If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and take the spirit of this site more to heart, we'd be grateful. It's in your interest too, because then your views will be more likely to change hearts and minds. Providing correct information in a neutral way may not persuade the person you're arguing with, but it will win over the larger readership who don't comment.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19239100 and marked it off-topic.
The result of this crash is three known fatalities. When focusing on whether deliveries were disrupted, rather than the known loss of life, the appearance is one of heartlessness.
Amazon deliveries are surprisingly reliable when my expectation is to get a new lamp or even a shipment of toilet paper. But if my life relied on their never being delayed, I would already be dead about 5-10% of the time, and it doesn't even take a plane crash.
This is an incredible stance to be taking: weighing the unlikely potential death of someone relying on known unreliable delivery schedules against three confirmed casualties from a freak accident. You want to talk about callousness?
No, it's an internal locus of control. If I went into the Disability Olympics I'm guaranteed at least the bronze. Believe you me when I say we could share some war stories about how the world is not set up to accommodate everyone.
That said, my point is that this is not the place to discuss that. It is not acceptable to go into a thread about people who did die in a way they could not have foreseen, and try to force the discussion onto people who could have died. Especially when your scenario hinges on poor planning and reliance on a known unreliable service for critical needs.
You're claiming ableism and saying that the world does not accommodate you, while callously downplaying the lives that were lost by people who were trying to do exactly that. If Amazon deliveries are what you rely on to survive, how can you brush off the deaths of those working to bring you those goods?
If they had approached from a different angle, something like "Remember that this can have knock on effects, my sister is waiting on her insulin delivery and after a particularly rough week a missed delivery could be fatal" it wouldn't have ruffled feathers. Instead it was phrased such that anyone who hadn't considered that concept was morally deficient. You claim to be upset by my "sanctimonious" behavior and yet view the post I responded to as just "sharing a personal experience"?
They almost certainly do plan for them. They will find out what shipments were on the plane, update the tracking status for those orders, and either refund those customers or ship replacements to them.
It will take some time for Amazon to find out what was on that particular plane, and so even for those customers for whom they decide to ship replacements rather than provide refunds there is no way they will get their items by the original due date.
...and this was a plane crash, which is probably the best case for this. With a plane crash, especially a plane that is specifically contracted for Amazon shipments, Amazon finds out quickly that they have a lost a shipment, and it is then just a matter of finding out which packages were on that plane as opposed to other planes sent out from the same airport.
In the far more common cases, such as delays in the rail system, or weather or natural disasters closing down shipping routes, (1) it will take longer for Amazon to even find out there is a problem, and (2) the same problem might affect an immediate shipment of a replacement.
It is simply not possible with existing technology, even with the resources of an Amazon, to build the shipping system you seem to want: one that will allow people to order essential items two days before they must have them, and always receive them.
I sell through FBA and see how much stuff gets returned for "missed fulfilment promise". The rates might surprise you. I've also sold medical products and once got a feedback crediting it with saving someone's life (was a blood pressure monitor).
All supply chain operations have many levels of risk attached to it and you always need to manage it. Main risk you should make sure you don’t have to is to depend on shipment arriving on time. Plane crashing, fire in a delivery center, last mile truck crashing, heavy snow blocking roads, etc, etc. And that’s just shipping - there’s also risk with insurance company getting cofnused with you prescriptions, credit card getting denied, pharma company having production issues, etc, etc. You have risks also with your local pharmacy, even if you aren’t disabled - again roads maybe closed, they may burn down, staff can catch some serious infection that will force closure, etc, etc
If you need critical meds, you need to make sure you always have enough of a buffer, as there’s many things that can always go wrong
I am very well aware that my health and safety are commonly at risk; therefore I don't find the suggestion that a firm might actually plan around an accident to be bizzare or antisocial.
But, there's tons of things that can go wrong with any company operations, and for some they'll have plan b to meet contract, for others they refunds, for others they have insurance, and for some of them - it's just an inherent risk of running a business, that they have to roll with.
It's unreasonable to expect any company to operate risk free, with 100% guarantee of fulfilling contract every single time - there's not a single company on earth that can do that. And as a customer, one needs to be aware of that.
I understand that you are advocating for a minority group, and that's noble. But the expectation that it's not okay for Amazon to miss a delivery due to a plane crash is irrational. It has nothing to do with "ableism".