Safe nightly temperature to order bonsai online

Cable

Omono
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Sheffield Village, Ohio
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I have had good luck with USPS when I use their boxes with the fixed-rate shipping. However this is only good for seedlings or small trees. Anything larger... and I refuse to ship with them.

Just recently, while I still lived in California, I had placed an order for a few bonsai pots that were being shipping via USPS. The day they were to be delivered, I made sure I stayed home the entire day because I wanted to make sure I received the pots. When sitting in my office, I look out at the street in front of the house, and can see any truck that pulls up, or any delivery person who walks up to our door.

Imagine my surprise when I get a "package delivered" notification, despite no one approaching my house. I immediately called the local office, and they said, in not so many words, that it isn't unusual for the delivery people to "batch process" the delivery notifications while they start their routes, and then deliver the packages later. Wait, they said, and the box will show up. Well it didn't show up... that day or the next. Finally, after I physically went down to the post office to talk to a manager, they pulled up the GPS info for the delivery truck, and realized they had, in fact, delivered my box to the wrong address. My pots had gone to a neighbor... but they refused to tell me which neighbor it was because they didn't want to cause friction. Instead they sent a different delivery person out to talk to the household where they delivered my box... and those people denied having received anything. :( So there ya go. And even AFTER all of this, the pots were insured, and trying to get the insurance payment from USPS was a trial - despite their admission that they had caused the problem.

Never again... If you can't ship via UPS or FedEx I won't order anything expensive from you. I can't control which carrier Amazon uses... but Amazon has such a bullet-proof delivery guarantee that I don't sweat it if they ship USPS and my package is lost en-route. It's on them because they decided to use a less reputable carrier.

I had an order I had drop shipped USPS go sideways a couple of months ago. It ended up in the wrong city in Michigan. It got marked in their system as "returned" but neither the customer nor the shipper ever got it. I called the wrong Post Office (which was more difficult than I was expecting) and got ahold of someone who remembered the package and said they had forwarded it to the correct address. It finally got there after like two weeks. Thankfully, it was only wire!

I'm keeping my ban on shipping trees until temps in most of the US are at least above freezing during the day. I often have deliveries that arrive in the morning and have to sit for hours and hours until the person gets home from work. I also ordered some seedlings earlier this winter and I missed the delivery notification so they sat in the mailbox all night. Fortunately when I realized they had been delivered and unboxed they weren't frozen.
 

Cadillactaste

Neagari Gal
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NE Ohio: zone 4 (USA) lake microclimate
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When I want a box of orchids to ship to me in winter, via FedEx, I request box to be held at a local FedEx office. That was it does not ride around on a delivery truck all day, or get left on the wrong porch.

In general, having package held at office for pick up does deter porch pirates.

For Fed Ex, night temps in Memphis are key. The Memphis hub is were packages moving east to west or west to east will spend time on the ground, on carts changing planes.
To go to a FedEx store it's a 45 minute drive to get there for me. I can see the reasoning for your picking up. I always wondered why that was an option. Now you clearly made me understand the benefits of it.
 

Bonsai Nut

Nuttier than your average Nut
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Charlotte area, North Carolina
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Good news is that here in NC we have a long circle drive, and I made it clear to all the delivery guys, including the USPS, that it is ok to drive up the drive and drop packages on the front porch instead of having to walk up the driveway. Also, the USPS driver here seems to have been on the route for a long time and is driving a personal vehicle. I wave to him when I see him on the road. I think things could be very different here than in Orange County, CA, where we would often get different USPS drivers on different days of the week.

My UPS driver in the OC I knew pretty well. He even delivered some live koi a few times, asked about them, and I invited him into my back yard to see my koi pond. He was amazed that you could ship live fish from Hawaii and they would live :)
 

ceriano

Shohin
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Richmond, Virginia
USDA Zone
7a
My last three deliveries from Fedex were delivered to my neighbor, one being a tree. I filed a missing package report with them and three days later the neighbor shows up with the box. I don't know if they contacted him or what. The last box, my husband just walked over and picked up off of their porch. Google Earth clearly shows our house as the address the packages are addressed to, but the drivers are just lazy. The neighbor's house is on the road, ours sits back down a longish driveway. I have made numerous attempts to contact them, but can't get past their automated system. It is beyond frustrating!!!! Amazon and UPS never have a problem finding my house.
Same here. I stay away from both FedEx and USPS.
 

ceriano

Shohin
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Richmond, Virginia
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I received the Elm tree today. Nice packaging I must say. It shed some leaves but otherwise it seems fine to me.
 

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