If only it were Apple's problem that delivery companies are unhelpful to recipients, then they'd have an incentive to give their money to the least unhelpful of them and improvements might be seen.

If your bad experience makes you less likely to buy from Apple in future, then it *is* their problem. As Apple have a monopoly on Macs, they are less vunerable to this than PC vendors.

Ideally, online shops would give you a choice of couriers (with a simple range of prices). But I suspect it makes things much easier for the shop to only deal with one delivery company.

I wonder what it would take for a courier to phone *before* making any attempt to deliver, to better co-ordinate things.