As online retailers strive to offer more and faster shipping options to their customers, more than 1 million consumers have opted for more control over when and where their packages are delivered.

UPS, the most commonly used shipping carrier among the retailers in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide, with 145 clients, offers a personalized delivery service called MyChoice that lets retail customers choose a day and time of delivery to their home address.

The service addresses the fact that, regardless of how fast a retailer gets a package to a recipient’s address, a delivery can be delayed for a day or more if a consumer isn’t home to receive a package, a UPS spokesman says. By giving consumers more control over when and where they receive packages, retailers can ensure their fast fulfillment service hits its targeted delivery time, he adds.

Within the first six months after MyChoice launched in October 2011, more than 1 million consumers subscribed to it, the spokesman says. Those 1 million customers received 7 million packages during the same period, including 1 million packages that UPS re-routed or delivered at a specific time according to a subscriber’s request.

The basic MyChoice service is free, including approximate delivery times and alerts of pending deliveries via e-mail, phone calls or text messages. The free service provides consumers with a delivery alert, and lets them request to have a package held at a UPS shipping center; for a $5 fee per request, they can request delivery at a particular time or to a UPS Store or other address.

Those fee services come at no extra charge for consumers who pay a $40 annual subscription fee.

UPS continues to support the MyChoice program with an extensive marketing program, which will include offering subscriptions at next month’s Internet Retailer 2012 Conference & Exhibition, the spokesman says.