Which courier do you prefer?

All three carriers are subject to under-delivering on service. Bad pun intended. Since moving to the Southeast:

 

1. The USPS is the least offender. My favorite though is when the carrier blows off the day and marks my package (out for delivery that day) as “undeliverable, business closed.” It was raining lightly…and yes, we live in a single family detached home.
2. UPS: Arrogant (insert questionable language here). Calling their customer service for a recently lost package was like reading a sign that says: “bang head here.”
3. FedEx: Absolutely the worst on the planet, bar none. Arrogant and idiots. Their favorite trick is to reroute our package (90% of the time) to a similar address in a different city, six miles away. True statement. Makes sense that we don’t know our own address. That certain place where none of us want to end up will freeze over before I ever use them to send or receive anything again.
   

 

In fairness after living most of my life on the West Coast, delivery from all three carriers was almost always positive and therefore taken for granted.

@ tubegb

What a mess on South East of Conus!

I do not have such bad experience in Washington State so far except some unexpected delay.

My experience tells me you can have very positive outcomes, or a negative one with any shipper. I’ve gotten records from the Mideast via DHL to NY in a week, I’ve had parts shipped from Eastern Europe via TNT (which I think is now part of Deutsche Post) overnight- i’d get an email saying it was dispatched by the sender and the delivery person would be walking up my front steps by mid-day the next day. And, I had same day cross country service.
I don’t consider any of these shippers ’couriers.’ A courier is a guy in a dark suit with sunglasses, a Halliburton handcuffed to his wrist, and no sense of humor.
As for the US Mail, I'm shocked that it works. But it does....

Records by mail from Middle East ? You mean Turkey, Bill ?
I see some stuff from there on ebay. I also see a lot of records from Israel there and got one once, not expensive. Of course, it was overgraded but playable. I shamed the seller in a very personal message and kept the record. He didn't say anything in return, he knew I was right.
When you get your balls handcuffed to your brain you lose sense of humor quickly, so I don't blame them.

Beruit. And other places nearby. Almost all UK pressings. There are people with great records all over the world. 
New Zealand has some wonderful pressings from the era- so does Australia- big market for British rock/folk/psych from the era, sometimes with the same matrices as the far more expensive UK pressing. In the Court of the Crimson King was released in Australia or NZ as a Vertigo Swirl. How bad is that! (I don't have that one, but wouldn't mind it- oh wait, I'm not supposed to be collecting!). Ah, it's late my friend. Tomorrow, another big adventure!