I just checked and I had 45 deliveries in 2019. To the best of my recollection, they were all on time or early. Admittedly, I didn’t pay close attention to most of them so they could have been late and I didn’t realize.
everything on time Sat and Sun. Have a few items due tomorrow and Wed. What is funny is most of these shipments go from Durham to Durham and then to me, I guess that is 2 different warehouses. Once their new really big local warehouse opens this year I assume stuff will come from there.
Is that a typical week for you?
That seems like an awful lot of deliveries.
RDU system? I helped one of the centers open! Probably it went from the Fulfillment Center to the Sortation Center and then to the Direct Delivery Station or the USPS. I would have to see a label to say for sure. We are odd in that even if the Direct Delivery Station in physically inside or attached to the FC or SC (such as in Cleveland) the label and tracking still shows as a “move” as it is relocated from one inventory/invoice to another one. I know of a couple places that show “in transit to the next facility” even though its basically just going down a belt, through a hole in the wall, and from there to the van route.
You would be surprised. I’ll let BD answer for himself but I know many people who are getting 3-8 packages a week. Some people literally order every day and sometimes twice a day. We peasants at Da Jungle sometimes recognize their names if we work the same lanes over a week. Depending on when and where mostly even orders placed the same day are treated as separate and sometimes because of where the product is (what Fulfillment Center has what item) an order for 3-10 things can come from 2-3 different places in different packages just to meet up at the Delivery Station.
Seattle insists we lose money on shipping and after 5 years I believe them. You can be very very fast or very very cheap; they chose the former over the latter every time.
Colour me edumacated!
There seems to be a bit of implicit waste in the ‘don’t wait for the other stuff, just get the first one off NOW!’ principle, but I guess in the case of people who have a truck turning up for them every day, it all evens out in the end
I’d say the majority of my stuff is on time, but enough if it isn’t that it bothers me. Typically, it’s my same day/next day delivery that’s late. And, to make it worse, if it’s late, it’s usually really late. Like if I order something Monday morning for same day delivery and by 6pm it’s not out for delivery, I know I’m not going to see it until Thursday or Friday. About the only good thing about that is that I can complain multiple times and get multiple credits. More often than not, I’ll end up paying between 25-50% of the original price by the time it’s done and over with.
The trick, I’ve found is to not only use their chat system, but also find their social media form (look for someone complaining on facebook and watch for Amz to give them a link or email address to contact them). Use that and you’ll get a response fairly quickly (less than 12 hours) and often time another credit. Even better, if anyone tells you, in writing, they guarantee you’ll get your shipment by tomorrow. Complain again when they miss that deadline as well.
I’m not sure if it helps or not, but I usually make a point of telling them that what I ordered had some urgency about it. It’s for a project, it’s for a birthday gift etc.
Granted, some of these things really can wait, but I’m not paying them $120 a year to get the exact same service as all the people not paying $120 a year.
I’ve also had a lot of problems with there suddenly being no same day or next day items available. Not ‘I can’t find any X that I can get today’, literally nothing. Not a single item. If I ask about it on facebook, I’ll get a bunch of bizarre answers ranging from ‘they’re probably out of stock on the item you want’ to 'I’m a bit confused, we don’t actually have anything called ‘next day shipping’ and she gave me a link to their different speeds of deliveries. One of them being ‘one day shipping - guaranteed next day’.
TL;DR, yeah, their shipping isn’t that great. It works the majority of the time, but with how much I order, I still see a late delivery at least once a month.
I do live in the RDU area. I have bought a bunch of Amazon items lately but that is not typical for me. Most of what I bought has been $15 or less. I bought more expensive items from REI but for those they are sending them to the local store so there is no shipping charge. REI is having a big sale now, for example I got a very nice kayak paddle that normally is $275 and I got it for $80. Got a $100 sleeping pad for $30.
Very good service here in Central Jersey.
My only beef is how they meet their two-day free Prime shipping with certain slippery definitions of “two-day shipping”.
Sometimes their funny math ends up with an in-stock package coming five business days later, but somehow still being a “two-day shipping” package.
Other than those shenanigans, everything runs smoothly.
I live about 38 miles West of a an Amazon warehouse in Hazelwood Missouri. I know not everything I order comes from that location but even so most of my items arrive on time. Some transferred to he USPS, other via Amazon marked vans.
Last year there were lots of late deliveries via what I’m told is Amazon Flex. That’s where individuals in private vehicles are paid to make deliveries. I’d get massages telling me “the driver can’t access the building without a gate code”. But there is no gate, just drivers who don’t wish to drive down our narrow road to reach our subdivision.
No problems to mention this year though.
I agree with what you’re saying. Over the past few years they’ve made more and more of an attempt at explaining that it’s two day shipping, not two days from the time you press ‘buy’ to the time it’s at your door.
In your example, if you called them on that, they’d likely tell you that it may have taken 3 days before they shipped it, but it was only in transit for 2 days.
