One side effect of the growth of Amazon is the replacement of "decent" jobs with absolutely soul sucking ones.
In the early 2000's I knew people that worked as delivery drivers for UPS or FedEx and it was a decent job. They seemed happy. Now I see the Amazon delivery people, and they look majorly stressed out as if they are on the edge of collapse. Many times they are delivering things at 10pm desperately trying to meet their quotas.
I think a lot of the same thing happened in the retail as well. I see the salespeople at malls or brick and mortar retail stores. Even though it is stressful, at least they get to be somewhat human in that they talk to people and have some degree of freedom to move around. Compare that with the Amazon warehouse workers whose every second has been planned out with maximally efficiency and who so afraid of losing their jobs that they are afraid to go to the bathroom.
It seems the "decent" jobs are going away, replaced by ones that turn workers into robots to better extract value from their labor.
I think we're all guilty of contributing to this problem. We all say we're for livable wages and then don't vote with our dollars as often as we should. I'm definitely guilty of going to Amazon because a book is a few dollars cheaper there and I can get it in two days instead of a week.
If we care about workers and corporate behavior, we need to be willing to pay a little more for products that are made by companies who's ethics we can get behind. Purism and System76 are good examples of this in the laptop space.
When we do vote with our dollars, the results are often impressive, as seen by the surge in availability of organic meat and produce.
If we care about workers and corporate behavior we need to change the law (and elect/appoint legislators and political executives and law enforcement agents and judges who will follow/enforce existing laws) to allow workers to unionize, increase the minimum wage, enforce fairer working hours, safer working conditions, better worker protections from fraud and theft, etc.
If Amazon wants to run a delivery network it should have to own the trucks, pay the workers a salary, guarantee them basic labor rights, and so on. Foisting all of the legal and financial liability for bad practices onto fragmented and poorly managed subcontractors who only exist to serve Amazon as a single customer is a tremendous abuse.
Federal antitrust action against monopolies and monopsonies would be helpful too.
Individual consumers can’t possibly have full information about the supply chain of every item they buy, and we can’t expect consumers to solve this type of problem.
Upvoted, because very valid points overall. That being said..
>Individual consumers can’t possibly have full information about the supply chain of every item they buy
Of course not, however, they don't need full information to hear, at some point or another, that Amazon is a poor place to work.
And it isn't as if the government has a solid track record of producing new regulation lately. Can you name one well-executed regulatory initiative the US Federal Government has implemented in the last 20-30 years? Or better yet, one well-executed major infrastructure project?
I'm genuinely curious, maybe I'm just cynical, but I'm not sure it's even possible anymore for the government to be functional at any deeper level.
One big federal problem with antitrust and other corporate–related law is that we have now had an unbroken half century of “conservative” domination of the US Supreme Court. Over that time consumer, worker, citizen, and small-business friendly interpretations of a wide variety of laws have been steadily replaced by interpretations friendly to wealthy/corporate interests.
That control should have been broken after Scalia died but the GOP-controlled Senate broke with any pretense of good faith or respect for norms or precedent and refused to allow even a moderate compromise candidate to come to a Senate confirmation vote. After regaining control of the presidency the Senate then eliminated the filibuster so it could force radical GOP ideologues through onto the bench.
> I'm not sure it's even possible anymore for the government to be functional at any deeper level.
This is absurd. The US civil service is full of highly competent experts without whom we would all be exposed to grave risks every day. They do their work conscientiously and seriously, largely out of the spotlight.
Let me recommend you read Michael Lewis’s book The Fifth Risk, or at least listen to one of these interviews about it:
>Let me recommend you read Michael Lewis’s book The Fifth Risk, or at least listen to one of these interviews about it:
I'm not sure I need to read a biased polemic about how big government is good and the Trump admin is bad.
>The US civil service is full of highly competent experts without whom we would all be exposed to grave risks every day.
I've worked for government agencies, and this is certainly not how I would describe the workers there. I'd say this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21805768 would more closely represent my typical experience with civil servants.. rampant incompetence.
Isn’t is possible that government bureaucracy is simultaneously both big, wasteful, and sometimes incompetent as well as necessary and staffed by a core of skilled, hardworking people? I’ve applied for govt contractor jobs and the emphasis placed on checking every box while blindly ignoring any other indicia of aptitude for the job (ie can you prove you have 4 years experience with Microsoft Office?) is infuriating. But its basically a big company- you get good employees with the bad, just harder to fire the bad ones.
