. Tried contacting OnTrac and couldn’t get through to a human being.” That’s not a very funny joke. Matthew and his wife are far from alone in their dissatisfaction with OnTrac, though.

It seems like a good idea for Amazon to hire smaller, regional shipping companies to handle some of their deliveries, especially with the larger shipping volume with tighter deadlines that Prime membership brings. Unfortunately, many customers trying to deal with Ontrac would disagree.

Matthew’s experience is pretty typical of what readers submit to us. He describes waiting all evening on the couch that is literally next to his front door. He heard nothing, not even a peep or a scratch at the door. No trucks or cars came. His package didn’t come. Yet this is what the OnTrac tracking information said:

Exactly 9:59, was it?

Complaints about Ontrac have become so common that there’s even a dedicated Twitter account that does nothing but retweet them. The person behind it calls him or herself OfftracRob, to match OntracRob, a real Ontrac employee who does his best to intervene when people complain about the company on Twitter.

Here’s a random selection of tweets containing the fewest slurs and swear words from just this past week:

@Newegg you guys need a new company to ship through. I'm in Spokane, WA and never buying through you again. http://t.co/9o6Ioap92U—

Daniel Tolczyk (@TheTolczyk) May 06, 2014

18lb package "delivered" on website, but no knock on door or doorbell. Full household at home, but package not found? FAIL @OnTrac_Shipping—

Merrick M. Tsai (@MerrickTsai) May 06, 2014

Called sephora to tell them how much I hate ontrac shipping now that they switched from ups & the woman dropped 500 points in my beauty bank—

Kitty Patrick (@KittyPatrick) May 06, 2014

Thanks, @OnTrac_Shipping ! I think we're done with @amazon Prime now. http://t.co/hVpWOwRT6j—

John Groseclose (@iaincaradoc) May 06, 2014

Broken promise @amazon @OnTrac_Shipping You missed delivering my sons bday present. Very disappointed. #epicfail—

Russell Fujioka (@russfujioka) May 02, 2014

We’ve tried to contact Ontrac when writing stories about them in the past, and we’ve been posting stories about the company for four and a half years now. The good news is that the company has a real gift for delivering customers’ original packages and the replacements sent by Amazon at the same time.

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist