Sorry to post on an old thread but I came acrosss this whilst searching something completely different amazon related and thought I'd chip in to give an insight from a Amazon drivers POV and answer some of the points made for the strange ways we sometimes work.
From the outset, any driver who doesn't even try to attempt to deliver the parcel should not be working for Amazon and if it was known that a driver only attempted to post a missed you card instead of delivering the parcel, he would get fired immediately. Amazon applies fines to drivers by taking them off the road for 1-3 days for 'offences' such as not reattempting to deliver a parcel at least twice after the first delivery attempt. Bringing back any parcel to the depot without very good reason will be frowned upon. As you can imagine, turning up to an address and not being able to deliver, knowing you'll have to come back later to try again is demoralising firstly and a real time consumer to an already long day.
Personally, I make every attempt to deliver the parcel on the first visit, whether it be at a neighbour, neighbour of neighbour, opposite neighbour, anywhere close by. We are not allowed to put parcels through letterboxes (even if they fit) unless it is specified on our scanning devices, which is usually only for the very thin envelope-like parcels or small DVD sized parcels. If we do post something other than these through letterboxes, and enter that the customer has accepted the parcel - they will come down on us hard, weekly bonus lost, days off the road as punishment etc... this will only occur if a customer calls Amazon and reports that the parcel has not been received because for e.g. Your not at home and you have received a notifications saying the parcel has been delivered. Chances are, the delivery attendant has put it through the letterbox and taken a chance so he doesn't have to come back later.
Drivers that leave parcels in hidden locations hoping you'll find them is something I'm against but you see the motivation behind it. If you have any kind of safe location that the driver could leave a package, specify this when you place your order - it really helps us and you get your parcel safely and quickly. You can even specify a preferred neighbour. I've visited many properties with enclosed front porches who have a door where when the handle is lifted, it self locks and can't be unlocked without the key, leave it open if your expecting a delivery and we will lock it after we leave. Some front porches have windows above the door, leave it ajar and we can drop small packets into the porch, locked side doors to gardens are sometimes good, weather, size, contents permitting obviously.
On average, I'm delivering 120 parcels a day, we start at 7am to sort and load our own routes then deliver throughout the day until we are finished. They want us to deliver on average 20 parcels per hour but with so many external factors, this can be difficult hence why drivers are tempted to take shortcuts to save time.