Amazon is a monopsony with respect to its delivery subcontractors. They are not real independent businesses in a real market, but are wholly reliant on Amazon, using Amazon branding and with most aspects of their business dictated by Amazon. The only reason Amazon has set things up this way is because it (a) allows them to deliberately abuse their subcontractors’ workers in ways that would be unlawful if they directly employed them, and (b) shields them from various kinds of legal risks which they should be liable for.
Disclaimer: I am not an expert in Amazon’s delivery network or other business practices. You’d have to ask a labor lawyer for a full account.
Requiring them to follow contractor vs w2 employee rules is not making them any bigger or smaller. Frankly, I'm not sure how they are skirting the law thus far. I'm not even sure they own the trucks that have Amazon branding on them. I have read some claims that the subcontractors have to buy or lease the vehicles from Amazon.
Can you explain what you mean? I don’t understand what you are trying to say. Specifically, what do you consider to be “grandstanding” and which “feedback” are you referring to?
I agree with you, but one feature all of the examples you gave have in common is that they're only accessible to certain demographics. When you make <$1000 a month, as many people do, organic produce doesn't seem very practical, let alone an eye-watering $3800 for a System76 box when compared with one made in a sweatshop for a fifth the price (and I know System76 offers generous payment plans, but not to people with poor credit, which excludes a large number of low income folks -- e.g. me, once upon a time).
Simón Borreo, one of the founders of Rappi, said a few years ago in an interview[1] that the wildfire success of Rappi and other on-demand startups in Latin America and other emerging markets is due to vastly lower labor costs. The unfortunate reality is that by and large pricing for many items is artificially low due to (hyper)exploitation happening somewhere up the pipeline -- if something is cheap and accessible, often it is because somewhere up the chain, wages are lower or labor conditions are poorer. (Incidentally I think Simón's point should make everyone living in countries with strong labor and minimum wage laws who values those things highly suspicious of the on-demand model and the lobbying efforts of unicorns in that space)
It's relatively easy to drive availability for the small subset of the population who didn't notice the apples on their grocery bill cost $5.99 a pound because they were organically grown on a small biodynamic farm in Oregon that treats its workers kindly. It's much, much harder (or outright intractable) to drive availability for everyone else -- under the current system.
Voting with dollars is hard when Amazon hoovers up their competitors. You may be buying from an Amazon subsidiary without even realizing it (e.g. UK's largest "not Amazon" book site is owned by Amazon).
Just vote with your votes for fair wages instead of tax breaks for Bezos.
It shouldn't be on the customer to investigate every company they deal with. The public will only know when it becomes so bad that these kind of news stories start coming out. If public opinion is that bad, it should be regulated. Or the drivers need to unionize. I think it's only a matter of time before the drivers join the teamsters.
I use eBay for books. Sellers pay a lower commission and a 3rd party seller is sending your book so you're supporting small business. The book is always cheaper and even more so if you buy used. The only catch is that it takes longer than 1 day and that's a dealbreaker for many.
No only indirectly via those choices but also by removing any and all “play” (inefficiency) from systems. Some automation is good and brings steadiness (removes errors), but other efficiencies basically remove jobs.
Do we need HFT trading? Did we need traders in the pit? In any case, this resulted in the elimination of good jobs.
We could “automate” much of sports and just have fantasy leagues, why not?
Automating transportation, same thing. It will eliminate meaningful jobs. We are all contributing to this acceleration.
So we’re destroying jobs in many ways. From preferring auto checkouts to buying from amazon to putting services “in the cloud”.
This is an interesting take on jobs, similar to what Ancient Romans had –– they preferred to not automate certain jobs to ensure that slaves would have things to work on :)
At the moment we’re automating low hanging fruit and some arduous manual things (with agricultural automation and factory automation), but it will keep on creeping up.
There is only a certain percentage of people with aptitude to go further and further up the value chain. What do we do for the many who just don’t have what it takes? We’ve taken all their jobs away. A baseline UBI isn’t an answer. People will want more. People have _some_ ambition. Not everyone is made out to finding things to do at home all day (we need only look at retirees for data). What are they going to volunteer for? It’ll all be automated.
> People will want more. People have _some_ ambition. Not everyone is made out to finding things to do at home all day (we need only look at retirees for data). What are they going to volunteer for? It’ll all be automated.
I don't know if this is true. Sure, if you grow up in a society where work is an important part of your self-worth for much of your life, it makes sense that upon retirement it's hard to see things differently.
But suppose you're raised in a society where this is not the case? Where for some, there isn't the often almost traumatic transition from play to school and school to work?
I'm inclined to believe that in such a society there will be different kinds of people, some who enjoy the tedious work, some who focus on art, and some who mostly fart around and remind the rest of us to take a break, so to speak.
As a child, I was always busy starting activity groups. I enjoyed learning for its own sake (preserved in part by not having to go to high school until I was around 17). I read voraciously. I explored. I learned a degree of diligence and discipline by other means that, in hindsight, felt a lot more natural than "do your homework". If I didn't 'have' to work I would probably still be doing the kinds of stuff that we now call work.
I've kind of become less certain that this is true for everyone, because other children seemed to mostly enjoy socializing and relaxing in various ways. But I can imagine there's a use for that too, and if we do manage to automate everything it's not like we can't afford these types of people too. I still suspect that with these other children perhaps they just hadn't yet found what innately motivates them.
Problem is deeper than that, much widespread than one company (Amazon). It's the culture of modern Western civilization. We're all guilty of it, so I'm not blaming anyone or any country. When everything is driven by profit, pure utility, regardless of its currency (it can be time not just money), what we are living is inevitable. Environmental degradation is just another manifestation of the same root problem, climate change, income disparity, you name it.
FedEx and UPS are likely hit by this as well. Given driver behavior in the past few years (throw packages at doorstep, buzz all units in building and don't wait for an answer before speeding off), they're probably judged on packages delivered, so they're optimizing for quantity, not quality.
I wouldn't blame Amazon's logistics group for this, but simply the rise of delivery shopping (in large part fueled by Amazon). It's really hard to scale that, especially at the low (or zero) shipping prices customers have been trained to expect.
It is a race to the bottom with one man having more wealth than 20 million Americans. Amazon delivery folk, and warehouse folk, need to unionize and demand better wages and working conditions.
While I haven’t seen Amazon day in the wild, I have to marvel at their marketing folks who have captured mindshare by coopting what used to be (and still is in my house) grocery day - when we do our weekly shopping - into Amazon day.
To me, it’s these little moves which capture an inch of mindshare at a time that really bring home the power of marketing.
Prime members can choose a "Prime Day", meaning consolidating purchases into one day of your choice (say Thursday). This might be a bigger triumph in marketing. Convincing customers who pay a premium for 2-day shipping to accept delivery a week (or more) out, by choice. Genius!
That's true to an extent, but unfortunately unions (at least in the US) tend to end up mimicking the same corporate behavior they are supposed to be placing a check on. The get bigger and more powerful and they start to take and take with no concern for the fallout, and like corporations, they get politicians to do their bidding at the expense of the general population.
There are towns near me teetering on bankruptcy, while the police and firefighters can retire after 20 years of service with a pension equal to 80% of their last 3 years of pay. Any effort to reform what is obviously an unsustainable agreement that never should have been struck in the first place is meet with a wall of resistance and veiled threats to public safety.
In the private sector, unions have had a long history of opposing environmental regulations out of fear that it would affect employment in heavy manufacturing. Auto workers unions have repeatedly opposed any effort to invest in public transportation and reduce auto dependency.
I've heard that Scandinavia has had better luck with unions, but here in the U.S. unions have been every bit as self-serving and bullying as the corporate overloads they're supposedly a counter balance to. I'd love to see better restraints on corporate power, but I'm not holding my breath for unions to be anything but one more moneyed interest.
Sure, US unions need some reforms, just like the plutocrats need to be reined in.
And yet, if there are moneyed interests promoting the goals of big business and the rest of the ruling class, isn't it better to balance that out with whatever imperfect form of unionism is currently available while advocating for the necessary reforms? An anti-worker imbalance in money and power seems worse than that.
That's what I believed when I was younger. However, after watching unions in action, they seem to make things even worse, especially for younger workers. I don't think the answer to outsized corporate power is to try and balance it with outsized union power.
What I'd like to see is simply more decentralization of power, something like the "trust busting" under Teddy Roosevelt. When any organization gets past a certain scale it seems to lose touch with basic values and decency. You see this with countries too. Small states like Singapore or Denmark don't often start needless wars or meddle in the affairs of others, the way superstates like the U.S., Russia or China do.
My experience with Amazon delivery guys is they look completely lost, and I don't think it is their fault. They are nice, nicer than postmen and deliverymen from well established companies like UPS, but as soon as something unexpected happen (if you can call "not at home" unexpected) things become complicated.
I often get "I don't know", "I need to call my boss", "this is not my route", etc... They don't have the master key for my mailbox or entry hall, they don't have a drop off point where I can pick the package later, I can't even go to the warehouse and pick my package there, tracking events are inaccurate, times are highly irregular ... None of that happen with other delivery companies.
