While this article will go into more detail regarding the overwhelming unreliability of American shipping services and the affect it is having in terms of data loss, I would like a moment to first give a brief description and example of the effects caused from a critical data loss.

Let’s use a small business for example.  This business contributes to the backbone of America by creating employment and paying taxes along with providing important services for their clients’.  The data stored on their hard drives contained their business portfolios, medical research, databases, and personal images that they cannot imagine never seeing again for personal reasons.  This business researches “data recovery” and becomes completely overwhelmed with advertisements promising everything from cheap, flat rate service to perfect success rates and diagnostics.  After many frustrating conversations with salesmen advertising local, safe, fast, and even courier pickups, they soon realize they are being lured to ship out their precious failed hard drive to an unknown “engineer”.

How can this be if nearly all computer shops, managed solution providers, and even Best Buy, Staples and Micro Center offer this service?  It is called the dirty business of outsourcing.  Computer technicians and sales representatives advertising a service without a proper understanding of what’s involved.  Many times tampering with the damaged drive (causing further damage to the media device from negligence).  We say “tampering” because without proper knowledge of how a device is engineered or access to the professional tools to diagnose the issue, it’s just plain tampering.  They then send it out to a third party with or without your knowledge for a ballooned quote if the data is still salvageable and not lost through transit or malpractice.

Shipping to outsourced companies

The increasing concern of shipping your irreplaceable data to on outside source has been justified in many ways.  Since 2016 we have kept records of shipping delays and losses from reputable shipping providers in America.  We have made many complaints to the corporations and even placed door tags to show our concern to the careless delivery drivers.  We must continuously address the situation usually caused from frequent, irregular changes in drivers.

Avoid shipping if possible and just take the short ride to our safe suburb of Philadelphia.  Can’t make office hours?  No problem!  We have an after hours drop box located in front of the building inside of Collegeville Station.  The building is open for drop offs from 6am until 12am.

Rather ship? Please follow the instructions HERE.

We will list here the most reputable and least reputable US shipping services based on our experiences.

Best – UPS – UPS has always been consistent professionals understanding the importance of their job and what they are delivering to us .

Good – DHL – Never had a loss with DHL and would recommend more for international shipping.

Fair – FEDEX – Many complaints have been filed with FedEx throughout the years from us and their lack of effort.  Complaints range from showing up at off hours and not returning, to leaving fake door tags and even lying about returning.  Many delays have been caused from FedEx.

Mediocre – USPS – The unreliability of the United States Postal Service has been on a downward spiral for many years; however, we’ll keep it short and to the point.  They have been known to reroute shipments throughout the country causing major delays and even gone as far as delivering to another party.   Priority or express mail is recommended to avoid a larger risk of delay or loss.