We all know this bullshit. But OK, that’s a reasonable window.
Then "We’ll be there between 11:30 and 3:30. Umm. Ok…
3:30 rolls past… We’ll be there by 5:30!
Me “Fuck it” my wife head out to a bar/restaurant we want to try. On the way there, another ‘update’ comes to me. “We are on our way!”.
So my wife and I (hungry) turn around and go back home. The item (a snowblower) arrives an hour later.
Got it put in the garage, and head back out to eat. Lowes does not know how to schedule deliveries AT ALL. The last thing I wanted delivered was shipped to a different store than I ordered it from and I had to go pick up this ‘delivery’. Two guys from the store had to help me load it into my 4Runner. Luckily it was a workbench, so I could just drop it out of the back onto the floor without worrying about damaging it.
I went into this thread thinking you were talking about friends coming over and didn’t realize my mistake until I got to the snowblower. I was reading thing ‘yeah, that’s fucked up - what the hell were they thinking - OH, it’s a delivery! That makes more sense .’
I’ve sat the entire day waiting for a expensive item, only for it to be delayed three times and never arrive. Modern convenience does trigger its share of rage. Still better than driving two counties over to the snowblower emporium and trying to cram it into a subcompact trunk. But yeah, aggravating as hell.
I ordered a fancy thing from Williams Sonoma once (a mistake) and the fucking thing kept getting pushed back week after week until I received it over two months later. This despite their customer service assuring me it was arriving to the warehouse for shipping in a ‘day or two’ like three times over multiple weeks.
It would be nice if there was some effective sanction for a management that overloads the truck each morning such that the delivery folks have all but no chance of finishing their route on time.
Management is deathly afraid of there being the slightest free time or waste by the end of the day while the workers and the customers pay the price for this overemphasis on squeezing the last penny until it cries.
We are doing well. Not ‘rich’ but well. We are retiring (my wife has two days of ‘work’ left after 33 years there!).
So, also, we bought a new house to get out of the altitude and snow.
And in our new house we have a perfect place for a piano. No, not a Grand, but the best Yamaha electric. It’s beautiful too. Not just a keyboard.
They didn’t even ring the doorbell. Just left it in our driveway. I got a text saying it was delivered. Yep, sure enough. Sitting in our driveway, all 170lbs of it. A little bit over what I can wrangle. Luckily I have a nice neighbor.
Jesus, at least knock or ring the bell and roll it another 15 feet to the garage so I can get it under cover.
This whole fiasco ended up sending me to ER (my hand truck hit me real hard in the shin, that got infected. Shit)
I think our building is at the end of the local Amazon route. Whenever I order something, I get a "delivered between 9am and 11am. Eleven passes by and there’s a “delivered between 1pm and 3:30pm”. Then a “delivered between 6:30pm and 10pm”. On occasion, I’ve gotten another one that says delivered tomorrow!
Yeah, you’d think they would at least ring the bell.
I don’t recall the item, but I recall wrangling with some delivery-scheduler. All they would promise was to back the truck up and drop th eheavy item right off the gate. Like I said, I forget the specifics, but if they would have dropped it in a particular place, or moved it 5-10 feet, it would’ve made my finishing the job a ton easier. My vague recollection is that we were successful on that one. Possibly just because the deliverymen weren’t jerks and welcomed a tip.
I used to try to get the early delivery (or in-home repair person) timeslots. The theory being that if I was one of the first calls, they would not have had time to become late yet. And so would meet their promised window.
I’ve since switched and when offered a choice, try to get close to the last stop of the day. I can (cynically) count on them being late within their window and I have almost my entire day unencumbered by their squishy-soft appointment. And most days my evening plans are soft enough that the latest they could practically still be working is still OK with me. I figure I’m outsmarting them at their crooked game.
Until they call and say “We can’t make it today. How about first thing tomorrow?” Gaah!
Amazon’s computers sure seem eager to advertise a specific future delivery time, long before they have nearly that much certainty.
I think it’d be fun if they were required to state what they’re really assuming. e.g.