They really look like amateurs doing their best with limited means, it is difficult to imagine they are backed by one of the biggest and most technologically advanced companies in the world.
> They don't have the master key for my mailbox or entry hall
Why would you expect someone to have your keys? That’s not a reasonable expectation.
Totally common in the US. It's not the keys to your house but to the common areas of your building, such as the lobby and hallways where packages can be left.
How many buildings might a delivery person deliver to over a day-long shift roaming around a large area? Does each one have to carry thousands of these keys? How do they distribute thousands of keys to thousands of delivery people working in a given area?
>Now I see the Amazon delivery people, and they look majorly stressed out as if they are on the edge of collapse. Many times they are delivering things at 10pm desperately trying to meet their quotas.
Even UPS sounds.. not great. I have a friend who's a delivery driver for UPS and especially this time of year he has days where his truck is loaded with 250-300 parcels and they're basically all supposed to be delivered by evening. They even hire temp guys as runners who ride along in trucks to help the drivers get the packages dropped off quicker. Not only that but if they do clear their truck and they have fellow guys in their route who still have a load to clear, they tend to be asked to stick around and help take that load. But it means 10-12 hour or more shifts in some cases.
It's the Amazon/online shopping craze, and seems like it isn't a very easily scalable problem.
RE: UPS - The hours aren't bad. You get overtime past 40 and are generally glad when it happens. If you work at a normal pace you won't get into trouble for productivity with your boss, and you're never at risk of making less money because you're not productive enough. UPS guarantees you a certain number of hours so you don't get trapped committing to a job that ends up only giving you 20/wk
What sucks about the job is how brainless and repetitive delivering packages is. It is nice that everyone is typically happy to see you, but conversations typically don't get very far past "hello" and "goodbye"
I don't know what it's like working for Amazon, but if it's typical gig economy BS, they are getting shafted by hidden costs and have bad incentives to make rushed and sloppy deliveries while overburdening themselves
Repetitive yes, brainless no. Every day is the same problem and you need to figure out the best way to solve it. You also get paid for the number of hours the computer says. Finish your route in 5 hours and getting paid for 8 was pretty rewarding. I also stayed in great shape and you get to hang out outside all day.
>It seems the "decent" jobs are going away, replaced by ones that turn workers into robots to better extract value from their labor.
We are in a (or entering a) transitionary period where said workers are soon to be literally replaced by robots. The current market expects robot-like efficiency from these jobs, but the robots aren't ready to fully take over yet, which means people get stuck filling the gap with jobs that require more and more of them. Transitionary periods always suck for the people caught in the churn.
On one hand, once the robots are more widely deployed for warehouse work and delivery, there will be less stories about overworked, tired humans. On the other hand, there might be more stories about less availability of low-skill jobs, and these same humans now being underemployed.
Well we have gone through times when workers were mistreated; the start of the industrial revolution. It took our grandparents a lot of pain to get the legal protections many workers take for granted. Protections that have been consistently eroded.
Society's creation is a pie, and what % of GDP goes to labor vs capital classes is not fixed. It fluxes and wanes. Over the last 50 years labor's percentage of GDP has fallen consistently.
There are a number of objective measures that support this idea, none of them are perfect, but they tend to show a clear trend:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_share
The same is true for taxi services, fast food, and cashiers...
We're moving to a point where all low-value jobs will be replaced by either self-service or automation.
The question is what happens to the people who filled those jobs?
I can recall working in retail as a HS student and observing some of the full time staff and wondering what the heck these people would do without their job as cashier, now 25 years later that same store has replaced most cashiers with self checkout. What happened to those people? What job do they have today?
By soon you mean in 20 years? Self Driving Car technology isn't ready yet and where are you going to get the humanoid robots to deliver packages over arbitrary terrain?
There is a simple macro view I don't see mentioned much: For the economics, in a word, the robots are deflationary. Usually in deflation people lose jobs.
Then there is the old remark IIRC "deflation is the easiest problem in the world to solve -- just print money."
It may be that the current pair of low interest rates and low inflation are just from such money printing for just such deflation.
Then with the low interest rates, businesses can afford to borrow to do the R&D for the (more) robots.
Also generally with the money printing, there is more money sloshing around which tends to result in more hiring, more jobs, and lower unemployment, and sometimes even training new workers.
So we've got five together: (i) More automation (robots, computing, the Internet), (ii) low interest rates, (iii) low inflation rates, (iv) high stock market, and (v) low unemployment rates. With tariffs and trade deals, we may have more jobs for low skilled workers.
I'd like to know in more clear terms just what Amazon is using cargo planes for: The usual idea is to use boats and trucks to move products to a retailer's warehouse and then use something like FedEx, UPS, or USPS from the warehouse to the end of the last mile.
A guess: Amazon wants a warehouse in each major city, maybe 100 - 200 in the US. From each such warehouse, they deliver to the end of the last mile by small trucks. For the popular items, they stock these warehouses via trucks. Then they also have a huge central warehouse, stocked by truck, that has all the rare items and each day have their planes fly at night moving the rare stuff that has just been ordered to the city warehouses for delivery by truck during daylight. Maybe.
Amazon needed a lot of computing for their Web site so setup their server farm(s) and also provided such computing to anyone via AWS. Well, Amazon needs lots of warehousing and small truck delivery so maybe wants to provide that to every other business that needs warehousing and small truck delivery.
In some cases there're big efficiencies there: E.g., for a lot of items, it comes out of the factory for, say, 10 cents but the consumer pays maybe $2. The $1.90 goes for advertising, order taking, warehousing, shipping, payment, and some earnings. Well, Amazon can save a big chunk of the $1.90 which for the US, and much of the world, would be one heck of a big increase in economic productivity and a lot of deflation needing still more money printing! My guesses!
For more, why do people need private cars? Sure: A big reason is for shopping, e.g., getting groceries. Well, do warehousing and small truck delivery well enough and can replace a lot of the need for private cars, even for refrigerated grocery items, milk, butter, cream, eggs, lettuce, ready to bake pizza, and maybe even ice cream!
The problem with this is that while it is easy to see that the success of large corporations with practices we disagree with creates the problem, it is harder to see how us stopping our support helps fix them.
I boycotted Amazon for the better part of a decade over the one-click patent. Result: they lost some amount of money they didn't notice, I lost out on all the convenience and options. They changed nothing I was boycotting about.
I boycotted Blizzard over the bnetd response for 5-10 years. Result: They lost out on me buying Warcraft 3. I lost out on playing WC3, on the related social activities, on being part of DOTA being born, etc. They changed nothing I was boycotting about.
I revisited the boycott on blizzard after the Hong Kong mess, but this time I said I'd time box it if nothing seemed to be changing.
Is this cynicism? My unwillingness top accept some minor inconveniences to be part of a group trying to prevent human abuse? Should I care that my efforts are unsuccessful if they are nonetheless the right thing to do?
Maybe I shouldn't care about sacrificing but failing, but I do. And not just because I don't want the inconvenience, but because I want the problems to be fixed. Stopping the spread of soul-crushing (and in the case of warehouses at least, body-crushing) labor is GOOD, and way more important than promoting technological equality. I want success at this!
If I'm making life harder and doing nothing to actually stop that, I want to shift my sacrifices to a more successful area.
I just have no idea how. Right now my options are: Suffer a little without helping those that suffer a lot, or don't suffer while still not helping those that suffer a lot.
I had problems with their service back in 2008. Long story short, my internet connection dropped frequently (20+ times per DAY), and not only were the techs unable to find the problem, but wanted to charge me for the visits since they assumed that it had to be a problem with my computer, even though it was the lights on the cable modem showing a loss of signal. After that debacle, I swore off Comcast and said I'd never use them again.
I doubled down on this boycott as net neutrality debates heated up.
But these days, my choices for Internet service are Frontier FIOS or Comcast. I'm on Frontier, paying $40/month for 30 mbps, but only get 20-25 mbps. They supposedly offer up to 500 mbps, but won't tell me what the off-promo pricing is. Comcast at least includes it in their fine print.
Having only 30 mbps is starting to be a drag. I'm a gamer, and having to wait an hour or more to download a game that my friends are inviting me to check out is lame. I'm starting to consider Comcast, even though I hate them so bad.
These are people who are competing with unionized drivers at UPS. Why feel any compassion towards them about their work conditions? They are only serving their own interests.
Amazon is pulling a fast one here, and The Verge is letting them get away with it. Here’s the key part:
> it’s also been building out a network of its own delivery drivers under the Amazon Flex platform, which is a kind of on-demand contract network similar to Uber and food delivery companies like DoorDash.
So, in fact Amazon is not delivering their own packages, they are employing an ad-hoc network of local truckers to deliver their packages. This is in contrast to FedEx and UPS, who employ the men and women who leave boxes on your doorstep.
This matters because:
> (Amazon Flex has been plagued by damning reports that the high demands it places on Flex drivers have directly contributed to automobile fatalities.)
