Once I told Amazon a package had not been delivered. They told me there was a picture of it. But when I looked at the picture, it clearly wasn’t my yard. So it works that way as well.
There are two gas stations near me, both owned by the same guy. One is right off the interstate & now, right near the new Amazon building & is in the neighborhood of 60 - 80¢ more than his other one < ½ mile up the road. Yet drive by the expensive one in the evening & it’s filled with blue vans filling up. I’m kinda surprised some boss hasn’t told them they can’t use the closer station.
Yup, thanks for the proof that I wasn’t visited by porch pirates…or your delivery person.
I’ve definitely seen in my neighborhood, and experienced myself, Amazon deliveries all in the same day from an Amazon truck, a contractor in a sorta-marked truck, a solo contractor, FedEx, UPS and USPS.
One thing Amazon has going for it is the ability to diversify delivery. Granted, most retailers have the ability to choose between FedEx, UPS and USPS for every delivery but Amazon can also be like “Nah we’ll get it there ourselves.”
I believe they are all contractors, in that none of them are Amazon employees. There’s Amazon Flex, Amazon Delivery Service Partners, and maybe other things, which all translate into the drivers not being Amazon employees.
Flex are the people using their own cars or other vehicles. DSP are people who work for an independent company that is (usually exclusively) contracted by Amazon to perform Amazon deliveries in Amazon branded trucks.
I had an Amazon first today. A very stupid first. A first that any sane routing algorithm would account for but utterly failed at.
I live in a secure building with a doorman. Packages are accepted only between 8am and 8pm 7 days a week. That info is in my standing delivery instructions for all packages. The doorman doesn’t accept packages; he simply sends the delivery person up the elevator to the appropriate floor and it’s up to the delivery person to schlep the package to the correct front door.
Right now I have 3 items on order that should dribble in today or tomorrow or maybe Sunday. I have Prime.
Today at 7:30 I receive a text from Amazon HQ saying the delivery driver wants to chat. I click the link to log into their site and I see a chat that opens with what is probably a canned phrase: “I’m nearing your address, so please ensure your pets are secured and a porch light is on for safety.” Sunrise was an hour ago; it’s fully blinding Florida daylight bright out.
I immediately text back “This is a secure building, you cannot get in before 8am.”
About 10 minutes later I get a text back which is written in bad English with bad typing but says in effect “They won’t let me in until after 8am.”. Which is still 15-20 minutes in the future as he’s txting.
Followed a couple of minutes later by what’s almost certainly an automated message: “Your delivery could not be completed. It might be attempted again later in the day if the driver has time. Otherwise it’ll be tomorrow or some later day.”
Yeah, sure seems to me that maybe their routing algorithm needs some work. As does the UI on their website to make it possible to define delivery timeframes in a way the computer can reliably interpret.
Perhaps they’re afraid of people going all Karen on them and saying “I’ll only take deliveries from 9 to 9:30am on Tuesday at my ordinary suburban home. Any other time is terribly inconvenient. Terribly.” With the consequence that they attempt a lot of deliveries to closed businesses and locked-down buildings that could have been avoided.
In the alternative, perhaps Amazon HQ could learn the habits and hours of actual buildings and businesses, not just trust the Karens to restrain themselves. After umpteen hundred failed early morning or late night deliveries to the 450 apartments in the building, perhaps they’d catch on to the pattern? Or detail a human to investigate? Nope. That shit costs money.
So the guaranteed failing deliveries happen over and over and over and over.
My (not so) WAG is that they have a credit account there that offers an even better deal than the cheap site. The owner may want to increase traffic in the more costly location - maybe the drivers buy snacks in the shop.
When I started work as a fleet manager for the NHS, we had accounts with two local garages - neither one part of a chain, and both the most expensive around. Of course, we did not pay the full pump price, but I often had people asking why we used such expensive suppliers.
After a few months, I introduced a fuel card which was cheaper still, had multiple outlets, and could not be used to buy anything other than fuel. Any suggestion that a few drivers had been putting 9 gallons in, signing for 10 and taking the balance in goodies.
And such an account is probably for a fixed price per liter, so their fuel costs are more predictable, not going up and down every day.
More likely a price that DOES change every day based on a wholesale or ex-refinery price index.
I suspect a few letters or a word are missing from the last sentence. But I get your point.
Here’s a similar US product for folks who’ve never heard of such a thing
A few years ago I was able to enter special delivery instructions in my Amazon account for my work address which included allowable delivery times. That option may still be there if you dig around.
I have those instructions already in there. As I said. I have had them set ever since I moved here.
The real problem IMO is it’s just a text field. There isn’t a calendar / time input type gizmo that would let you get specific about your delivery window in a way a non-AI program could understand. The closest thing they do have is an option to select [closed on Saturday] and [closed on Sunday]. Neither of which are applicable to my situation.
Lastly, it appears that this text field isn’t routinely supplied to the drivers or else they (always / often / sometimes) are not diligent about reading and heeding info intended to make their own jobs easier and more successful.
Or the drivers don’t have enough leeway to be able to take the text field into account. If they’re handed a route and schedule they have to follow, then the failure is in whoever or whatever makes the schedule not reading that field.
In my Amazon business account I can “Edit delivery preferences” and set delivery hours for each day, and set certain days as closed. There is not a similar setting for my regular personal account.
Or the drivers have a route, and they don’t see that field until they are at the location. Some orders when ordered have an appointment time, and some customers accidentally order the earliest time. Which may be before 8 am.