Your package will be delivered tomorrow between 8 and 10am. If it gets on the plane coming to your city tonight and then gets to our warehouse within 10 minutes of touchdown and then gets onto the correct delivery truck in the first wave of the morning and there’s no morning rush hour traffic at 8am Tuesday in your big city and the driver’s very first stop is your house.
Since I work from home, a squishy-soft appointment is generally OK. But I am also half deaf. Oh I will hear the doorbell or a phone call. A truck pulling up? Not so much.
“Looks at piano in driveway. Looks at 110lb wife. Umm…” We did get it into the garage, but shit man, I know it was already on an appliance dolly. 15 feet would be all that I would ask.
And I wouldn’t have had to go to the ER.
Ever since COVID these folks are trying to deal with all kinds of shit. And they are completely understaffed. DJT is making sure of that.
How sweet. They bring stuff to your house like that. Here, I, if it wasn’t for Amazon prime, I’d pay the same delivery fee as everyone except, I gotta chase it down when it says it “delivered”. That means it is at the post office, about 12 miles. If you time it just right you can get there when the lone postal employee isn’t sorting, shitting, or eating. Maybe sleeping.
The mail carrier won’t bring pkgs to my door. If it goes in my mail box a zillion miles from my house, it gets stolen.
The few times UPS tried my road the pkg was tossed over the gate. He didn’t even try. I have a intercom to the house out there. All he had to do was push a button. I’d have either passed him thru or told him to leave it by the gate and go down there and get it.
But…Nooooo. Can’t make it easy.
They do have awful jobs. I think the pay is pretty nice for no education requirements.
As someone who has worked in logistics (specifically in software for planning/dispatch optimization) I 100% agree although I think it also needs to come with consumer willingness to understand the pressures that on-demand and next-day services have put on last-mile logistics, because the flip side is that I would prefer:
We really tried to make this delivery, but we gave our delivery driver 300 packages and 6 hours to make them, they managed to get 295, and you were unlucky. Sorry, we’ll try again tomorrow.
to “Arriving between 4 and 6!” while you watch like a hawk out the front window followed by the infuriating “a delivery attempt was made at 4:50:04.566 but failed, drive over to the depot and pick it up yourself.” But I suspect, the same way that people prefer to drive in stop-and-go traffic as long as they’re moving rather than stay on a route that will get them there faster but involve staying put, people prefer to see the package moving with regular updates even if those updates are not necessarily authoritative.
Similarly I wish United Airlines’s dispatchers would be honest and say “we don’t know when your plane will depart” instead of the sign saying “on time for a 2:30PM departure” when it’s 2:27 and we’re all still milling around the gate, then “delayed until 2:40” until 2:45 when it becomes “delayed until 2:58,” then “delayed until 3:05,” then “delayed until 3:11,” then “delayed until 7:30,” then “cancelled.”
But I assume—since this is closer to your world—that it’s basically the same thing: they’re trying their best to keep to their timetable, lack visibility into all the variables, are dealing with inherently unpredictable and cascading issues, and probably know from customer sentiment analysis that most people don’t want to be told “your ETD is ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ man, sorry”.
The additional visibility and knowledge we have now is kind of a curse.
Conversely, we frequently get boxes carefully placed on the top step against the storm door, where 1) you can’t quite see it from indoors, and 2) you can’t open the storm door without knocking the box down the flight of stairs, not to mention 3) it’s for the neighbor with the same house number one street over….
At my age and in my physical condition I have chosen only to order appliances and furniture from local dealers. They seem to be more dependable and responsive to any issues that might crop up.
If someone left a large appliance or even package on my front porch I don’t know what I would do. I would have to start calling people some of who live an hour away to help. Or possibly approach a neighbor I barely know.
Ordering or buying a computer chair has become a difficult problem as I am not able to get the delivered item into the house without assistance. Nor can I lift the pieces to put it together.
So I am struggling with a very decrepit computer chair until I can figure this out!
I think that most of the big box stores offer a paid delivery and assembly service, usually by a third party, to take care of all of that. They’ll dispose of the old item too.
Depends on who you order from. I don’t think my office chair came with that option. On the other hand, the tv was delivered into the room i planned to use it, and the wall mount came with two guys who assembled it, and attached the tv to it. (Yes, i paid extra for the two guys. Well worth it.)
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