I’m sure Amazon intends to build out a full shipping network, which is the only way to optimize both quality and cost in shipping. The reality is, they are still a long way from doing so.
And... it's so much worse for customers than the old system.
Every package I order used to get here in 2 days. Now they can't get it right, and every time I make an order I get an email saying, "Oh, we're sorry it's delayed a day or two!" So Prime is now taking 3-4 days on average to get to me. I'm in the suburbs, sure... but the point remains, the old system worked better. I wouldn't even care if it took 3-4 days, if it just advertised it was going to take 3-4 days... it's crap for them to say, "Be there on the 12th!" and not get here until the 16th.
And yeah, I mean... to the original point, these guys look stressed. They're not "professional" delivery guys, half the time it's some guy without a uniform in a a minivan. Looks like just a sub-sub-sub-contractor.
So what's the solution? Do I stop using Amazon? Pretty hard this day and age. I don't know, but it's sure been bad service the last 5-6 months.
Amazon arguably has the worst possible externalities associated with it, in terms of both gravity and large scale potential. It is the epitome of consumerism and has every early sign of leading towards an "Autofac"[0] dystopia.
The office complex I work at had a major tenant leave a while ago, leaving a building empty and a parking lot empty. This parking lot is now full of these Amazon delivery vans. God help you if you try to make it into or out of the parking lot on foot during their rush to start deliveries, or worse, when they're getting back.
I feel bad for these workers, they're clearly stressed out, but I can only feel so bad after almost getting flattened a few times.
If reporting is to believed, Amazon puts a lot of pressure on delivery partners which contributes to the problem, and is happy to partner with companies that are poorly run and incredibly risky.
I'm just happy because 9 times out of 10 USPS would mark my stuff as delivered and then deliver it the next day. I have yet to have an Amazon delivery go bad besides when they try to deliver to my work after 5pm. I recognize people have huge issues with amazon delivery drivers but my experience has been better than USPS.
Last week the USPS driver was clearly running behind on his route (which is fine), but then decided to mark my package as "could not access delivery location". Which is funny because:
1. USPS is the only carrier that has direct access into my building (because that's where the mailboxes are)
2. I was home all day and there was definitely no delivery attempt
I'm guessing they have SLAs in place with Amazon that penalizes them for late delivery, so they have to resort to such tactics.
15 minutes ago an Amazon driver left my package on the street in front of my building (in urban San Francisco) and marked it as "handed directly to a resident" in the system.
Amazon doesn't provide any discoverable way to complain about this either so I'm sure their internal metrics look great.
Amazon's ways of getting help are... confusing... at best. Recently I ordered something, shipper marked it as delivered, but it wasn't there. I dug through the orders interface, trying to find an option for "item never arrived", but could only find things about returns and exchanges, or ways to report damaged items or bad packaging. After searching the customer support site for the problem, the (non-interactive) answer was essentially "wait 48 hours because sometimes things appear later than indicated". It had already been more than that, and there were no follow-up steps beyond that.
Eventually I googled the problem, and got linked to some random non-Amazon site, that told me to go find the generic "Help" link, and dig through a couple screens until I found a link to a chat interface (basically a "nothing here is helping me" link), where a robot would help me. The process worked perfectly and easily once I got there, but there's no way I would have gotten there on my own.
I suspect some people, when confronted with a missing item, will try part of what I did and just give up and eat the cost, especially if it's a cheap item. So the internal metrics look good, but that's not telling the whole story.
I ordered an item in early Nov. It was given a tracking number and marked "on it's way" a day later. The day after its expected arrival, the status updated to "delayed" and told me come come back after Nov. 8 if it still hadn't arrived. The tracking number (Amazon) was never clickable so I couldn't get any info. The item never arrived but I also was never charged, so I just ignored it.
Black Friday, I got charged for the item but nothing else changed about my tracking. A few days later, after a similar search, I found the help link and got a refund. To this day, I have no idea whether my item ever made it out of the warehouse.
Mine's definitely been worse. I had one go missing marked "handed directly to resident" for an item on a one day only sale that Amazon said they couldn't reship. Then the next day a neighbor's package was left at our building. I walked it over. Then two days later a package for someone the next street over was left at our building. I walked that over, too.
It doesn't seem like Amazon's delivery drivers know what they're doing at all.
Ordered a gift for delivery on Friday for a party Saturday. Driver shows up, didn't look at the instructions to access my building, texted me, immediately marked the package as undeliverable, left, and now it's sitting a weird limbo. UPS and USPS (and weirdly, Amazon Fresh..) never have issues.