The trick, I’ve found is to always check the ‘guaranteed delivery date’ and use that against them. Again, with your example, if you ordered on Monday and got it on Friday, you can go back to them and explain that the guaranteed delivery date was Wednesday (or Thursday, as the case may be) and go from there.
And, of course, all of this only applies to things “Shipped from Amazon”.
They’ll still try to get out of it, but just keep pushing back and eventually they’ll toss you a few bucks to go away.
I have Amazon Prime, also. Keep in mind that, even if you buy something through Amazon Prime, all bets are off on the 1-day delivery policy if what you buy is coming from a 3rd party.
I haven’t seen that. Each time I go to buy some Prime item, it’s happily telling me “Buy in the next 1:22:45 to have by Thursday!” regardless of how true that is. In fact, the other day, I bought something with that message (buy in the next hour and have by tomorrow) and, the next morning, was told that it shipped and would be there the next day. It wasn’t time sensitive so I didn’t bother raising a fuss but they continue to promise pipe dreams as often as ever.
Yeah, it’s buried on their site somewhere. Also, IIRC, they attempted to change the definition of ‘guarantee’ from meaning something WILL happen (ie a delivery date) to ‘it’ll probably happen, we’ll try our best’. I don’t know how that worked out for them.
If I were you, I’d double check the confirmation email. As soon as the date/time on that email passes, call/email/chat with them and complain. If you’re paying for prime, you should get what you’re paying for, otherwise, why bother?
The more often people complain, the more likely they’ll be to fix the situation.
I have Amazon Prime and have never received a package late. A few have been delivered in one day instead of two. If it’s a small item, it usually comes from the post office otherwise it’s always UPS.
Not worth the effort. The first time they were apologetic and offered a free month. Any time since it then it was obvious that their attitude was not giving a shit and saying “Oh well, that’ll happen to ya…”
Yeah, I usually do it when I’m sitting in front of the TV and have 20 minutes to bicker with them about it. They’ll absolutely try to dismiss it with an apology. You have to push back a little. If it happens with any frequency at all, find a link to their online form or an actual email address and contact them that way. It escalates the issue past the drones that are feeding you canned replies…or worse, the bots they use now.
I have not complained to them but if it keeps up I will.
When we started making deliveries almost 80% were through flex drivers (and your understanding of who they are is correct). Those kind of problems were so regular that within 6 months almost all stations went to vans and logistics companies running them. A flex driver once said he could not find the building the Old Wench works in despite it being one of THE major buildings in downtown Pittsburgh. These days almost everyone across the system still uses some flex drivers for a few specific smaller routes but we’re talking like 5-10% of the volume and with a waiting list of drivers wanting to get on board - three “fails” in a quarter and you may find your name crossed off the list.
(I am not sure of the exact amount right now but flex used to get around $86 for a route that can be done in 3 hours; more for bigger routes. And for the most part it means an honest three hours and not “we say its 3 even though it takes 7”. Even with using your own car its not a bad after work gig. The way it works is we have x-number of flex routes today of 3-5 hours by half-hour blocks. A text message goes out and “pings” everyone on the trained-and-approved list. If you want to claim a route you hit the link and pick the size/time-sized one you want; you get a confirmation. You then come and load up at the time you are given to start. I know folks who make more for us than they do from their “real jobs” so if you like doing it its worthwhile doing it well.)
My only complaint with Amazon is the claim they will deliver the same day I order a product. I look at an item I want, the listing says buy this item in 3 hours and 15 minutes and it will be delivered today. I have never had an item delivered that day.
Another thing about Amazon that puzzles me. I live about 3 miles as a crow flies from a huge Amazon warehouse. Everything I have ordered that has come out of that warehouse goes to a delivery center in a town 30 miles south of me. Then it gets delivered. Seems like it would be easier to do the deliveries right from the big warehouse. There is a huge parking lot near the warehouse that is packed full of Amazon delivery vehicles too.
Probably a storage lot type of deal for the delivery station; that’s all the vans you see.
As for the rest, it only makes at best a sort of sense and then only if you’ve worked in sales and/or shipping on that level. Assuming what is closest to you is a Fulfillment Center and not one of our warehouses (the former fill boxes for you, the latter fills the FCs for us) chances are it pre-dates us doing any sort of deliveries. The sortation system feeding the USPS only really started in 2014 and the AMZL van deliveries by us in 2016. And a delivery station as we operate them takes a huge footprint compared to some. It is cheaper and easier for us to operate from another building nearby than to try to retrofit an existing building of ours especially since most of them are pretty much max capacity. And I hate to admit it but we still don’t know what we’re going to be when we grow up. Amazon built a super-automated sortation center that could do over 300,000 packages a day in January 2015 ------ and then started building up the delivery routes and system. So we have a building operating at 1/3 capacity that still costs 100% to heat and maintain. As things started to move to where we may someday bypass the USPS, UPS and everyone else and totally operate ourselves - and for others who hire “us” - we don’t know what we’ll need. So right now its “rent and plan and own wisely” and see where next year leads us.