My house has the same street name and number as another house on the same block, across the town line (it’s about 15 houses away). UPS and FedEx drivers rarely mess it up, but Amazon contractors drop my package at the wrong house about 60% of the time. I always dread ordering from amazon for this reason.
Same think with UPS, they marked a package's address as 'incorrect'. Then 3 days latter had it 'out for delivery' a second time but by the end of the day the tracking info reverted to just simply 'In Transit'.
I'm sure it's some dark pattern thing so that their employees have to mark everything as something other than late, damaged, or lost since otherwise it eats into their profits.
I've never had a problem with an Amazon delivery because I use the Amazon locker service. I'm lucky enough to have an Amazon Locker location that I pass by on my way home from work. I get my packages delivered there, and there's never been a mistake.
The only time I can't use it is if my package is too big to fit, and that's rare.
Yep, at my apartment complex USPS and Fedex will often leave my packages in the completely wrong place (by one of the many entrances, sometimes outside of it). One time while I was exercising I saw the USPS guy spend 20 minutes trying to find the entrance to the post boxes. We have an Amazon Hub and amazon deliveries never have these kinds of problem.
I had an urgent Amazon order for a replacement laptop for which delivery was promised by December 11th. They claimed it was delivered and signed for after 10PM, when the entire building was closed, unattended, and inaccessible.
We can be mad at Amazon, but so many brands have a chance to ruthlessly focus on customers, but choose not to. Even today, in grocery, you see it happening. There’s major players with deep pockets struggling to do an end-to-end grocery customer experience that competes. After a while I don’t want companies like this to survive.
If many markets were about two competent players duking it out, I’d be sympathetic. But usually it’s Amazon vs some company I’ve mostly just tolerated my whole life, but seems to care less about the customer. Amazon just often deserves to win.
Now maybe it already is already to the point we need to think about anti trust issues, but that comes with a big cost of potentially protecting a lot of incompetent players out there.
(And there are lots of brand that ruthlessly focus on customers that treat employees very well, ie Starbucks, Trader Joe’s, etc)
Amazon's last mile delivery is a significantly worse experience than FedEx, DHL, or UPS. I put their service about on-par with USPS, which is to say: full of people lying about attempted deliveries.
With both USPS and Amazon I get notified of successful delivery hours or days before the package actually shows up, or attempted delivery when I was home and nobody used the callbox. They're making a huge mistake by not prioritizing the delivery experience; it is eroding customer confidence and loyalty.
In Manhattan, 100% of deliveries from their in-house delivery service to my building (any tenant) are returned as “undeliverable”, while 100% of deliveries from USPS and UPS are fine.
It’s a 24/7 multiple doorman building with a famous address (even {address}.com works) and the number printed in 10 foot letters.
There are zero moments in years that a package could not be delivered, yet my account shows 50 fails of their in-house delivery, and 450 successes of UPS and USPS.
So ... riddle me this.
What does their vaunted machine learning have to say about such situations?
It’s scenarios like that that suggest the best ML still has a long way to go.
I've reported failed/incorrect deliveries a number of times. They ignore directions (we say leave it behind a fence), have lied about delivering the package, and have lied about handing it to a housemate (which we've caught on our security camera).
Their last mile delivery is shameful, but they have been willing to pay for a new one everytime, so they are going to feel the cost... but yeah, it's horrible.
I actively avoid ordering from Amazon now due to their terrible delivery experience (as well as selling refurbished items as new).
They're the only delivery company here that doesn't have a way to recover your package at a center. The only way to get it is to be at home during the day.
Pretty amazing you can go from being a little tiny online bookstore to owning your own fleet of planes, trucks and vans. Very inspiring story.
Also like when they are close to you, it tells you how many stops away they are in the app. So useful if you ordered something and excited to get it. However it seems when they used UPS packages would get here earlier like noon to 2PM, while Amazon own drivers seem to be a little later... but I guess that depends on where they started their day, maybe I'm closer to a UPS hub or something.
Oh, Amazon does not own all of the delivery infrastructure, though they certainly own some of it.
https://logistics.amazon.com - you too can work 7 days a week for whatever peanuts Amazon decides to throw at you, all while 'owning your own business' that is totally and completely dependent on Amazon and the success of Amazon.
That's the biggest middle finger in workers' faces I've seen: the re-appropriation of "be your own boss" rhetoric where in actuality you are under a very specific contract and "flexibility" is replaced by race-to-the-bottom exploitation.
Rideshare and food delivery gig companies are the worst offenders.
I am just amazed they determined buying the thousands, if not tens of thousands of trucks, recruiting and training drivers, and the logistics of it all, was better for them than what they could negotiate from the delivery giants and USPS.
I would assume they considered shipping items for others including pickup and delivery from customer homes. I just cannot believe it is only for delivery of their own goods
they're not buying the trucks and recruiting the contractors, it is more gig-economy bullshit. You are a 1099 worker who rents your own truck and whatever is left over is what you get.
Amazon sent out 3.3 billion packages in 2017, and saves $2-$4 per package shipped if they handle it themselves. USPS, UPS and Fedex are all raising their rates. You do the math...
The same happens here, but DHL is the major player being replaced and it makes total sense for both Amazon and its customers. To be honest, since my first delivery made directly by Amazon, until now, I never missed a single package. It was delivered on time, most times on the day after the order. DHL on the other side has horrible drivers that would just drop off the package at the next post station, instead of knocking on your damn door, while you are at home. This is absolutely frustrating and I really hate DHL for that.
From what I heard (no hard facts, sorry) the payment of the drivers is not really worse than those of the DHL drivers. Yet they do a lot better job.
Personally, I don't understand the matter of having to pay nothing for the shipping of online orders. Why don't they charge at least 3€, which is then used to pay the drivers more? A regular DHL package costs about 6€, not including the package material itself. I would appreciate paying more for the delivery if I knew that the drivers receive a better salary with that.
> I would appreciate paying more for the delivery if I knew that the drivers receive a better salary with that.
Unfortunately most people do not think like that, and would just not buy the item (or would buy it from a cheaper competitor) if there were higher shipping fees. Amazon knows this; free shipping is essentially a marketing cost for them. And they know that even if the shipping/delivery experience is sometimes frustrating, people will still come back for more.
Always really depends on your local micro-location. Here, Amazon drivers behave a lot worse, and DHL works fine, and has the comfortable fallback of the Packstation.
"Delivering" is kind of an overstatement - "shipping" maybe. I've placed at least a dozen orders over the last month. Almost half of them have been subsequently marked as "Get a replacement" (or whatever the text says). The Amazon delivery drivers seem to not be nearly as dedicated as UPS/FedEx drivers, at least in my area.
The number of Amazon packages that are prematurely marked as delivered has skyrocketed lately. When I have inquired about it via chat I have been told that this is common and I will probably receive the package later today or tomorrow. Does this happen to there people? I'm going to start fire paying attention to how these are shipped and if it's via Amazon versus USPS/FedEx.
Yeah and I just got apackage from them where everything was damaged. The book was just thrown in along with a large item. It was all creased and useless as a gift.
The carton for the small appliance they bundled with the book had what looked like a punch mark in it.
In my neck of the woods Amazon only uses their in house delivery for Sunday deliveries, otherwise it is UPS. A few months ago I had a 12 year old girl standing at the door with my package. I lightly joked, you look a little young to be driving deliveries around, and she responded that she was working with both her parents. When I asked if they waited in the car she said they were dropping packages at the neighbors. An entire family working on likely one wage. I've only used Amazon a couple times since then and never on Sunday again. If the other days start getting serviced by their in house delivery it will mean total boycott.
These days I explicitly order items with a later delivery date (usually an amazon suggested 'amazon delivery day'). The good thing about this that I get to claim/reserve a limited-sale item, but at the same time have the luxury of re-considering my choice on the impulse-buy one or two more days before the item is shipped.
The article mentions that Amazon is also on pace to be rivaling FedEx and UPS in total volume as well. It's interesting that Bezos' estimate of 5% of retail equals this much volume of packages.
In my area, anything small enough to fit in my mailbox or the smallest cardboard box they use comes via USPS. If it's in the local warehouse, Amazon delivers it. Otherwise it's UPS. I can't think of the last time an Amazon package arrived via FedEx.
In the early 2000's I knew people that worked as delivery drivers for UPS or FedEx and it was a decent job. They seemed happy. Now I see the Amazon delivery people, and they look majorly stressed out as if they are on the edge of collapse. Many times they are delivering things at 10pm desperately trying to meet their quotas.
I think a lot of the same thing happened in the retail as well. I see the salespeople at malls or brick and mortar retail stores. Even though it is stressful, at least they get to be somewhat human in that they talk to people and have some degree of freedom to move around. Compare that with the Amazon warehouse workers whose every second has been planned out with maximally efficiency and who so afraid of losing their jobs that they are afraid to go to the bathroom.
It seems the "decent" jobs are going away, replaced by ones that turn workers into robots to better extract value from their labor.